We All Need A Bestie Like Sally Carden

Sally Carden can make any zany fit (including Minions pajamas) look amazing; she loves Justin Bieber so much it brings her to tears (relatable); and she’s an expert at navigating group conflict without causing further drama. To boot, she’ll even add sprinkles to your drink, just to make sure your day has a little whimsy in it. TL;DR: She is the dream best friend. The only problem? Any hopeful besties would have to fight Alix Earle for the job.

The competition is, admittedly, pretty stiff. The two have been inseparable since they were 14, growing up in New Jersey together, and unlike a lot of teenage friendships that fizzle out somewhere between college, graduation, and everyone moving to different cities, theirs has always stuck. “We never lost that connection — we always knew what was going on in each other’s lives,” Carden says. Daily FaceTimes, frequent visits, and constant texting carried them through a decade that included college (Earle in Miami, Carden in Charleston) and Earle’s rise to social media stardom. “We still go home and have the same normal debrief that we did prior to all the fame and the craziness. So it’s different, but also, it's very much the same.”

Carden amassed a devoted fanbase of her own parallel to her bestie, with nearly 700,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok tuning in to her daily vlogs and matcha-making tutorials. As we chat over Zoom, the 25-year-old is curled up in an all-white room, a cheetah-print throw peeking out from behind her. She talks about Earle so casually that it’s easy to forget their lives now look very different from the ones they had as teens. Earle Meets World, which came out earlier this month on Netflix, didn’t just offer an unfiltered glimpse into the TikTok star’s family dynamics, but also launched Carden into a whole new realm of notoriety as the scene-stealing ride-or-die BFF.

While she didn’t plan for her life to end up on the world’s biggest streaming platform, Carden says her participation in the series was basically a given. “Our family's doing a reality show. You're a part of our family, so you’re obviously gonna be in it, too,” she was told. “So I was like, OK, I guess I'm gonna be on a reality show. We're doing it.”

Filming meant letting camera crews in on the good and the bad, including one memorable moment where Carden got fired by her bestie in Episode 3. (If you didn’t know Carden was running Earle’s Amazon and Snapchat, you’re not alone — the two kept this layer of their relationship on the DL.)

It was weird to think about how the whole world is now gonna watch me get fired.

Carden says she expected that this conversation might be coming, but she didn’t expect it would happen after a long night out in Aspen when they were violently hungover. “I remember I sat down, and I was like, ‘What are we doing? Like, can I have some water?’” Carden says. Then, Earle took her hand. “I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”

Watching it back was its own kind of surreal. “It was weird to think about how the whole world is now gonna watch me get fired,” Carden says. Despite some nerves, she didn’t spiral over it. “But it’s whatever. It’s fine. It’s funny.” At the end of the day, there’s only one title between the two of them that matters: “She’s my sister.”

This naturally means Carden has also inherited another part of being an Earle: sibling drama. Specifically, the kind that occasionally gets posted and dissected by thousands of people online. When Alix and her younger sister Ashtin Earle found themselves in one of their semi-frequent spats — which Alix documented in a viral video of Ashtin kicking her out of her apartment — Carden responded as any good honorary sister would: by refusing to pick a side. “I definitely try to just be Switzerland,” she says.

As her friendship with Ashtin has blossomed because they both live in NYC, a new challenge has arisen: assuring Alix that her sister isn’t trying to take her place in their squad. “Alix would always make comments and be like, ‘Ashtin stole all my friends,’” Carden says. “But I’m like, Alix, we are all friends. You brought Ashtin into the friend group.” Once and for all, she’s ready to set the record straight: “We’re never leaving Alix out. There’s the whole thing with the two different group chats, but if she’s in LA, she doesn’t want to hear what we’re doing on a Friday night.”

Still, for all the drama, nobody seems particularly interested in holding a grudge. When I ask whether she and the sisters had moved on from the apartment debacle, Carden replies, “I think so, because Alix is at Ashtin’s apartment right now and it looks the exact same as it did.” In Earle family terms, that’s a full reconciliation.

Of course I love Alix ... but I also wanted to have my own identity.

Outside of her top-tier peacemaking, Carden also gave Earle Meets World viewers a glimpse into her dating life, with a hilarious double date alongside Ashtin in Episode 4. They were paired with two wonderful — and wonderfully meme-worthy — men, one with a comb-over, and one with a backpack (Carden’s No. 1 ick, unfortunately). Things didn’t work out, and Carden is still single.

While she may not have found her boyfriend in New York yet, Carden has found something much more valuable through her brushes with fame this year: a version of herself she recognizes, one not defined by relationships with others. For a long time, she was more than happy being identified as Earle’s best friend. “Of course I love Alix, and I love the dynamic that we have,” she says. “But I also wanted to have my own identity. I feel like recently, that’s really happened. It’s been so nice to be my own person.”

That growth has meant embracing her main character energy a lot more in the videos she posts. She’s saying yes to opportunities she once didn’t know were an option for her, like the five-piece jewelry collection that she’ll launch on Oct. 8 with Electric Picks (Carden is known by her followers for her impeccable jewelry stacks).

This is just the beginning of Carden's next chapter. “I’m manifesting everything. I always say I’m the luckiest girl in the world, so manifesting more luck. Luck and abundance.”