Ep. - 1649 - SATURDAY SERIES: ELLEN SKRMETTI
Reality Life with Kate Casey
Kate Casey
4.7 • 7.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ellen Skrmetti is a comedian, author, and viral storyteller from Ripley, Mississippi, now based in Birmingham, Alabama. She first broke through with her "If the Queen Died in the South" series on Instagram, followed by her beloved "Hey Jesus, It's Me" videos, short, sharp sketches about faith, family, and Southern life that have been viewed millions of times. Her debut book, Hey Jesus, It's Me, is out now from Hachette. Ellen joins Kate to talk about growing up in small-town Mississippi, the unconventional path from beauty pageants and stage fright to going viral during the pandemic, and why bold prayers and belly laughs go hand in hand.
Reality Life with Kate Casey
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The amazing Kate Casey. |
| 0:04.3 | Welcome back for another episode of Reality Life with Kate Casey and welcome back for this Saturday series episode and you are going to love my guest today, Ellen Scrimetti. |
| 0:13.2 | Now, first I have to tell you this. In 1995, an 18-year-old girl from Tippa County, Mississippi, walks onto a pageant stage to compete in Miss |
| 0:22.3 | Mississippi. And her stage fright was so bad, so physically overwhelming that she made a deal |
| 0:28.2 | with God right there in front of the judges. She said, if you get me off the stage, I will never |
| 0:34.0 | get on one again. And she meant it and kept that promise for over 20 years. |
| 0:39.1 | Now, the town of Tippa County, I should note, never held another pageant, which means she's technically |
| 0:44.8 | still the reigning Miss Tippa County, 1995. She never relinquished her crown. She went on to live a full, |
| 0:52.6 | rich, unglomerous life. She married Tim, and they moved from |
| 0:57.4 | Jackson to Nashville, and then to Alabama outside of Birmingham, and they had two kids, Meg and Nick, |
| 1:03.7 | and just goes on to live a pretty normal life. And then in her 40s, her husband gave her comedy |
| 1:09.9 | writing classes as a birthday gift. So it's |
| 1:13.8 | during COVID and she's enrolled. She started performing in early 2020 and then of course |
| 1:19.6 | COVID shut down Alabama the week that she's supposed to start the new class. So she pivoted to |
| 1:25.2 | online classes through Second City in Chicago. It's the same program that |
| 1:29.0 | trained Tina Faye, Steve Correll, and Amy Poehler. And in January of 2022, she starts posting |
| 1:35.2 | short comedy sketches on Instagram. And this is crazy what happened next. This is not a story |
| 1:41.4 | about overnight success. She went from 700 followers to 1100 in nine months. |
| 1:47.5 | That's 400 people in nine months. She decided she was going to redefine what viral meant to her |
| 1:52.7 | and celebrated when she hit 5,000 views on a video. And she told her husband that if people |
| 1:57.3 | didn't know she was funny before she died, they should put on her tombstone. |
| 2:01.4 | She died trying. |
... |
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