MrBeast announces engagement to YouTuber Thea Booysen
2025-01-02
Category: entertainment

YouTuber MrBeast has announced his engagement to girlfriend Thea Booysen.The 26-year-old revealed that he'd proposed on Christmas Day, sharing photos of the moment he went down on one knee.Mr Beast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, is the world's most popular YouTuber with 340m subscribers. Fiancée Thea, originally from South Africa, also has her own channel, TheaBeasty, with almost 40,000 subscribers. Now living in the US, the 27-year-old also streams games on Twitch and is a published author.
In an interview with People magazine, MrBeast said he asked Thea to marry him while her family were visiting. Although he's known for his elaborate stunts online, he told the magazine he wanted a "really private and intimate" proposal.The couple shared photos and footage of themselves and their dog wearing matching MrBeast-branded festive jumpers. According to People, the couple say they're not planning a big wedding."We're thinking of doing it somewhere on an island where we're far away from just about everybody," Thea told the magazine. "We're not going to try and have a big, extravagant wedding. It's going to be nice, but it's certainly going to be intimate [with] close family and friends."
Thea has reportedly previously come to the YouTuber's defence following a number of allegations made against him last year.When he was forced to investigate allegations of grooming made against his former co-host Ava Kris Tyson - which MrBeast later said were "baseless" - Thea reportedly wrote on her channel that she "wouldn't be with him" if the allegations were true.The pair were recently photographed together at a red carpet event for MrBeast's new series, Beast Games.Inspired by the Netflix hit Squid Game, the series promised to be the biggest live game show in the world with 1,000 players competing for a cash prize of $5m (£3.5m).However the show, which MrBeast made for Amazon Prime rather than his YouTube channel, has been mired in controversy.
In September he was named in legal documents filed in the US on behalf of contestants, who alleged they'd been "shamelessly exploited" and experienced sexual harassment.While neither MrBeast nor Amazon have formally responded to the allegations, in November he posted on X that the claims had been "blown out of proportion".
The series, which began releasing weekly episodes on 19 December, has also been heavily criticised by reviewers.In a two-star review, The Guardian slammed it as "ugly and tasteless", Decider said it "takes advantage of people's greed", while gaming site IGN said the show was "shallow", "dull" and "almost entirely devoid of anything to get invested in". In a post responding to IGN's review on X, MrBeast said it was "sad one person who doesn't like me can just label something a thousand people poured their lives into a 2/10 when it's clearly not".He's said the series continues to be popular on Amazon around the world.
Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.