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Last fall, Dan Howell and Phil Lester broke the internet.
In a 46-minute video titled “Are Dan and Phil in a Relationship? The Truth,” the OG British YouTubers finally revealed — after 16 years of speculation — that
they’re a couple, and have been since they started making videos together in 2009. The news made headlines around the world and delighted their 3 million fans, many of whom had shipped “Phan” for over a decade.
“It feels so different to have hard launched and be open about this,” Howell tells Variety over Zoom, sitting besides Lester in the London flat they share. “Living with this secret, having this wall up between ourselves and the audience and feeling like there’s something to be afraid of, has just felt like this barrier the whole time.”
There were several fears around going public with their relationship, including the fact that the duo — who made a name for themselves with videos featuring their comedic banter and gaming escapades — didn’t want to limit themselves to “couples content.” But as the years went on, they realized how much keeping the secret was limiting them. They were hesitant to have romantic dates in public, had to alter stories they told on their channels and could barely do press for their burgeoning careers.
“Me and Phil used to be terrified of interviews,” Howell admits.
“Oh my gosh, even doing this I would have been like, ‘Oh no! What if they ask about it? What am I gonna say?'” Lester interjects. “Because I’m a terrible liar.”
But now, with the news finally out, the pair is leaning in. Shortly after the announcement in October, they started the “Hard Launch” podcast, which quickly climbed to the top of the charts. And last week, it was revealed that they would be embarking on a 65-date “Hard Launch” tour starting in September — including stops in Mexico, the U.S., U.K., Europe, Australia and Singapore — their fourth overall but first as a public couple.
“We just want to go on stage and be completely ourselves and not hold anything back,” Lester says.
Below, Howell and Lester talk more with Variety about hard launching their relationship, what to expect from their new stage show and their thoughts on the U.K.’s recent social media ban for under 16-year-olds.
Tickets for the “Hard Launch” tour are on sale now! How are you feeling?
Lester: Just so excited that it’s finally out there, because I’m really bad at keeping secrets. So many times I’ve almost said, “We’re going to go on tour!”
Howell: Phil is the leak, so we’re very relieved.
Lester: And I kept the biggest secret ever about our relationship…
Howell: To be fair, Phil, you did successfully sit on the large secret, so that’s OK.
How did you do that?
Lester: I don’t know how I did it.
Howell: Fear and homophobia.
Lester: But yeah, we’re seeing a lot of excitement online about the tour.
Howell: The box office is on fire, maybe because the country physically is, but yeah. It feels very symbolic. We’re going to be bringing hope and joy to the charred remains of society around the world.
You two hard launched your relationship in October and then created the “Hard Launch” podcast. What made you want to get back on the road?
Lester: Well, we had this huge conspiracy — probably one of the biggest conspiracies of all time — of “Phan.”
Howell: I think “Are Dan and Phil secretly dating?” was a conspiracy that defined an entire generation.
I have to say, you were some of the first YouTubers I ever watched.
Howell: Well, thank you and sorry.
Lester: We just want to go on stage and be completely ourselves and not hold anything back. When you’re holding this big thing back when you’re entertaining, you don’t realize how much you can’t say. There’d be a story I’m trying to tell and I’d be like, wait, we were in the same hotel room in that story, now I’ve gotta switch it up. So I think we wanna just do a show where we’re 100% authentically being ourselves.
Howell: It feels so different to have hard launched and be open about this. Living with this secret, having this wall up between ourselves and the audience and feeling like there’s something to be afraid of, has just felt like this barrier the whole time. And now, for that to be knocked down… we experienced something similar when we came out, and we didn’t realize that us just being able to talk about our lives and the fact that we’re together is such a big part of that.
And there’s been this incredible reaction, like, we had no idea how positive it would be. We were terrified. We didn’t know whether people would take it badly, if they’d be offended that we kept a secret. We’re old enough now and we feel like the culture has caught up and the audience has grown up and the whole environment on social media has evolved so much, that we finally felt that the time was right and we’d be safe to share this with the world. And so the fact that people met us with such a positive reaction, we just felt like, well, now we need to introduce ourselves to these people all over again. It’s like we’re baring it all for the first time 16 years into our entertainment career, which is crazy.
You’ve also inspired and helped so many people discover their own sexualities and identities. How does that feel?
Howell: It’s amazing how many people found something that resonated with Dan and Phil. I think that we represent so many different communities — there’s queer people that always looked to us for exploring some aspect of their sexuality or gender identity, there’s people who just felt like they were too alternative, that didn’t fit in with the right type of people at school. And now everyone’s grown up, and the idea that there’s all of these people from so many different groups of life but they’re like, “When I’m in the room with the Dan and Phil followers, I feel like they’re my people” — that’s beautiful. Because we always wished we had that when we were younger, and now that we’re all older, it just feels like this tour is a celebration that we all made it. It’s like, me and Phil against all the odds. It took us this long to hard launch, but we made it. And our audience is like, “Hey, it was a struggle back when we were watching YouTube as teenagers, but now we’re struggling young adults. And we made it.”
Lester: We got a whole new audience as well after the hard launch, so there’s loads of people that are going to be seeing us for the first time. And we’re making this show so that it’s got something for someone who’s been a fan for a long time and for someone that maybe just heard about us a month ago.
Howell: I mean, the energy shift since the hard launch is wild. Because there’s so many new people who are just saying, “I don’t know what the hell this Dan and Phil thing is about, but I love the vibe here.” And I think that’s something that we’ve only been able to unlock since we freed ourselves from all of this baggage. And that’s what the podcast is about — like, we hard launched our relationship, but really the podcast and the stage show is about feeling free about your identity. And because we are out here yapping, it’s showing people the level of audacity that you can achieve by being authentic, and encouraging other people to embrace that, no matter what it is to them.
In your video revealing your relationship, you said one of the main concerns was wanting people to still see you as a comedy duo and not just as a couple. Do you feel like you’ve achieved that so far?
Lester: I think what some people may have been surprised to see is that we’re just acting pretty much exactly the same as we did before, because this is just what our relationship is like. We weren’t like, hiding this other version of ourselves that people haven’t seen, but also on the flip side of that, we’re not really people who share every single aspect of our lives, and I don’t think that’s changed either.
Howell: It was a huge risk for us to say, “We’re opening up this part of ourselves and we don’t want it to ruin something.” And we’re happy with how it’s gone, but I still think there’s this conversation about like, what are boundaries? You see all these pop stars, all these actors, and people are talking constantly about where’s the line in how people can have these parasocial relationships and enjoy fandom. And I think we are very happy to have that conversation. A lot of people like to just talk negatively about these things, but I think with me and Phil and the hard launch, we said, “You know what, there were a lot of bad sides to it, but we understand them.” Some of it we can forgive; people were young, they didn’t get it. And so I think that even if it’s a bit messy and uncomfortable, I think we really wanna embrace all of it and let people feel like it’s OK to have fun. And we can have conversations about what are respectful boundaries, but the reset that we’ve had culturally and just the energy between us, it’s really fun. We’re living in a new era.
Let’s talk about tour! What can fans expect from the show?
Lester: We’re always going to do something extra and theatrical.
Howell: We’re doing the most. We’ve set the bar way too high and that’s a problem that our accountant has to deal with.
Lester: People might have seen the title and thought, “Oh, they’re just going to be sat on the stage doing a podcast.” Absolutely not!
Howell: We’re going to take everything that’s fun about the podcast, but then we’re going to make it something incredible. People are like, “What is the vibe?” And someone said, “It’s like Charli xcx doing comedy.” And we’re like, “You know what, that’s actually the gig, yeah.” That’s what it is. So you’re going to come to laugh, everyone’s having a good time together, but it really feels like you’re at a concert.
Lester: I mean, we have sung before, so don’t put it past us.
Howell: Obviously, we’ll plan loads of stunts and moments and cool things, but we think we have the funniest audience in the world. We really put people through the ringer having to survive 10 years on Tumblr, but this has turned our audience into the funniest people that are all competing with each other to crack the best jokes. And so anything that we can do to interact with the audience, do improv, get people involved, play with whatever local town that we’re in, I think it makes people feel like every show is special for them and that you’re having a night with just that audience. But not in a way where we’re dragging people on stage, because we still respect the amount of social anxiety that’s there.
Lester: We’re both people that would hate to be dragged on stage, so we’re not going to do that to you, but we’re going to think of an inventive way for you to be involved.
You’re doing 65 shows all around the world — how do you survive that? What are the best and worst parts of being on tour?
Lester: First of all, sleeping on a bus is a challenge for me because I get motion sick. So it’s getting used to that again. And also, we’re going to have some time to explore each of the places we’re going, so we’re going to do a mix of sharing where we’re going with the internet and doing the show at the same time.
Howell: We tour because we have fun. It’s our favorite thing to do. We do all of this stuff on the internet, and then touring is what makes it feel real. That’s what makes us feel like, “Oh, we’re doing this for a reason, there are real people out there that are enjoying our content.” And look, it’s a scary time in the world right now and people are like, “Dan and Phil, you’re going on tour, are you sure?” And it’s like, well that’s why it’s so important. The whole point of our hard launch is that it’s important to be as loud and alternative and queer as possible to celebrate that we’re still here in spite of everything. Our audience deserves a good time, we wanna have a good time, and so the whole thing is really quite defiant. And we’re going to go around the world and probably get no sleep, but I think we all deserve a party.
Lester: We just want to be as gay as possible and create as many queer, inclusive spaces where people can have a good time, because I think the world needs that at the moment.
Will you be filming the show so that those who can’t make it can still enjoy?
Howell: Yeah, definitely. We did that before with the last couple, and people really enjoyed and appreciated it. We’re definitely going to come up with some kind of plan to film the show so that everybody around the world, for whatever reason that might not be able to make it to a show in person, gets to feel like they were part of the experience.
I also wanted to get your take on the U.K. social media ban for under 16-year-olds. What are your thoughts on YouTube being included in that?
Howell: With social media, obviously there’s lots of bad things on it, but it’s a place where people can discover a wider world than their immediate environment. And for some people, that’s life-changing and life-saving and inspiring. I know that being able to log into your own YouTube account may not seem like the biggest thing in the world, but it is a way for people to explore what kind of media they love that really shapes who you are as a person.
Lester: It’s so creatively inspiring on YouTube as well. There’s so much stuff out there that I think is helpful to young people, like art videos, comedy sketches — and if I hadn’t started watching other YouTubers making videos, then I wouldn’t be doing this now.
Howell: Yeah, if we couldn’t have digested all of that, then we wouldn’t be Dan and Phil. And so I respect that there’s things that everyone should be doing to make the internet a safer place for young people, but I also want to make sure that we’re still inspiring young people and showing them that there’s a big, beautiful world out there and there’s a place for them.
Lester: Definitely regulate it more, if possible, to protect people. But don’t just take it away, because that feels like the wrong move. I don’t think banning things really works anyway.
Howell: No. And I mean, hey, we don’t take any of this for granted. Every single year, every tour that me and Phil have done since the beginning — you know, we started YouTube when social media culture didn’t even exist. And we thought, this isn’t going to stick around so we need to have fun now, we need to work really hard now because it’s going to disappear in two years. And then that didn’t happen in 2015 and it didn’t happen in 2020 and now, you know, 2026 has come and somehow 16 years later, Dan and Phil are still at the top of their game. Who would have thought that would happen?
Lester: And we’re somehow not sick of each other.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
