NEW YORK — It’s 8:04 a.m. Alysa Liu stands in a crowded green room inside Rockefeller Center, lowkey freaking out.
Yes. Alysa Liu. The 20-year-old figure skater who snatched America’s heart by owning the biggest stage of her life. At last month’s Milan Olympics, with the gold on the line, she proved cooler than the ice on which she danced to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park.” As she put it, bringing “Oakland to Milan.” Liu displayed no angst. The tension compelled viewers to sway with her, panic with her every jump, sigh in relief after each flawless landing. She, however, ignored the pressure, deeming it unworthy of accompanying her glee.
That same newly minted superstar now has awe in her eyes at a pending connection. The gold medalist, finally, looks rattled.
“I just saw him,” she says, eyes widened, smile stretched by nerves.
Daniel Radcliffe, 36, the actor famous for playing Harry Potter, was sitting in hair and makeup, preparing for his appearance. The Tony Award-winning actor came to promote his newest Broadway play, “Every Brilliant Thing.”
It’s about an hour into the first stop of Liu’s three-day media tour, which began at the “Today” show. She arrived just shy of 7 a.m., with a black puff coat and a black scarf. Liu got into town the night before after a five-hour drive from Massachusetts, where she kept her commitment and did three shows for The Skating Club of Boston. And Nike kept her up past 1 a.m. with a stylist, choosing outfits for her appearances. Still, Liu showed up smiling like a sunny Friday afternoon. No coffee. No energy drink. She doesn’t need either. Her bubbliness brews internally.
She bounced through the first tasks. She did two on-camera teases and an interview with the “Today” crew — Craig Melvin, Hoda Kotb and Carson Daly — delivering her trademark ease to the process. Even about her name.
She confirmed it’s pronounced Lee-oh, but, she said, “I’m good with whatever.”
“It’s actually Ah-LEE-sa Lee-oh,” she said. “But if people can’t get Ah-LEE-sa, they’re not going to get Lee-oh.”
Hearing “Ah-LISS-a Lou” doesn’t bother her, though. Another example of the voluntary nature of her disposition.
Plus, the outfit popped. She beamed about her threads, curated by Oscar-nominated costume designer and stylist Miyako Bellizzi, a fellow Bay Area native. She wore blue camo denim shorts that sagged slightly despite a thick black belt lined with silver studs. A navy blue Nike shirt under a navy blue blazer hugged her torso, creating a dark canvas for her two gold medals. Punctuating the fit, a pair of blue Nike Moon Shoes from a collaboration with French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus.
Look good, feel good, right? But Liu loses a bit of her cool when she gets wind that Harry Potter is in the building.
“The wizard is here?!” she asks excitedly.
The way Radcliffe scurries out of his chair and into the green room to meet Liu illustrates her visceral impact. It’s more than her becoming America’s first figure skater to win women’s singles gold in the Olympics since 2002. It’s the way Liu won, the aura she exudes, the mindset she espouses that touches people deeply.
“Holy f— s—, you!” Radcliffe exclaims in his London accent, walking hurriedly towards Liu and hugging her. “Holy f— s—.”
They high-five as Liu jumps with excitement. After Radcliffe satiates the cell phone cameras, he asks for a private moment with the gold medalist. He brags about how jealous his girlfriend would be that he got to meet America’s newest darling. He asks Liu if she really did her own smiley piercing.
“If you want, I can pierce you,” Liu offers, after confirming it was her handiwork. “I’ve pierced three people.”
Liu arrives at an ideal moment in a nation starved for lightness. No one gets universal approval in this divided country. But few garner approval ratings as high as Liu currently boasts. America is digesting her like comfort food.
No doubt youth permits such bliss. But Liu’s spirit resonates in part because of the context it contradicts. Public life hums with perennial grievance and anxiety. But Liu’s performance, her personality, cut through it.
“I am a very joyful person,” she says. “My whole thing is I want to share what I feel with other people. I want people to feel the way I feel, or feel something they’ve never felt before. I think that’s, like, the whole point of storytelling is to make people feel something. Art, figure skating, movies — all that is to make people feel something they aren’t feeling. And I’m really grateful that I’m able to do that. It’s literally my dream.”
It’s 9:29 a.m. Liu, back in the puff coat, hops out of a black SUV onto Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The next stop on her tour is a photo shoot and interview with Rolling Stone, which rented space at the private social club Moss New York. Construction work hides the entrance, giving Liu time to get her first full experience with paparazzi.
One photographer comes out of nowhere, rapidly snapping photos of Liu, who stands giggling while her team finds the entrance. Liu lives in front of a camera. She takes pictures with just about anyone who asks. But this reveals a different ball game. Her paradigm about celebrity and her place in it begins transforming right there on the sidewalk.
“This is crazy,” she said. “Paparazzi?”
Liu’s social media followers have exploded. She crossed seven million Instagram followers while in New York, from a few hundred thousand before the Olympics. Fake accounts have cropped up. Unauthorized merchandise flies off digital shelves. Established celebrities fawn over her. Stephen Curry invited her family to a Golden State Warriors game. Reps for the immensely popular K-pop boy band BTS reached out. The scope of her magnitude comes into clearer focus.
Liu’s agent, Yuki Saegusa, senior vice president at IMG, warns about autograph seekers selling her signature on eBay. She instructs Liu to ask whom to make the autograph out to, because putting an actual name can weed out the collectors.
This new life is coming fast. She’s quickly learning about the magnetic properties of a gold medal and the special place reserved in America for women’s figure skating champions. But as inviting as her aura may seem, Liu diligently protects her peace.
She quit figure skating in 2022, at 16, to reclaim that peace. She returned in 2024, promising never to relinquish it again. She has no problem saying no. Before she became a household name at the Olympics, she declined an invitation to a San Francisco 49ers game. After the Olympics, she nixed a parade the City of Oakland wanted to throw for her, but compromised with Mayor Barbara Lee for a celebration rally at City Hall. That’s on Thursday.
After this media tour, she planned to escape to the seclusion of training for the World Championships later this month. But Saturday, it was announced she’s skipping the event, a luxury Olympic gold medalists tend to take.
The frenzy excites her now. It’s still stunning, the relentless love she receives. At each stop, people can’t wait to tell her what she means to them. But the concern of overexposure, of managing the demands of her stardom, bubbles to the surface. Liu talked about her first brush with paparazzi all the way into a conference room at Moss, her base during this stop on the tour. Before swapping into the next outfit, she took a moment to gnaw away on a treat.
The “Today” chef made an edible gold medal out of her favorite cereal, Lucky Charms. A half-pound patty of sugar. Liu tasted it on air with Al Roker and Dylan Dreyer. She’s been taking periodic bites since.
Food is part of Liu’s rebellion. The terms of her return to competition included eating what she wanted. Figure skating can be an incubator for eating disorders, especially in young women. Wispy frames provide an advantage. And the sport provides a steady diet of stress.
Liu went through it, deprivation as discipline, her first 11 years in the sport. That’s why, in her return, control is non-negotiable. She wears what she wants. Skates to music she loves. Performs when she wants. And if she wants pasta or lava cake, so be it.
She’s been unbeatable on the biggest stages after coming out of retirement, winning the 2025 World Championships, the 2025 Grand Prix Final and the 2026 Olympics. Her approach isn’t void of discipline, just filled with trust in herself. She doesn’t do triple axels anymore, or the quadruple jumps she did as a dainty teen. But she won anyway, proving her competitive streak and appreciation for the sport can properly regulate her process. Expertise over obsession.
“Your confidence,” Chris Witherspoon, an entertainment journalist and pop culture expert, told Liu in the green room of “Today.” “The way you came at 110 percent and knew you’d be that girl, it’s inspiring to me. … Teach a MasterClass.”
While Liu munches on the Lucky Charms, Isabelle McLemore, vice president of communications for U.S. Figure Skating, organizes the next costume from the stack of clear garment bags: a black Nike hoodie with red interior and matching black Nike shorts, with a red and white plaid Pendleton jacket, a pair of shiny black Nike Shox and white socks. Eventually, her medals will serve as priceless jewelry. The gold discs, heavier than they appear, make a distinct ping as they bounce off each other when she walks.
“They have a lot of scratches from clinging together,” she says. “I like them with the scratches.”
Liu loves this fit. It’s so street. So Bay Area. Hoodies are an all-seasons fashion in Oakland.
After a photoshoot, Liu puts on a white button-up shirt over a long Nike skirt, connected by another studded belt for an edgy touch. A scarlet-colored capelet type of garment covers her shoulders. Then, cinematographer Grayson Kohs films her eating Lucky Charms before a sit-down interview with Rolling Stone.
It’s 12:41 p.m. The camp arrives at Embassy Row in the SoHo district. This stop includes two appearances. The first: Reading Rainbow.
She sits in red leather chairs and reads two books. “Sarah and the Big Wave,” followed by “Kat and Juju.” The former tells the story of the first woman to surf the Mavericks, a notorious break in California. The reading stops for a few minutes while the producers find the accurate pronunciation of the main character, Sarah Gerhardt. They did the same for Kat and Juju’s author and illustrator, Kataneh Vahdani.
The irony.
“That would be bad,” Liu says at the thought of messing up the names.
The music thumps louder as she approaches the next appearance. She’s told it includes a live audience. That excites Liu, who lets out a “Yes!” as she pumps her fist like Napoleon Dynamite.
“Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen” isn’t Liu’s demographic. Bravo skews toward affluent women older than Liu and heavy into pop culture, gossip and drama — matters that don’t seem to hold her attention.
Somehow, she fits right in. She stands behind a bar while two other Bravo stars chat with Cohen. She doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but the music is thumping, the set is colorful and the studio audience yells on cue. It’s a vibe, so Liu smiles easily, laughs freely and speaks candidly. She sings along when the music matches her playlist.
It’s this spirit people recognized on the ice, the one that finds comfort internally and doesn’t seem to mind the possibility of flopping on her face. The spirit that prompted the blessing of Jamie Lee Curtis, who met Liu in the green room of “Today.” Curtis — who Liu recognized from the 2022 movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — called the gold medalist “the greatest role model for young people today. Hard work. Dedication. Letting go of results.” At this stage in Liu’s life, not seeing the harm in defeat or the potential for embarrassment allows her to absorb the experience.
Grace Ahlbom, the photographer assigned to shoot Liu for W magazine, explained what she wanted before the shoot. Look relaxed. Pretend they are alone, the photographer and the figure skater.
“She was really able to kind of click into that and look like that on her face,” Ahlbom said. “That’s kind of a hard skill. Just the ease. It goes back to her at the Olympics. Making it look easy.”
She earned the ease. The fun she had on the ice directly connects to her excellence as a skater. After years as a prodigy, she retired because the sport was too brutal and consuming. But those torturous years groomed an expert technician. She can play up her personality, get lost in the vibes, because of her mastery of edges.
She’s learned how losses produce lessons. And once she gets it down, she’s free to have fun.
“I think I only have this confidence because I was given the chance to explore myself,” Liu said. “So for two years, the two years I was away, I was able to try out different things, do a ton of different hobby stuff I never ever did before. And so I was also able to find out what I like and what I don’t like through trial and error.”
It’s 2:48 p.m. Liu wraps her scarf around her head like a hijab. She hopes that covering her hair, with its renowned blonde ringlets, will make her less recognizable. It won’t matter this time, because the paparazzi await outside. She can see the flashes popping before she exits the building onto Vandam Street in Manhattan’s Hudson Square.
Liu, so amazed, emerges from the building with her phone out.
“There’s people following us?” she asks while recording the photographers. “That’s so funny.”
Her agent, adding gravity to the chaos, breaks it to Liu that it’s not really funny. People will follow her. Her location and other private information are now in demand. Life as America’s princess has a dark side.
Forced to process the inevitability of all this attention becoming problematic, Liu wonders what to do about her hair. She doesn’t want to change it. She loves it, the perfect combination of fashion statement and symbol of independence. She’s had it touched up multiple times since the U.S. championships in January, making sure her ‘do is fly for the big stage. She adds a halo ring every year and plans to keep doing so.
But it works against her need for liberation. To go where she wants.
She could don wigs and disguises. She touches her lip and points her eyes upwards as she envisions the possibilities.
The magic ingredient for Liu, though, is freedom. The feeling that she’s skating, living, above the weight of expectations instead of under it. That’s why people love her. Why America rushed to wrap its arms around her.
But how does she share her joy without losing it? That’s the delicate line she skates. Because belonging to America risks losing what makes her so appealing: that she belongs to herself.
It’s 9:28 a.m. Tuesday morning. The green room in Disney’s new headquarters in Hudson Square features her name on a digital display outside the room. Liu fidgets with her outfit in a tall mirror, preparing to appear on “Live with Kelly and Mark.” The long blue-and-white plaid skirt sways while she changes poses. Her gold medals cling atop a green shirt with navy stripes. She covers them with a zip of the jacket. Then unzips. And zips again. Eventually, she settles on unzipped.
It’s another show outside of Liu’s wheelhouse. But Kelly Ripa’s humor and the jarringly large studio audience put Liu at ease. She no longer needs to sell herself or the sport. The audience hangs on her every word, warmed by the anecdotes she’s gotten comfortable telling. She’s grown past her playful, unfocused answers at news conferences into efficient quips and timely pauses to give space for reaction.
She walks out of the Disney studio looking energized. But before she can leave the building, and head back to Rockefeller Center for the next stop, she has to wait out of sight. Her reps go to make sure the car is out front and ready so Liu can quickly depart. Paparazzi await, enough for security to rope them off.
Liu leans against a marble wall in the lobby. She sighs. Already, it’s getting old. Being stalked. Having her movements dictated.
The photographers complain as she whisks by, covered in black, and gets into the SUV without giving them a clear shot.
“What kind of PR is that?” one of them screams.
“Go back to L.A.!” another yells.
Liu can’t help but laugh as she gets in the car, even while making it clear it’s not funny.
“First of all, I’m from Oakland,” she says, correcting the photographer now a few blocks away in the rearview mirror. She’s still wrapping her mind around the idea of people finding out her location and showing up to take her photo, then having the audacity to chide her for not playing along.
“I’m being mocked for not being thirsty. What the hell?”
Liu stares out the car window, tinted so no one can see her. The black SUV makes its way to Midtown, where slushy rain nixes her scheduled skate at The Rink at Rockefeller Center. The photo shoot with W Magazine and the news event with media remain indoors.
She’ll keep her grin, give her charming answers, love the clothes, take selfies, listen to confessions of strangers, respond with her sheepish humility. That spirit of hers perseveres.
But it’s clear her new position in sports royalty has lost some of its luster since she won Olympic gold. Coupled with adoration is an entitlement people feel to her, an element antithetical to her swag. The role of America’s sweetheart requires managing that. The paparazzi. The slew of marriage and prom proposals she’s received. The arguments about her online. Getting bombarded by fans at the airport. They’re windows into the other side of being beloved and being so relatable.
Liu broke away from the entrapment she felt, became her own woman and reached the pinnacle of her sport as a result. And the reward risks becoming a hug so tight it suffocates. America’s clingy right now.
Liu must manage this relationship and our insatiable appetite for access. Tell her story. Inspire the people. Protect her peace. Because if Liu’s crown becomes too much like a cage, it will no longer be worthy of her halos.
And one thing we know already — she can walk away from it all.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Olympics, Global Sports, Women's Olympics
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