JoJo Siwa is ever-evolving.
Last April, when she sat down for a digital cover interview with Luxury Handbag Shopping, she spoke about growing up in the limelight, sharing, “I’ve changed a lot since I was 14, in the last seven years. And I’m sure I’m gonna change a lot until I’m 28.”
Earlier that month, on April 7, 2025, she entered the Celebrity Big Brother UK house and met British television personality Chris Hughes. JoJo, 21 at the time, was still in a relationship with Kath Ebbs, but had an intense connection with Chris, 11 years her senior, that was apparent to everyone watching. They laughed and cried, cuddled and whispered together, even swapping rings at one point (JoJo is wearing Chris’ on a chain around her neck during our latest interview).
JoJo defended it to Us at the time as “genuine friendship” but now sees clips from that season differently. “Our chemistry was so strong and we had so many beautiful moments on there,” she tells Us exclusively. “I can totally understand where people were like, ‘yeah, obviously.’ Because when I watch it now, I’m like, ‘yeah, obviously!’ But living it, I guess [I] just didn’t know yet.”
There is an openness and embrace of surrender from JoJo, particularly when she shares adages with Us like, “I always say life is gonna life, and you’ve just got to let it life.” But don’t think for a moment JoJo’s no longer doing or saying what she wants and feels.
“In the last year, the impolite way to say it is I’ve ran out of Fs to give. The polite way is that I have really stopped trying to play to a certain audience or give a certain vibe, so that people think a certain thing,” she explains.
To celebrate one year since the day she met Chris in the Big Brother house, she’s released “Serendipity,” named after a type of luck that JoJo and Chris were unfamiliar with when they first encountered the word while watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
“Maybe a month into our relationship, we didn’t know what it was, [Chris] posted it on his Snapchat and then a fan replied, ‘that is the definition of you two.’” The couple agreed, it was.
JoJo’s mom, Jessalynn Siwa, suggested she film some vertical content for the release of “Serendipity,” but JoJo quickly realized that wouldn’t be enough. She envisioned a “little cabaret performance” that exploded into what she described as the “most insane thing I’ve ever done.”
From idea to execution, JoJo worked over a week and two days, ending with a “Serendipity” performance featuring 86 dancers and four different kinds of props, including a cane routine that she swears is the hardest thing she’s ever choreographed. JoJo does it all in a pink bow, fuzzy sweater and skirt, wearing her heart on her sleeve, as she surprises Chris with a performance that shows just how far she’s come since her Dance Moms days.
Just ahead of the video’s release, JoJo opened up to Us, revisiting how her life changed when she met Chris a year ago, where they stand today and what lies ahead.
The video comes out the day you met in the Big Brother house, April 7, but your one year anniversary is May 27. What does that day mark?
I did a talk show in the UK on the morning of May 27 and the guy said, ‘So how’s your boyfriend?’ I said, ‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’ At this point, there was a lot of speculation. And they were like, ‘OK, well, how’s your not boyfriend, Chris Hughes?’ But it was very up in the air. You know, Chris and I did say ‘I love you’ to each other, and we knew what we had, but we never had dubbed it ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend.’ And then that night he was actually staying at my hotel, and he said, ‘Babe, I can’t believe you said I’m not your boyfriend.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re not.’ And he said, ‘What about this isn’t boyfriend and girlfriend?’ And I was like, ‘You haven’t asked.’ And he was like, ‘I need to ask?’ At first he didn’t understand why. I was like, you have to ask, because then there’s a specific day that we can celebrate and be “oh that was….” one day we’re going to tell our kids. That’s the point of having the day. By the third and fourth month is when he started to actually appreciate the day as well.
I spoke to you on April 30 of last year and at that point you said it’s a ‘genuine friendship.’ Was that really the case at the time?
At the time, it was, because he came to Mexico and surprised me right before my birthday, which is May 19. So that was around May 15, probably. It was very confusing. Obviously, look at us now. It clearly was the beginning stages of a beautiful love development that was going to happen. But before it happens, you don’t know, right? I’m filled with these feelings. What do they mean? Also, how’s the other person feel? At that point it was a lot of feelings at once.
It’s nice that he surprised you, and in the “Serendipity” video you surprise him. It must be hard to surprise each other. How often does that really happen?
It is tough. He surprised me in Mexico. He surprised me and came to one of my concerts in Birmingham when I was on tour over there. The “Serendipity” surprise was very complicated. I don’t know how complicated his surprises are, because my mom is always with me, so you can just communicate to one person. But for him, he’s a little bit of a moving target. I never know who he’s really with. I never know what’s going on. I’ve surprised him twice. I surprised him once by coming a day early. The thing that I was worried about with “Serendipity” though was the rehearsals. I decided that I was going to be very honest with him and tell him that I was in rehearsals for a music video but for a different song. We told him and his friend that my parents went to see this theater show, and they wanted to take us. He and his best friend had no idea.
In the “Serendipity” video, you’re wearing a bow again. Is this the Joelle era that you said you’re in, with these soft, fuzzy pinks, pastels, skirts and necklaces
Golf has gotten me to wear skirts. Honestly, I’m not a skirt girl. Never have been, probably never will be. But all of a sudden I started golfing, and I guess maybe I will be, because I’m into it when I golf.
Chris is the one who got you into golfing?
Yeah, basically. He and my dad love golfing.
Are you good?
Shockingly, yes. And I haven’t been playing for a long time. I just played my 11th game ever in the span of a couple months. I’m pretty good but I do some redos.
Last year you shared that the ‘Karma’ concept did not reflect who you really are. Tell Us how the Big Brother experience helped relieve the pressure you felt to turn heads.
That was really a clarifying time for me. Big Brother let me just exist and have fun, and it took every pressure away from me. It also gave me the love of my life, so I can’t complain about it, but it gave me the freedom to just exist. And then coming out of the house, people liked it. That was in a phase where, anything I did people didn’t like, and then all of a sudden they liked when I was just me. I think I was very scared to be just me. It was hard because people liked the version of me that I put online when I was a kid, which was very outgoing, very loud, very energetic, very fun, doing these crazy things. But I never realized how that was going to translate when I was an adult. I’m not going to film those kinds of videos anymore. I’m not going to talk like that anymore. Not that that was ever fake. But I just grew up.
What are the challenges with long distance? How do you navigate that?
Long distance friendships are a beast. Long distance family is a beast. A long distance relationship, I think, is the beast of all beasts. But it’s very worth it. Not for everybody, but for me, with Chris, and for Chris with myself. The biggest challenge for me: we have an eight hour time difference, because it gives us like a six-hour window that we’re both awake. We’ve gotten used to that. The thing that is trickier to navigate, is when I’m just waking up, ready to check my phone, have a sweet call, text for a little bit, that’s the middle of his day. You’re not on your phone, you’re out doing things, working, or with friends. That’s the thing that’s hard to navigate. At night it’s the same thing. He’s in bed on his phone, ready to go to sleep, ready to talk for a little bit. I’m just in my day, active and I’m busy.
Have you two talked about ever changing that, where one of you moves to the other place?
Oh, of course. I think people think we have a very public relationship, and don’t get me wrong, we do. I would say 90 percent of our relationship is private, and people see a very small little bit of it. So we do talk about it, we do think about it, but we also don’t share it. We’ve genuinely never had a conversation about this is what we do share, this is what we don’t share. Everything just feels organic, and we trust each other.
We saw when you posted, teasing about having a baby with him, and teased about being in a wedding dress.
Oh wouldn’t that just be great?
Those are things you’ve talked about before as hypotheticals. But those are questions for you too.
I get asked this nearly every interview that I do, and even just people that I talk to, they say, ‘Do you want to get married?’ ‘Do you want to have kids?’ And I’m like, ‘You do realize I wouldn’t be with him if my answer was no.’ We wouldn’t be coming up on a year. We would have lasted a month or two, and we would have kicked rocks. Of course, I see a lifelong future with him, but I love our relationship that we have, and I love our phase that we’re in. Of course, the future seems beautiful, but the future is also unknown. So I sit back and I can’t control it. It’s also his choice, and it’s when he’s ready. I think it’s beautiful. I just exist. I’m happy and I don’t want to change anything.
You had said you want to have kids by 23. Now with your birthday next month, that’s why people are like well, this is what you had said.
I know. 23 has crept up on me, and I do want to have kids by 23 but unfortunately, this baby ain’t going to bake in a month! No, surely one day. I have no doubts that I will have kids one day. I think three or four years ago, I always said I want kids very early in life. Now I have a wonderful partner. It’s now not just my choice when I want kids, it is our choice when we want kids. It’s a lot easier to say that you want kids by a certain age when it’s just you and it’s just your choice. I want to have a life with him, and I want to make those big decisions together. We’ll see when it’s baby time, we’ll see when it’s marriage time. But it’ll all develop perfectly. If you would have told me a year ago that, like, ‘Hey, kid, in a month or two months, you’re going to have a wonderful boyfriend who you’re going to see a future with,’ I’d be like, ‘you’re crazy.’
We see your mom with him in the “Serendipity” video. What is their relationship like? Is he a little afraid of her, like most guys are afraid of their girlfriend’s mom?
Honestly, my mom’s very scary. It kind of freaks me out that he’s not scared of my mom, but my mom has never had to scare him. Mom for me is Mama Bear, she will protect me at all costs, but he will also protect me at all costs. My dad [Tom Siwa] and him are absolute best friends. He loves my mom. He calls her Jessica. We don’t know where it came from, her name is Jessalynn, but he likes to call her Jessica. It’s cute. They have a wonderful relationship.
Last year you said he didn’t want you to watch Love Island, have you? Or no, still not?
Of course not. No, I will never do something that he doesn’t want me to do when it’s obviously within reason. I would never go against him and do that.
In our last chat after Big Brother, we spoke about queer identity and navigating that. Where are you with self-identifying and thinking about that now?
I obviously have shared my entire life since I was nine. I’ve never hid anything. I was very honest when I was 17, and I fell in love with my best friend, who happened to be a girl who’s still a lovely friend to me today, but obviously our relationship didn’t work out clearly, but that doesn’t matter. She’s off living a wonderful life. I’m off living a wonderful life. But I never hid that. And so that was very, very real and very, very authentic. And then life does life. And I continued to share my journey and continued to be honest and continued to be open. This time, though, it was with a man, and all of a sudden, a lot of people who once were really supportive of me decided that, ‘hey, bad!’ And it was really confusing to me for a time, but now, I guess I just look at it as like it’s because they could. It’s because people could. It’s much easier to gossip and throw hate and throw shade than it is to be nice and kind and supportive, unfortunately. I don’t think the world should be that way, but it is that way. I think that for me personally, I will continue to keep sharing my journey. I will keep continuing to be an advocate for the LGBTQIA community. I will keep supporting. I will also keep being a member. It’s not… you don’t get a membership to the LGBTQIA community. But, I am not straight. I clearly am not a straight human being. I could never say that I’m straight. Am I in a straight relationship? Yes. Am I in love with a man? Yes! Do I want to spend the rest of my life with him? Absolutely. But does that discredit my past? Absolutely not. Zero. And so that’s where, all of a sudden people forget these beautiful terms, queer, pansexual, bisexual, plus the other terms that I could name, but those three, really relate to me. And if I had to put a label on it, just to basically shut people down, yeah, I would say I’m probably pansexual. I fell in love with humans. I’ve dated girl, I’ve dated non-binary, and now I date boy, and I don’t know, I think just the love is, I’m very lucky to find a love as strong as I have with Chris.
Now with the release of “Serendipity,” are you returning to acting? Will we get more music?
I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you April and May for me are filled with filming two shows, both that I’m very excited about. Everyone will understand when it comes out why I’m super excited, but there are two different ones. They are both going to be a blast, but there’s one specifically that is awesome. I could never say what it is, I would get crucified. I’ll throw it to my old sound bite from an interview back in the day where I was like, ‘I’m the first of a generation’ to do this, believe it or not, without making myself sound like an idiot, I am the first to do this. May is the 10 year anniversary of my song “Boomerang” so we’ve got a lot coming for that. There’s a Boomerang ballad remix, re-record, I’m going to release the original acapella audio file of my baby voice. It is adorable. After that, I go on the JoJo cruise, which I’m really excited about, and there’ll be a big live performance, and then I’ll be honest. Here’s where I’m at: I bought a house, I’m renovating it. It will be done at that time, and I think I want to enjoy it for a little bit. So I don’t really know after that. All I know is April, May and June are absolutely slammed. So I’ve just got to make it to June!
