Emmie P grew up in a household so religious she was not allowed to dress up for Halloween. Now dressing up as someone else is a central part of her career.
The cosplayer, Twitch partner and car enthusiast sat down with host Wayne Ayers on “The Wayne Ayers Podcast” to talk about convention life, how she picks her costumes, why she prefers DC to Marvel, the Japanese sports car she keeps modifying and what aspiring streamers should do before they go live.
Ayers first met her at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, where a video of their conversation went viral. He said people still ask him about her.
“That was actually my first convention that I ever went to as a creator that you caught me at,” she said. “It was a really cool experience. But I’ve just been getting more into the actual convention game of cosplay. Usually I just do it from my home, but I’m getting super comfortable with it now.”
She has since been to Anime NYC, which she described as a huge space with plenty to do but fewer activities than the Los Angeles show, where she played Beyblade on stream with a friend. Cellphone service was another problem for someone who streams from the convention floor.
“The service was honestly [expletive], because I usually stream it,” she said. “But other than that, it was great. I got to see a lot of fun people, cosplay a lot of fun people.”
At the time of the interview, she was preparing for New York Comic Con and hoping to stay in Los Angeles long enough to attend LA Comic Con. She has been trying on costumes and lining up backups, including more obscure comic book characters.
“Getting some comic character backups ready, like a little more unique ones,” she said. “Hopefully not everyone recognizes them.”
Shoes first, then the character
Ayers, who said he tried cosplay for one day, remembered the process as overwhelming. “I was like, d***, this [expletive] is stressful,” he said.
Emmie said her process starts from the ground up.
“I think the first thing I go for is the shoes,” she said. “Once I pick a character, or if I’m wanting to do something in the X-Men line or something in the Avengers, which I don’t think I’ve ever done, or if I’m trying to pick a DC character from my favorite comic, I kind of go straight for the shoes. I’m like, what shoes can I wear for eight hours plus and I’m still going to be comfortable in?”
Some of her costumes call for heels as tall as 6 inches, which makes that choice critical, she said.
“I feel like everything else can kind of fall into place, but if I’m uncomfortable in my shoes, I will completely shut down,” she said.
She started cosplaying only about three years ago, and the hobby grew out of a childhood without costumes.
“It’s always something that I wanted to do, but growing up, I grew up in a very religious household, so I wasn’t even allowed to dress up for Halloween,” she said. “So I’ve kind of always had these ideas and wants and desires to kind of be somebody else for one day, you know, cosplay a character.”
Social media changed that. “When I started my social media accounts, I was like, ‘Wait, I can do this. I can just do whatever I want. I can be or dress up as whoever I want. This is awesome,'” she said.
Her first costume was Catwoman, and she does not look back on it fondly.
“It was the s***tiest mask you could imagine,” she said. “A weird bodysuit that was a super awkward texture and material. It was genuinely one of the worst cosplays that I’ve ever done. And the wig itself looked like it was taken off of, I don’t know, a mannequin 50 years ago. It was genuinely terrible. But that was the first of many.”
Her dream costume is a female version of Guts, the hulking swordsman from “Berserk,” though she worries her height works against her.
“I would probably want to do gender bender Guts, but my height kind of restricts that,” she said. “I’m not very tall, and Guts is originally this massive, really buff character, and I don’t think I would fit into that. But every time I see a woman playing Guts, I just absolutely lose my mind.”
When Ayers pointed out that shorter cosplayers have pulled off the character, she reconsidered. “That’s true,” she said. “I just have to put on a little more muscle and then I’ll be good.”
She had no Halloween plans at the time of the interview, but she had been getting a head start at Renaissance fairs, wearing chain mail and maiden outfits nearly every weekend that month. With two comic conventions on her October calendar, she said, “I feel like that’s my dressing up fantasy fulfilled right there. But I’ll probably end up finding a fun party to go to.”
“They’re a lot of fun,” she said of the fairs. “People like to get in character, and anytime somebody tips the staff, they’re always like, ‘Huzzah!’ And then everyone just screams ‘huzzah.’ And there’s always pickle guys yelling, ‘Get your pickle. Get your pickle.'”
She recalled a friend’s birthday visit to one of those pickle vendors.
“The guy was like, ‘OK, here you go. You got to open your mouth.’ So he opens his mouth, and he’s like, ‘Look down,'” she said. “He looks down, and he shoves the pickle halfway down his throat. I was just like, ‘What is this? What is the Ren fair right now?'”
“But I think they only harass you like that if you have good energy, you know?” she said. “If you’re super excited, because we were talking about getting a pickle the entire day.”
DC all the way
“I feel like I was an anime nerd growing up, but I’m developing more of a deep love for comic books and comic characters,” she said. “But growing up, I was watching the cringiest anime you could possibly think of.”
Asked to choose between Marvel and DC, she did not hesitate. “DC all the way,” she said. “The storylines just feel more complete in my mind.”
Ayers said he is frustrated with how DC has handled its film universe given how much material it has to draw from. “That should be the one universe that should never fail,” he said.
Emmie defended the studio’s slate. “Well, they have ‘Clayface’ coming out, and at least with TV shows, we have ‘Lanterns’ now,” she said.
After Ayers praised “The Penguin,” she agreed. “They’re amazing at making TV shows. ‘Peacemaker’ as well,” she said. “They’re so beautiful and so whole almost compared to some of the Marvel stuff, which just seems like a cash grab at this point.”
Asked for her favorite and most overrated comic book movies, she turned instead to the comics themselves, noting she has not read as many as she would like. Her favorite is “Absolute Batman.”
“I think ‘The Absolute Batman’ was probably my favorite, just because of how dark and gory,” she said. “It’s an alternative Batman, which we don’t really get to see, like poor Batman ever. We see this rich Bruce Wayne, not this unfortunate circumstance Bruce Wayne. So I really liked that for a comic.”
Her biggest letdown was “Power Girl,” a character she cosplays often.
“I read it, and I was like, this is just pure [crude slang]. They don’t even do anything,” she said. “No character develops at all. There’s a slight character development. It’s purely [crude slang] with the b**b window and the implied lesbian roommate, which I love. But just show it at that point. Like, you’re already doing the [crude slang]. I need to go into the back of the comic store and find the good stuff at this point, because now I’m just mad and it’s over.”
Her anime Mount Rushmore starts with “Dorohedoro.”
“I really enjoy the art style. It’s just very unique and different,” she said. “And I like how the character needs to find himself throughout the series.”
Next came “The Way of the Househusband” and “Sakamoto Days.” “It’s just so cute and so wholesome, and ‘Sakamoto Days’ as well, with the wholesome kind of family vibes,” she said.
She described “The Way of the Househusband” as the story of a former gangster from Japan who leaves the mob to care for his wife and cat while dodging people around town who recognize him. When Ayers compared it to “Sakamoto Days,” she agreed. “They are very similar, but there’s less of a story element,” she said.
The fourth spot went to “Berserk.”
“I feel like I have to go with ‘Berserk,'” she said. “It’s mainly a manga, and not all of it’s adapted, but what is adapted of ‘Berserk’ is still phenomenal, and it makes me cry every single time. I literally have to take breaks in between reading or watching, just because it gets so dark so quick. It’s like, wow, I really need a break from this. But I love it so much. I will be back.”
Adult money and a turbo Subaru
Her love of cars arrived the way most of her adult obsessions did.
“Now that I have it, I just want to spend it on things,” she said of having adult money. She builds massive Lego sets, including a large Batman set that sits behind her on camera, keeps comic book figures on her wall and collects anime.
“When it comes to cars, I feel like I have been really into Japanese cars, and that’s kind of the love that I have for it,” she said, crediting the racing anime “Initial D” for pulling her in.
Money was tight growing up in a cold, snowy region. She and her three sisters shared one car, while her brother had his own, and her parents would not buy snow tires for it.
“If it was a really snowy day and there’s either a school delay or a complete cancellation, that’s the only time my parents would let me drive with snow tires,” she said, laughing. “We had a car for utility, but they wouldn’t even give us snow tires for that thing. They were just like, ‘You’re fine. Good luck.'”
As a college senior at a school in the South, with her lease ending and no ride home, she bought her first car, a Mazda3 hatchback.
“Paid way too much money on it,” she said. “That was my first car. That’s my baby. But that was my first JDM.” Car enthusiasts use JDM, short for Japanese domestic market, to describe Japanese performance cars.
A faster car came next. “Later on I was like, I really like this car, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a little fast car that I can go drive in?” she said. “And obviously that’s the BRZ, the Subaru BRZ.”
Then came “Initial D.” “I started watching ‘Initial D,’ and I was like, this could go faster,” she said. “I am BMW deep into a Subaru right now, with adding the turbo and all the other mods that I am planning on.”
She said she considered and passed on a Toyota Supra. “I just didn’t want to get a Supra, so I went for the BRZ with an additional turbo after,” she said.
She cannot drift yet but hopes to learn, and she is planning a trip to Japan.
“I really want to plan a [expletive] Japan trip,” she said. “The culture is anime, but it’s also leaning towards drifting in the mountains. There’s a whole lot to do, and I hope to do all of it.”
Ayers said his own interest in cars started with “Tokyo Drift,” the third film in the Fast and Furious franchise. Emmie said the series lost its way.
“Later on in the series, they really moved away from the cool Fast and Furious being a car movie, and now it’s a heist franchise,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Streaming from upstate New York
She wants to do more collaborations, but most of her mutuals live in Los Angeles, while she lives in upstate New York.
“I have to make a lot of trips out to LA to do livestreaming and to make, you know, silly little TikToks and Instagram reels,” she said. “I feel like community is important as a creator or in general. Doesn’t matter who you are. Community is important, and it’s sometimes tough being so far away, because I do just want to, like, ‘Oh, that trend looks so much fun. Let me go do it with my friend.’ Oh wait, I can’t. She’s in LA.”
She has thought about moving. “I feel like it’s going to be sooner rather than later, but it’s not going to be next month,” she said.
She explained that Twitch streamers earn money through ad and subscription revenue and that partners, as she understood it, receive different ad terms. Partner status requires streaming a set number of hours and reaching certain levels of views and engagement per stream, she said, though creators with big followings elsewhere can also apply.
“I love Twitch. I love being a live creator,” she said. “That is where I experience community. That’s where I can raid my friends that are in LA. That’s where I can kind of talk to people with common interests, and them not look at me like I have three heads.” A raid sends a streamer’s audience to another channel at the end of a broadcast.
Asked whether she would try a subathon, a marathon stream that gets extended as viewers subscribe, she said, “Maybe one day.” Her streams lean relaxed: building Gundam models or Lego sets, or playing a video game. If she did one, she said, it would likely be from a convention.
“I feel like I’m not very pushy when it comes to subs, but I feel like I need to be a little more,” she said. “That’s part of my next development. I’m like, ‘OK, we’re going to sub. OK, you need to sub right now. This is my livelihood. Just do it.’ Because right now I’m just like, ‘If you want to go ad free, subscribe.’ I feel like a walking ad.”
Ayers said many of his friends plan to take a month off when “Grand Theft Auto VI” arrives, which he said would be in November, and launch Twitch channels. He asked what they should do first and whether it was too late.
“Download OBS on your computer,” she said, laughing, referring to the free broadcasting software. “Get a webcam and start making your profile.”
“Streaming on Twitch, same with any social media or livestreaming site, consistency means the most,” she said. “If you’re going to do it, make sure you have the right hashtags, make sure you have the right layout if you want to do Streamlabs, to make it a little more crisp and not just screen to screen. You want the overlays, you want the chat on the screen. You want to be able to read your chat, and you also want to be able to see your game clearly.”
She admitted she is bad at keeping a schedule, going live two or three times some weeks and every day in others. Her preparation takes about an hour at most, longer for in real life streams that require a gimbal, chargers and other gear.
“I have a Discord server that I announce when I’m live in. I don’t even say what I’m doing. I’m just like, ‘I’m live. Come watch,’ and send the link,” she said. “So that’s kind of my preparation, I guess. Sending out the Discord link. That’s literally it.”
Ayers said fans want to see her do a weeklong subathon with fellow creator Hannah Jo. Emmie said if it happens, it will likely be during her October trip to Los Angeles.
“She has an amazing personality, and she’s so captivating,” she said. “If you ever get a chance to catch her Twitch stream, it’s so entertaining, but it doesn’t always happen. So every time I’m there, I have to convince her. I’m like, ‘Please Twitch stream with me. I love you so much. Please do this. I know you like it. I know you want to. It’s not that scary.'”
“She’s always the life of the party, and it’s always a good time,” she said. “So I’m going to try to convince her.”
Their friendship started the way most of hers do, through Twitch raids.
“I’ll raid them on Twitch, and then I’ll slide into their DMs and be like, ‘Hey girl, we should be friends,'” she said. “And then I consistently raid their streams.”
Because she rarely sees other creators in person unless she is in Los Angeles, she plans ahead. “When it does, I try to make connections before I go out there to have a friendly face,” she said.
Asked which Los Angeles creator she would most like to collaborate with next, she named Cricket, a comedian on TikTok and Instagram who she said resembles Black Widow.
“Her content is just very captivating,” she said. “But I don’t think she streams on Twitch, so I can’t slide in the DMs.”
“Well, Cricket, if you see this, Emmie wants to do a collab,” Ayers said.
‘I promise I’m not’
Asked what people misunderstand about her online, she pointed to claims that her content is generated by artificial intelligence.
“The AI allegations are getting kind of annoying,” she said. “I promise I’m not. I would rather die than put anything AI out there.”
“Somebody was like, ‘Wow, these abs are AI edited. You can’t fool me,'” she said. “I’m like, ‘No, it’s a little oil.’ That’s about it. I don’t know what to tell you.”
She said deepfakes that borrow real creators’ work bother her more.
“I think the worst is when they take somebody’s likeness and they’ll overlay it on somebody else’s original content,” she said. “I’ve gone on and been like, ‘Wait, no, that’s my friend. That’s my friend’s room. That’s their body, and it’s not them.'”
For a hot take, she first offered a defense of the Pokemon Meowth.
“Meowth isn’t as annoying as everyone wants to believe,” she said. “He’s like the little bully of the group, you know? You can’t really be mad at him. He’s small and cute and he’s kind of harmless, but he’s there p***ing everyone off. You got to love that in Meowth the Pokemon.”
Ayers said that did not sound very controversial. “Oh yeah, you’re right. I need a better hot take,” she said.
Her second attempt involved the X-Men, though she briefly blanked on a name after recently cosplaying Psylocke. “Wait, [expletive], what’s his name?” she said, before adding, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m so bad on camera.”
“My hot take is that the best love triangle in X-Men would have to be Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine,” she said. “You kind of have to mix in this short king angry energy with Wolverine and the spicy redhead who kind of bounces back and forth but has her true love and her true match. It’s just kind of seeing Wolverine interact with somebody he’s head over heels with is really funny to me, because he’s so short and passionate, and Wolverine is one of my favorite characters.”
“And I don’t really believe that Rogue and Gambit and Magneto were actually a love triangle. That’s only in some continuities,” she said. “That’s not valid.”
Marvel Studios announced the cast of its X-Men reboot at Disney’s D23 event in August, naming Inde Navarrette as Rogue alongside Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Kit Connor as Cyclops, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost and Maya Boyd as Storm. The film is scheduled to open May 5, 2028.
Ayers said he had expected Navarrette to land a different role. Emmie said she is excited.
“I know [Navarrette] is a great actress from what I’ve seen, and she’s very passionate about the roles that she gets into,” she said. “I would have loved to see her in a ‘Transformers’ movie, but you know, we’ll start here. We’ll start with X-Men and see how it goes. I’m just excited to see how she performs in a Southern accent. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most with her character.”
Five years out
Asked where she sees herself in five years, she said she wants to keep growing her platforms and take on more intricate costumes.
“I’m really enjoying all the cosplay content that I’m able to do,” she said. “Again, it’s an expression of myself that I wasn’t able to have as a child. So I’m really enjoying that.”
Her goal is ambitious.
“I think the goal would be to get through all of the DC characters to ever have existed, but that would be a very big challenge,” she said. “I would just stick to female characters, because if we’re doing gender bender, then that list just is never ending.”
Ayers noted that is a lot of characters to get through in five years. He said he hoped to see her at LA Comic Con.
“Yeah,” she said. “I should be out there.”
