Is there anybody out there who hasn’t fallen in love with Alysa Liu yet?
Kim Jong Un, maybe?
Putin?
Homelander?
These days, can you really have an Oscar party or a fashion week or an awards show or the Met Gala without Liu?
The Devil might wear Prada, but America’s sweetheart rocks Louis Vuitton.
The actor Daniel Radcliffe was so excited about running into Liu backstage at the “Today” show that he did a double, OK, maybe only 1 1/2 Lutz while screaming “Holy f—–g s—, you! Holy f——g s—!”
It was an interaction that led to a moment even more unlikely than Liu becoming the first American woman to win the Olympic figure skating title in nearly a quarter-century, less than two years after returning to the sport she walked from after the 2022 Beijing Games:
The Olympic champion offered to pierce Harry Potter.
“If you want, I can pierce you,” Liu asked Radcliffe after he complimented her on the frenulum piercing connecting her upper lip to her gums that creates a “smiley” on her front teeth. “I’ve pierced three people.”
Liu then made a second offer.
“Do you want to wear it?” she said, holding out one of her two Olympic gold medals to the actor.
“Obviously, I wasn’t going to ask, but yeah!” Radcliffe said before having second thoughts.
“You know, I’ll hold it. I’ll hold it. Wearing it feels like stolen valor.”
The three months since Liu’s Games-stealing performance at Milan Cortina have taken the 20-year-old Oakland native and her sport to places neither could have imagined. Three months in which Liu, one of figure skating’s most high profile cautionary tales, has transcended her sport to achieve pop icon status.
“Stepping into different environments is really cool,” Liu said in an interview ahead of her appearance in the Stars On Ice show at Honda Center Saturday night.
“I never thought I would go to a fashion show, do a music video and all that. I’m just an athlete. Really my favorite thing has just been meeting people and getting to step into their world a little bit.”
And Liu’s footprints have been all over the planet since helping the U.S. defend its team title in Milan Cortina and then claim the Winter Olympics’ biggest individual prize, the women’s individual gold medal.
She handed Taylor Swift the artist of the year trophy at the iHeartRadio awards.
“To receive this award from Alysa,” Swift said, “you brought me so much happiness and everyone else so much happiness with your performance. And I was so inspired by how much diligence and work and effort and love you have for what you do.”
Liu has appeared in video shoots for Vogue, a photo shoot for W, and she sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone. She appeared in a music video for Laufey’s new hit “Madwoman.” Liu skated to Laufey’s “Promise” for her Olympic short program.
Liu’s performance, the singer said, “brought this whole new meaning to the song.”
Liu showed up at Paris’ Fashion Week in March and, a few hours later, was given the key to the city while thousands shut down downtown Oakland in celebration. She dropped by Sir Elton John’s Oscar viewing party and then, after the awards show, headed to Vanity Fair’s Oscar party.
“I’m not going to be doing triple Axels in this dress,” Liu said adding, “I hear there’s In ‘N Out” at the party.”
Liu, of course was among the everybodies who are anybodies — and Jeff Bezos — at last week’s Met Gala, wowing the paparazzi in a burgundy red ruffled Vuitton dress. Liu seemed equally impressed when she was presented with a fashion accessory during a “Today” appearance: an oversized medal made out of the marshmallows from her favorite breakfast cereal, Lucky Charms.
The edible medal certainly could have come in handy in Liu’s whirlwind tour through her post-Milan life that includes eight more Stars On Ice stops before the tour finale next month in Mississippi.
Yet for all her celebrity, Liu is a reluctant superstar, more comfortable hanging out with friends and family in Oakland than in the spotlight.
“My labels for myself are like sister, friend, and stuff like that,” she said.
Just as she returned to skating and then won Olympic gold “on my own terms,” Liu will chart her own path through the glare of the spotlights, down the red carpet and beyond.
“As that figure skating girl with the striped hair taught us,” Connor Storrie, the Heated Rivalry star, said of Liu during a Saturday Night Live skit, “you can still be a baddie, even if you’re a little quirked up.”
“I like to say no a lot to people,” Liu said, laughing. “So I’m good at keeping my boundaries. I have a good team around me that will make sure my boundaries don’t get broken. That’s what’s really been protecting me.”
Even so, it was suggested recently to Liu that surely she had to be exhausted by the past three months.
“I mean, define exhausted,” she said, laughing. “I am an athlete. My usual training regime is really hard and I love that. I’m usually physically exhausted anyways, so this is not unusual, not out of the ordinary. Red carpets are physically not as tiring as a full training day.”
She hopes to take “a little vacation” in July after the tour ends, destination to be determined.
“I kind of just go with the flow,” she said.
Then Liu will return to training in Oakland.
“I don’t think I’ll ever leave Oakland and I think I’ll rep it forever,” she said. “Oakland is like the best place on earth in my opinion.
“I’m definitely committed to skating (in 2027),” Liu continued. “I really like it, it’s really fun. Honestly, after tour, I just can’t wait to get back to my usual day.”
Does that commitment include competitions or just shows or other performances?
“Competitions,” she said. “I love competitions, but like I love the training aspect the most.”
Liu was asked if she would still train without the prospect of competing?
“Be a really hard to justify it,” she said. “So that’s why I compete.”
But Liu views skating more of an artistic outlet.
“I want to do different types of programs, I want to try different styles,” she said. “I want to wear something different, too. I just want to experiment creatively.
Liu, however, said she has yet to decide on music or programs for the upcoming season.
“I have no ideas,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about it. There really isn’t too much time to think about it right now. I’m not rushing myself.”
After retiring in 2022, Liu studied psychology at UCLA and would eventually like to return to college.
“I want to go back to school so bad,” she said. “I love learning. But this year, I really don’t see how that’s possible for me, to be honest. I just really think I would get stopped a lot.”