Katseye Claws Back

Even on Zoom, Katseye knows how to make an entrance. Four of the six women pop up in separate windows, turning on their cameras in succession, ready to get down to business. The walls behind them are mostly blank, and each member is in a more casual, dressed-down presentation than their usual edgy glam. But the chaos of getting all six members at once remains: Daniela Avanzini and Manon Bannerman both have wi-fi issues. It takes Daniela a while before she can join, and we lose Manon intermittently until she connects outside, sitting at a table in a courtyard.

The rest of the women are as patient and professional as usual. If they have any inkling that, in one week’s time, they’ll make an announcement that would not only break the internet but turn their fan base upside down, they aren’t showing it. At this point in late February, they’ve barely even come down from their Grammys high.

“I’m literally still processing that I was even there,” says Megan Skiendiel, quick and ecstatic to talk about it, in her usual bubbly tone. They performed “Gnarly” — an addictive, topsy-turvy jock jam with brainrot lyrics that capture the experience of mainlining a thousand TikToks in one sitting — during the blowout Best New Artists medley and could see Lady Gaga and John Legend from the stage. That night, they hung out with Tate McRae, met Sabrina Carpenter for the first time, and mingled with other nominees on the floor.

“We had such a fun kiki with Zara Larsson. She’s the best,” says Lara Raj. Bold and confident without overshadowing the others, she often takes the wheel of the conversation from her square on the left side of the screen. “We were sitting right in front of Slash, which was so cool and so iconic,” she continues. “Literally, one moment he’s sitting behind us, and then the next moment he was on stage performing, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t even realize he was right behind us.’ So many iconic, iconic people.

Sophia Laforteza is the group’s designated leader, and she lives up to the title. She keeps everyone on message throughout the conversation, clear and concise about her hopes for the group. “When we all sit down and reflect on what just happened in the past year, it really is nothing but surreal,” she says, crouched on the floor next to her bed. (The members live separately but near each other in Los Angeles.) “It’s so crazy how a lot of the things [we said] in past interviews are coming to fruition already so soon that it’s making the future even clearer for us. It’s starting to just carve this path for us, and we just can’t wait.”

“You cannot do this if you’re not deeply passionate about it and if you don’t deeply love it,” Lara adds. “There is so much hardship but also so many beautiful and exciting moments.”

Last year was pretty extraordinary by most pop standards. “Gnarly,” despite its risky sound and nonsenical wordplay (courtesy of hyperpop pioneer Alice Longyu Gao), became their first Billboard Hot 100 entry and preceded their second EP, Beautiful Chaos; follow-up single “Gabriela,” with its hypnotic Latin-pop rhythms and bilingual lyrics, inspired its own viral TikTok dance challenge. But the group was always more than an online sensation: When they played the MTV Video Music Awards pre-show, you could hear fans screaming along so loudly, the censors had to bleep them. At Lollapalooza in Chicago last summer, Katseye set a daytime attendance record with more than 85,000 people catching the set (and another 100,000+ watching the livestream) before embarking on their first headlining tour in the fall.

“We’re only as strong as our weakest member. We need to make sure that we’re all showing up for each other. We cannot leave anybody behind.”

By the end of the year, they were up for two Grammys (for Best New Artist and Best Pop/Duo Group Performance). Their burgeoning careers have also been fed by a slew of event-level endorsement deals, including a massive Gap denim ad in which their mesmerizing moves to Kelis’ “Milkshake” helped boost the brand’s comparable sales by 7% (and, for a moment, mercifully made the world forget the words “Sydney Sweeney jeans discourse”). Since then, Fendi, Glossier, Urban Outfitters, Lush, Pandora, Jollibee, and even the New York MTA have all called upon the world’s coolest group to give them a boost. By early 2026, Katseye has already appeared in a Super Bowl ad for State Farm and snagged perhaps the hottest accessory around: a custom smoothie for Erewhon.

It’s everything Katseye has been grinding for. Their journey began in late 2021, when Hybe — the South Korean company behind BTS — and Geffen launched auditions to create a new global girl group, styled and trained like the K-pop stars Hybe is known for, but with multicultural appeal for the last remaining souls somehow convinced K-pop isn’t for them. After two years of searching for, then subsequently workshopping, prospective members, the 120,000 applicants were whittled down to 20, who then competed in the YouTube competition The Debut: Dream Academy, where fans voted for the final lineup. The top six became Katseye as we know them, the world’s most talked-about girl group, responsible for some of the tightest dance breaks and gaggiest performances on the planet.

Most of them had been working toward stardom for a decade or more already. New York City-born, Manila-raised Sophia, 23, grew up around theater thanks to her mother, who starred in Miss Saigon on the West End in the ’90s, and she speaks of her childhood ambitions with the same laser focus she uses with Katseye. “In school, I was the girl that joined every single thing that was related to what I loved,” she says. “I joined every single extracurricular activity. I was in every single program, and I led all of them. I always made sure that if it was something that I knew I was good at and that I loved so much, I would excel and be the leader of everything that I did.”

Lara, 20, was similarly single-minded in her mission. Raised between the tri-state area and Dallas, she pursued acting and modeling as a preteen, even making an appearance in former first lady Michelle Obama’s Global Girls Alliance campaign launch video in 2018. “I always knew that I wanted to and was meant to live a really big life, and I wanted people to receive and be an audience to what I put out into the world,” she says, glowing in the L.A. sunlight streaming through the window. “I’ve always wanted many, many eyes on me.”

It’s a quality she shared with Atlanta-born Daniela, 21, who competed as a dancer on both America’s Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation and still looks chic in her off-duty ’fit of a black tanktop and large tortoiseshell glasses. “I always knew dancing was for me,” she says, “but when I moved to Miami around 8 or 9 years old, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to sing, dance, and act.’” In Miami, she further connected with her Latin roots — her mom and dad are Cuban and Venezuelan, respectively, and Spanish was her first language — listening and dancing to more salsa, merengue, and bachata.

“We’re not going to stop showing you more of us. We’re really embracing that rawness — that crazy, wilder side of us.”

In contrast to some of her bandmates, Honolulu-born Megan, 20, says she never felt confident in school. She took dance classes and knew she wanted to pursue a creative life — it just didn’t feel totally accessible to her. “I was not really in the center of the entertainment industry,” she says, bundled up in an oversize puffer jacket, hoop earrings dangling. “Obviously, on a little island, all of our info came maybe a month after everything was already happening in L.A.” But eventually, her focus crystallized: She started spending weekends in L.A. when she was 10, knowing there was “no Plan B” for entering showbiz.

The baby of the group is South Korea’s Yoonchae Jeung, 18, whose cheeks today look particularly rosy. She’s the quietest member, often waiting to be called on to speak up, but underneath her reserved demeanor is a fierce determination. “I think I was very extroverted before, when I was young,” says Yoonchae, who started in K-pop’s trainee system prior to joining Katseye. The other members perk up whenever she speaks, with clear care for the remaining teen in the crew. “I love to dance every day. I used to go on the stage every time we had a talent show. I knew I was going to be a singer.”

And then there’s Switzerland’s Manon, 23. The group’s eldest member, she’s as talkative and confident as Lara. Though she was already building a following in Europe as a popular influencer and model on social media, America called to her. Around 2% of Switzerland’s population is Black, and Manon wanted to be somewhere where there were more people who not only looked like her but also had a foothold in this industry. She came to L.A. in 2020 for an exchange year, and even though it was cut short due to the pandemic, she had already fallen in love.

“I was honestly so shocked that there was a city with so many creative people and just so many like-minded people,” she says, fresh-faced with her hair pulled back under a headband. “Now I’m here with these girls, so I’m like, ‘What the hell happened?’ I’m so, so grateful and feel so blessed, and it really just goes to show that anyone can do it.”

We all know by now those innocent childhood dreams and ambitions always come with a price. These days, there are more eyes on Katseye than ever. Each individual member’s social media is followed by millions of fans. For every swarm of new fans they made after their Grammys performance, there was a detractor who didn’t understand why they were on that stage in the first place. It’s a cycle every young woman in the industry encounters, and right now Katseye is in the eye of the storm.

“What we’ve learned about what it takes to be an artist is not paying too much attention to what is happening online,” says Manon. “I think once you get famous, there’s so many opinions all of a sudden about you. Everyone’s judging and having something to say. Just keep building a wall between all of that.”

Easier said than done.

On Feb. 20, Katseye announced that their group of six would, for the moment, become five. “Manon will be taking a temporary hiatus from group activities to focus on her health and well-being,” Hybe and Geffen said in a statement. Of all the members, Manon always seemed to have the clearest boundaries when it came to extending herself. As seen in the Netflix documentary Pop Star Academy: Katseye, a behind-the-scenes look at the Dream Academy experience, the other members either talked behind her back or confronted her directly for not showing up to rehearsals enough as she took sick days instead of pushing herself when she knew she couldn’t. Her competition may have thought she was lazy, but Manon still had enough charisma and star power to be voted through to the final.

For fans — many of whom have lived through the traumas of past girl-group departures by Geri Halliwell, Camila Cabello, and Jesy Nelson — the announcement triggered a panic, as well as their own investigations. A Weverse message from Manon, in which she assured followers she was healthy and that “sometimes things unfold in ways we don’t fully control,” suggested to some “Eyekons” (as the group’s supporters are called) that there was more at play. They pored over photos and videos of the group, doing armchair body-language analysis. They resurfaced clips from Pop Star Academy and other off-stage footage that, in their eyes, pointed to a long-fractured dynamic or alleged mistreatment by their labels. Was Manon at odds with the industry machine behind her? Had intragroup tensions somehow reached a breaking point? Or did she just, in fact, need a break?

“There’s moments where the internet can get really, really rough. The more years you’re in it, the easier it is.”

The group declined to answer additional questions about Manon’s hiatus, or the intense fan speculation around it, after the news broke following our interview. (Last week, Manon removed mention of Katseye from her Instagram bio but told fans, in a separate Weverse statement, that she was in a happy, healthy place: “HxG and I are having positive conversations and I feel supported.”) Back during our initial chat, Manon is straightforward about what it takes to be in Katseye. “Being in a group, it’s just about good communication and setting good boundaries and building a friendship, but also work relationship, and always remembering that it’s a shared goal that we have,” she says, while Lara nods in agreement.

“There’s six of us, so obviously not everyone’s always going to be on the same page about everything,” Manon adds. Like at photo shoots, she offers — sometimes two members may like the same outfit and have to decide among themselves who wears what. “But I think we all are at, or have been learning and are finally coming to, a point where for the group’s sake, you give and you take. You pick your battles.”

The group has experimented with how they make decisions. They’ve tried a majority-rules approach before, but when it comes to a new song or choreography, votes like that felt exclusionary — and more detrimental to the group’s dynamic than the work of finding a way to make everyone happy.

“We have to lean on each other — and a good therapist.”

“We’ve learned that if even just one person doesn’t feel good about a certain thing, we need to heavily consider and communicate about it — because it’s not about the majority enjoying it and just having the people who don’t enjoy it adjust,” Sophia says, taking the reins when I ask for more examples of how they work through disagreements. She’s a diplomatic leader, and she looks the part: With a white headband, black shoulder-baring top, and a prominent gold cross necklace, there is something nunlike about her calm today. “If we don’t feel comfortable, we don’t feel passionate. We don’t feel good about something. We need to help that person see another perspective or adjust everything overall because it really is hard to perform a song if you don’t enjoy it.”

At the end of the day, Sophia continues, it’s all about professionalism and respect. “We’re only as strong as our weakest member,” she says. “We need to make sure that we’re all showing up for each other and all going at the same pace. We cannot leave anybody behind.”

As is clear from the reaction to Manon’s hiatus, Katseye has not been immune to the minefield that is being a woman on the internet these days. The group members have been open about the racist and misogynistic harassment they’ve faced online, both in the comments and on their feeds. They say they’ve received thousands of death threats and have made an effort to call out the hate as it comes. Megan asked fans on Weverse to stop commenting on her appearance after getting bullied over her red-carpet look at a Grammys event. Throughout her time in the group, Manon has been criticized for not being “Black enough,” as if such a thing even exists, while others have sniped that Daniela is exaggerating her Latina identity for branding purposes, with little understanding of cultural nuance. Last year, a post from someone supposedly reporting Lara to ICE made the rounds online.

“There’s moments where the internet can get really, really rough,” Daniela says generally of this kind of toxic feedback. She talks about it like she’s describing what she had for breakfast; managing the hate has become a normal part of their daily lives. “I think the best thing for me personally is to just distract myself with other things, whether it’s hanging out with friends or talking to family or just going out.”

“We have to lean on each other,” Manon says. “But we also have supportive friends and supportive family. It’s something that keeps you humble and grounded. And then just having a good therapist.” (All the members are in therapy.) On Popstar, it was clear that the group dynamic hinged on all of the above. Scenes of the girls crying on each other’s shoulders during brutal days in rehearsal or calling their parents or friends back home for advice gave the show its heart and humanity.

“I feel like the more years you’re in it, the easier it is, because I remember when we first started, it was really tough,” Daniela adds. The group members have been at the mercy of stan culture from the jump — fans voted them into Katseye, after all — but they’ve learned how to take the power back together, even if it just means laughing at comments in their Katseye group chat. “Having each other is a really, really big one, ’cause we all get it,” Daniela says. “Having my five sisters being there for me is helpful because I know that I’m not in it alone.”

“I think Coachella is going to be a very iconic moment for us. We want it to be very grand.”

Historically, girl groups have been expected to rise above the chatter, save for some broad, relatable messages about championing over adversity. But what’s striking about Katseye is how, this early in their careers, they’ve used their music to bite back. The Beautiful Chaos track “Mean Girls” magnanimously addresses how viewers described some of them after watching Popstar, while “Internet Girl” laughs off the polarized reactions to “Gnarly” (“Click it, click it, ooh you hate it”). Lara teases their upcoming single “Pinky Up” (out April 9) as an “EDM and rave-inspired” banger that touches on being in the gossip crosshairs.

“I think the fans can really expect to see us explore more areas of our identity when it comes to the things that people have said, whether it’s good or bad,” Sophia says. “You can see us touching on that and clapping back at it. We’re starting to do that slowly just on our social media presence and through a lot of the music that we released.”

Every girl group speaks to the issues of its day: The Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child spelled out what healthy relationships looked like; the Pussycat Dolls believed sex positivity was inside us all; Little Mix and Fifth Harmony took female empowerment to the girlboss era. Katseye’s legacy — or at least one of their legacies — just might be their fiery insistence that you don’t have to take this crap lying down. “We are showing the fans that we’re listening,” Sophia continues. “This is who we are, and we’re not going to stop showing you more of us. We’re really embracing that rawness and that crazy or wilder side of us.”

Expect to see that side front and center when the group performs at both weekends of Coachella. For artists on the cusp of a total pop-music takeover, the festival has proven to be the essential push from buzz to breakout: In 2024, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter benefited greatly from their own sets going viral enough to rocket “Good Luck, Babe!” and “Espresso,” respectively, to the upper echelons of the charts.

“I think Coachella is going to be a very huge and iconic moment for us,” Lara says. “We’re all very obviously inspired by Beychella and Blackpink Coachella and how much effort they’ve put into their Coachella performances. We want it to be very grand and this big pivotal moment for us.”

“You cannot do this if you’re not deeply passionate about it. There is so much hardship — but also so many beautiful and exciting moments.”

While it’s unclear at press time whether Manon will return to Katseye in time for the double-header, the group has been experimenting with what it’s like to perform as five instead of six. In mid-March, they took the stage at Lollapalooza Argentina, where Sophia shouted out Manon during the show. In an ominously prophetic turn on our Zoom call, Manon’s connection finally cuts off entirely before we wrap up. But the show must go on, and the other five keep the interview going, chatting about how they’ve been looking for inspiration lately as they look ahead to the rest of their year.

“I love spending time on Pinterest,” Megan says. She likes to make a new board to fit the energy of a new song. “I love spending time looking at pictures, looking at vibes, and creating worlds and picturing what kind of version I would be of myself in that world.” Daniela digs for new artists and studies “fire choreo” that makes her want to move differently. Sophia and Lara go back to their pop awakenings: Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” for Sophia and Kesha for Lara.

But Yoonchae is just inspired by Katseye itself.

“Once a week, I search ‘Katseye’ and I watch our previous videos and performances,” she says. The rest of the girls smile warmly from their windows on the video call at Yoonchae’s admission. “When I’m tired and when my fire is gone, and I see that video of us very on fire? I get inspired.”

Top image credit: Yoonchae: Lacoste clothing; Sophia: BOSS top; Cou Cou bra; Manon: Moschino top; Intimissimi tank; Brooks Brothers boxers; Lara: Issey Miyake clothing; Daniela: Another tomorrow top; Tie Bar tie; Meagan: Polo Ralph Lauren top; Hanro boxers; Brooks Brothers tie