@paigeneimann/TikTokFor every high-profile celebrity, there’s a lookalike. However, few are as frighteningly uncanny as Paige Niemann – an Ariana Grande doppelganger.
Paige was just 10 years old when her peers started to compare her to the pop star in the playground.
Now, four years later, the 14-year-old has established herself as one of the most authentic lookalikes online – with a whopping one million followers on TikTok to prove it.
i just wonder whyyyy the cat voice / dialogue. 😭 i am sure she is the sweetest sweet sweetheart forreal !! but it’s definitley bizarre seeing people blend the two worlds lmao.
— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) November 24, 2019
After asking her mum to do her makeup just like the thank u, next singer, Paige started to pick up a few tricks here and there. The more she posted on Instagram, the more attention she attracted from Ariana fans – now, the young lookalike has more than 115,000 followers.
The teen attributes their similar appearance to the fact that both she and Ariana, 26, are Italian-American (the superstar’s full last name is Grande-Butera, and she describes herself as half-Sicilian and half-Abruzzese).
Paige has achieved such a high level of online notoriety that she shares her own sponsored content as an influencer. However, while many Ariana fans admire Paige, others are much nastier – condemning the teen for trying to ‘be her’.
Even Grande has seen Paige’s posts. The popstar tweeted in response to a TikTok: ‘I just wonder whyyyy the cat voice / dialogue. I am sure she is the sweetest sweet sweetheart forreal !! but it’s definitley bizarre seeing people blend the two worlds lmao.’
Paige told Dazed in an interview earlier this year:
I thought she was so gorgeous, it was such a huge honour. When I started to do my looks like her some of her fans are really sweet, but the other half are the meanest people I have ever seen online.
Ariana fans get so offended when people do anything similar to Ariana. They’ll be like ‘be yourself’, or that they don’t like people stealing, or that there is only one Ariana, that I’ll never be her.
For example, on one of the teen’s latest posts, one user wrote: ‘She looks more like Ariana then Ariana looks like Ariana.’ Another complimented Paige: ‘Wow girl you are so pretty.’
One Twitter user, sharing the teen’s posts, wrote: ‘I just discovered that Ariana lookalike from TikTok and now I’m scared… but also low-key jealous.’
This is not Ariana?.. It’s a 14 year old lookalike… Sway, how?.. https://t.co/pzzDeoXRCS
— T.J. Suire 🖖🏼👅🏳️🌈 (@TJSuire) November 24, 2019
However, at the other end of the spectrum, one follower commented: ‘It’s a bit freaky not gonna lie. Why be someone else when you can be yourself? We already have an Ariana Grande we don’t need another.’
However, the haters aren’t getting Paige down. She added:
I don’t care what haters say. I’m just going to keep on doing what makes me happy, and looking like Ariana makes me happy.
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.