Tay Lautner Will Tell You (Almost) Anything

Tay Lautner walks into Maman in the Flatiron district, looking every bit like a Manhattan girl: wearing a simple black top, light-wash jeans, and sunglasses, with her shiny, blunt bob framing her face and white block heels clacking satisfyingly on the concrete sidewalk. She’s a born-and-raised Californian, but every time she visits the city, she tries to find a reason to stick around. “I was telling my husband, ‘Do we stay an extra day and look at apartments?’ He was like, ‘No, we’re going home.’ I was like, ‘OK, bye,’” she laughs. “I wouldn’t move here, but maybe I would do a little six-month rental.”

The 28-year-old is in New York for a few days in mid-October, on the heels of the mental-health summit she co-hosted with her husband, Taylor Lautner. The couple planned and organized the Sept. 20 event in Malibu, welcoming speakers like Anna Cathcart, Joey Graziadei, Chandler Kinney, and Allison Kuch to open up about everything from grief and anxiety to addiction. Lautner’s face lights up when she talks about it. “I went home and cried happy tears afterward. You go into these things — at least I do — not expecting anyone to show up, but we sold it out,” she says. “I get emotional thinking about it because it’s so cool that people resonate with these crazy ideas I have and love this as much as I do.”

Mental health is more than just a passion for Lautner; she’s built her life around educating people on the topic. As we pick up our drinks — a hot lavender matcha with oat milk for her, iced vanilla matcha for me — and walk to Madison Square Park to sit in the sun, she tells me about the surprising journey that brought her to becoming the host of The Squeeze podcast and founder of her nonprofit, The Lemons Foundation, which builds community and provides resources to support emotional well-being. “I grew up very normal, nowhere near the entertainment industry,” Lautner says. Her mom is an esthetician, and her dad works in home loans. “A lot of my family members have struggled with addiction. I lost my guy best friend in high school, who took his life during a manic episode. So I had a lot of mental health stuff around me, but I never really struggled with it myself until I started working as a nurse.”

In 2019, she graduated from College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California, and started applying for jobs in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lautner spent six months working in a COVID unit before she contracted the virus at an unrelated event. “I ended up getting long COVID, and I had to go on disability. I was out of work for two and a half months.”

It took a little bit to figure out that Taylor was actually into me.

During those days at home, she realized what a toll work had been taking on her mental health. “It took me getting sick and removing myself from it to show me how much I was struggling,” she says. Lautner was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and decided not to return to hospital work. She took some time off to recalibrate, re-assessing how she could use her skills more sustainably.

While Lautner was in nursing school, she’d also stumbled unexpectedly into a more public profile, thanks to her budding relationship with the Twilight star. The two met thanks to a setup by Taylor’s sister, Makena, whom Tay knew through a mutual friend. “Makena had texted Taylor, saying, ‘Hey, I met a girl. I think you’re really going to like her. You need to throw a game night. I’ll have her come,’” Lautner says. Makena texted Tay and their mutual friend to ask them over. “[We] were both confused why she invited me because she’s so protective of her brother and doesn’t just bring anyone random into the picture,” Lautner says. Still, she didn’t think too much of it. “We went over there three or four times, and I had no idea of the setup. I was just there to play running charades and mafia,” she says. “It took a little bit to figure out that Taylor was actually into me.”

When Taylor followed her on Instagram, she still didn’t get the hint. “He followed me, and my dad was like, ‘He likes you.’ I was like, ‘Dad, he does not like me,’” she says. “I was also fresh out of a relationship, and I was not looking to date.” But their connection felt inevitable. “I think we both just knew. We ended up kissing on New Year’s, and then we speed-dated for two and a half weeks before he went off to London to film for two months. It was the coolest thing. I look back on that time, and it’s so fairy tale.”

Since the two met in such a low-key way, it was easy for Lautner to forget that she was dating someone of household-name-level fame. “I always say he’s the worst famous person because he’s so kind and helpful and normal. He’s just like this lovable golden retriever,” she says. “The first time paparazzi were shooting us leaving a date, we got in the car and he put my little visor down to block the flash and started driving away and didn’t say anything. I was like, ‘What just happened?’ It’s just so normal and routine to him.” She still hasn’t gotten used to it. “Even eight years in, it’s so funny to me.”

If I’m sharing something, I’ve either healed from it, or it’s going to help people.

Lautner sometimes pokes fun at the attention, like in a recent TikTok, when she joked about forgetting her husband’s celebrity status until Chipotle sent her a tub of guac with a figurine of him as Jacob Black. (Lautner also tells me her TikTok mentions are “flooded right now” thanks to Hoa Hoa Hoa season.) But for the most part, she thinks of his career as something that’s given him perspective. “He’s lived a lot of life and has so much wisdom, and I think a lot of people need to hear that.”

After starting her blog, Lemons by Tay, in 2022 and following it up with the Lemons Foundation, Lautner brought her husband on to co-host The Squeeze. “Life was giving me a lot of lemons, and I was like, ‘This is what I’m going to do with it,’” she says. “I woke up one day and was like, ‘I’m going to start a podcast, and we’re going to do it together.’ Taylor was like, ‘What?’ And here we are almost three years later.” Working together hasn’t been an issue. "Luckily, we're very similar, and also, I feel like we both have different strengths, so it's nice to rely on the other person,” she says. “Obviously, we butt heads sometimes, but it's nothing major.”

She opens up about her personal life to listeners, getting real about things like pregnancy scares and health concerns — both mental and physical. Lautner will discuss most things she’s going through, but she’s intentional about working through issues in therapy first. “I do think it’s important to still have a boundary with what you share, and I think timing is a big part of it, too,” she says. “If I’m sharing something, I’ve either healed from it, or it’s going to help people, because sometimes I feel like dumping doesn’t really do anything. Why would I fill a space with that?” She also has a hard line when it comes to certain topics. “I will talk about everything I’ve struggled with in terms of my PTSD, but if someone wants me to show them my bathroom, I’m like, no. I think it’s important to still own some things and keep them personal.”

The Lautners have interviewed guests from the entertainment world, like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Mayci Neeley and beauty influencer Golloria. Lautner says her most meaningful conversations are with people who’ve experienced tragedy, like Stacy Chapin, the mother of one of the University of Idaho murder victims, or Gabby Petito’s mom, Nichole Schmidt. “It’s been really cool to bring light to their stories and help share awareness,” she says. Her dream guests are Matthew McConaughey and Mark Wahlberg. “Mark gets up at 4 in the morning to do a full workout. He has so much energy and has this love for life, and I need to know what that is.”

In between podcast episodes and planning more mental health summits (“I want to do them everywhere”), Lautner is embracing the world of hosting and content creation, working events like The Summer I Turned Pretty premiere as a red-carpet correspondent. Lautner is Team Conrad, but her husband is Team Jeremiah, despite the “bad edit” for Gavin Casalegno’s character in Season 3. “Because of Jacob, he has to be [Team Jere],” Lautner says. “Taylor supports the other guy.”

Despite reports that she and her husband might be joining Dancing With the Stars, they don’t have plans to be on the show at the moment. But she’s open to a foray into reality television in the future. “One day, I would love to do it. Dancing With the Stars and The Traitors are two of my favorite shows,” she says. When I ask if she’d do Traitors with Taylor, she has one suggestion for the casting team. “Taylor would want to host it because when we do mafia at the house, he is Alan Cumming’s character. He turns the lights off. He lights the candles. He gets it all dramatic and everything. Taylor loves him.”

Looking ahead, Launter is manifesting cool podcast guests, giving a TED talk, and naturally, more unexpected opportunities. “My goal for next year is saying yes to hard things, so I’m really amped,” she says. “I’m so determined and I work so hard, and most of the time it does end up working out.” She names her nonprofit and podcast as proof of that — and she credits it to one thing: “I’m stubborn.”