The Fascinating Life Of Kris From MrBeast's Crew

When it comes to YouTube fame, there's hardly anyone who's a bigger deal than MrBeast. His channel has skyrocketed to success thanks to his ridiculous stunts and challenges, many of which involve giving away his millions to fans and total strangers. MrBeast's channel isn't a one-person show, though. It never would have gotten as far as it has without the people on MrBeast's crew, including longtime friend and collaborator Kris Tyson.

Diehard MrBeast fans know exactly who Tyson is, because she's been around since the very beginning of the channel. Tyson's typically been content to play as a sidekick, but has also been one of MrBeast's biggest supporters since long before the entire world knew who any of them were.

Fans have come to love Tyson for her humor and willingness to go along with whatever ridiculous idea MrBeast comes up with next. In 2023, everyone has been talking about Tyson's new look and her admission that she's been taking Hormone Replacement Therapy, as well as her eventual announcement that she's . Tyson may be making headlines these days, but that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her fascinating history.

MrBeast is obviously the center of attention on his channel, but he has an entire team of people working with him. MrBeast's friends aren't just integral members of the team, they've also been supporting him from the very beginning.

Over the years, MrBeast's channel has grown faster than anyone ever expected, and Kris Tyson has had a front row seat for the whole wild ride. She's known MrBeast since he was a seventh grader everyone knew as Jimmy. Despite a two year age gap, MrBeast and Tyson became friends because they were both deeply interested in YouTube and the process of making videos. "One day, I went over to his house and he made the MrBeast channel and I was his first subscriber," Tyson told Newsweek.

Anyone who's had big YouTube dreams can tell you getting that first subscriber, even if it's one of your own friends, is a big deal. Kris and MrBeast had no idea what they were really starting on the day they launched a YouTube channel, but internet fame and fortune was just a handful of years away from them.

In the world of YouTubing, it's not uncommon that major content creators find their way to fame after taking an incredible leap of faith. MrBeast himself famously dropped out of college after just two weeks of class in order to pursue his dream of becoming a successful YouTuber. It's much less often that you'll hear about someone leaving behind an entire job just to help their friend with a channel.

That's exactly what Kris Tyson did. While MrBeast was beginning his YouTube career, Tyson was studying IT in college. After graduating, Tyson found herself working in an internship position and planning out a traditional career path for the future. Then a single conversation with MrBeast changed everything.

"Jimmy was like, 'Hey, I know you worked really hard for that job, but can you quit it and just come work for me?'" she told Business Insider. Where someone else might have seen incredible risk, Kris saw the opportunity to completely transform her life. At that time MrBeast's channel had just 750,000 subscribers, but Tyson decided to take a chance and join the team. All these years later, it's safe to say that leaving a "real" job by the wayside was the right call.

MrBeast's YouTube channel has well over 150 million subscribers. No one could join a production that massively popular and expect their lives to stay the same, but back when Kris Tyson became MrBeast's first subscriber, she didn't exactly know what she was getting into. Tyson told Newsweek that she noticed her life was really beginning to change when people started recognizing her in public. After MrBeast started giving away huge amounts of money to local waitresses and pizza delivery drivers, everyone on the team noticed that more and more people were coming up to them in public.

Internet fame might have been a dream come true, but then again, Tyson wasn't exactly prepared for her entire life to be disrupted every time she stepped outside. In an interview from 2020, Tyson joked about her intense social anxiety, saying, "I'm kind of dying inside a little bit when I meet people." Tyson went on to clarify that she's always happy to talk to fans, but anytime she's interacting with someone publicly, most of her attention goes to worrying about how other people might perceive her. Fame is a double-edged sword, and even though Tyson loves working with MrBeast, she has to acknowledge that the job comes with a few downsides.

There's sometimes an assumption that everyone in the world wants to be successful on their own terms, completely in charge of whatever business they're running and universally recognized as the boss. Anyone who's still working as part of a team, playing some kind of support role, hasn't really made it yet, right?

That couldn't be further from the truth, and Kris Tyson, consciously or not, is helping break that idea down. At this point, it wouldn't be too difficult for her to launch her own YouTube channel or internet brand, bringing along some of the following she's built up from working with MrBeast. If Tyson wanted, she could stop helping MrBeast achieve his goals and build something from scratch all by herself. But there's really no point in making something new if you already love what you have.

"I hate saying the word 'sidekick' because it sounds bad, but, like, I don't know. I kind of like it," Tyson said when asked if she'd ever consider starting her own brand. That response might catch some people off guard. It's not a glamorous answer, but in reality it makes sense. Tyson's job right now involves working with her best friends and making videos every single day. Who would want to give that up?

Everyone's got skeletons in their closet, but these days that's just a fancy way of saying no one should scroll too far back on Twitter. There have been a handful of times that MrBeast's shady side has gotten him in trouble, and one instance in 2018 involved The Atlantic digging through his old tweets and finding some particularly nasty jokes. MrBeast's defenders pointed out that the tweets were posted when he was still a teenager, but whether or not you think MrBeast deserved all the negative attention, you can probably agree that his friends should have taken the hint and gotten rid of their own troubling tweets.

In 2021, Kris Tyson found herself in the same hot seat that MrBeast had occupied in 2018. YouTuber Def Noodles went back through Tyson's Twitter history and posted screenshots of some truly awful tweets that Tyson made between 2016 and 2018. Tyson's tweets might have been meant as jokes, but that doesn't make them any more palatable. The posts run the gamut from Islamophobia, to blatant racism, to "edgy" 9/11 jokes.

After Def Noodle's tweets, Tyson posted an apology to Twitlonger. In it, Tyson wrote, "I want you to know I have learned from this and I am going to keep using my platform to try to help people and spread messages of acceptance and love."

Any big internet personality knows that its next to impossible to keep any information about their relationships private. For years fans followed the relationship between Kris and Katie Tyson. However, the Tysons didn't make keeping up with their relationship the easiest thing in the world. Katie preferred to stay out of the limelight, and the whole time she was with Kris, she only appeared in a single MrBeast video.

Despite their attempts at privacy, fans still kept a close watch on Katie's and Kris' social media accounts. In June 2020, the internet was overjoyed as the Tysons welcomed their first son to the world, but by 2022, fans thought they'd picked up on a problem in the relationship. For the entire year, Kris and Katie hadn't posted any pictures of each other.

Though the Tysons probably would have preferred to keep things private a little while longer, Kris eventually explained to fans on Twitter that the two of them had separated in 2022. Though their marriage didn't last, the two still communicate with each other, particularly when it comes to co-parenting their son Tucker. Who knows what the future has in store for either of them, but one thing's for certain: fans are going to keep rooting for their family.

After becoming a parent, it's natural for a person to shift their priorities. Kris Tyson's son Tucker was born in 2020, right when the whole world was figuring out how to navigate a dramatic change of pace. The past several years have been exhausting in more ways than one, and Tyson credits Tucker with getting her through these particularly tough times.

Figuring out how to be a parent is hard enough when you have a traditional job, but Tyson's career involves around-the-clock work and, on occasion, major travel plans. Sometimes that's worked out to Tucker's benefit. Tyson once said that Tucker got to tag along for a MrBeast video that involved some travel and he "says thanks for the cool plane rides Uncle Jimmy."

We already talked about how fans can easily become over-invested in the personal lives of their favorite creators, and that's something Tyson is always thinking about as a parent. She and Tucker's mom Katie have posted pictures of Tucker in the past, but Tyson has said that she's trying to minimize Tucker's online exposure going forward. It's one thing to have fans obsessing over your marriage, but having people follow your toddler like a celebrity is a step too far. Balancing private and public life is particularly challenging for content creators, but right now it seems like Tyson's heart is in the right place.

In April 2023, Kris Tyson got the internet talking after revealing that she'd been undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy for two months and would be okay going by any pronouns for the immediate future. Tyson didn't mince words about how impactful this step in her gender journey has been. "Informed consent HRT saved my and many others' lives," she wrote on Twitter.

MrBeast immediately came out in support of his friend, popping into Tyson's replies to write, "Here to help with the ratio." MrBeast's initial comment did frustratingly little to dissuade angry commenters and wild speculation that Tyson's decision would impact her role on the MrBeast team. Eventually, the chorus of negative voices got so loud that MrBeast stepped back in to say, "This is getting absurd ... All this transphobia is starting to p*** me off."

Despite some of the negativity floating around online, Tyson has made it clear that coming out was the right decision. "I was super nervous to be public about this ... but seeing conversations started bc of me is amazing," she wrote on Twitter. 

Just a heads up, someone finding themself does not always mean they are now x identity, however this is a great time to say trans rights are human rights. Let people exist and be happy. And if this make you mad enjoy being on the wrong side of history looking back https://t.co/M5mKN2Jhff

— Chris (@chris) March 27, 2023

Kris Tyson is continuing to use her platform to proudly declare that "trans rights are human rights," and fans are just excited to see where Tyson's journey goes from here.

Kris Tyson also had to clear the air about rumors that MrBeast had fired them from the team. There's been no shortage of speculation and gossip surrounding Tyson and her work with MrBeast, ever since Tyson came out as gender non-conforming, but the latest rumor spread far enough that some people really started to believe it was true.

It all started when Tyson went to Japan with MrBeast to film a video. Tyson ended up leaving the trip earlier than the rest of the team, and some online were quick to jump on that as proof that Tyson wouldn't be working with MrBeast anymore. Of course the reality is even more straightforward and way less exciting.

Chris Tyson responds to rumors of being kicked off the Mr. Beast team pic.twitter.com/4FSEYxv9PM

— No Jumper (@nojumper) May 1, 2023

In an AMA, Tyson responded to a question about why the Japan trip had been cut short. "Because I want to spend time with Tucker and [MrBeast] is traveling a lot, I'm just going to come and go as I please," Tyson said. That answer isn't going to satisfy everyone. After all, she's has taken Tucker on trips with MrBeast before, so some fans are still going to wonder why that didn't happen here. Ultimately, though, being a parent to Tucker is more important than making videos, and it's hard to argue that a toddler should be spending more time on planes than in their own backyard.

In July 2023, Kris updated fans on a few major milestones in her life. She joined YouTuber Anthony Padilla for a heartfelt interview, during which she revealed that she now officially uses she/her pronouns and would be going by a different name around friends and family. In the interview, she reiterated her feeling that being on HRT was a life-saving decision, and that she's feeling much happier than ever before. "I've really never felt connected to my body until I started taking HRT," Kris told Anthony Padilla.

She also revealed that she had made her decision to transition as far back as 2022, but that was not an easy decision. In the years leading up to coming out as trans, Kris struggled with a lot of self-doubt and depression. Now, as Tyson told her followers on Instagram, "The physical changes aren't the only things that have made me feel so much happier," and she feels able to face the world at last.

Shortly after the interview aired, Kris also shared a set of before-and-after photos to illustrate to friends and fans how much progress she's made in six months on HRT. The comments were almost immediately flooded with followers congratulating and rooting for her, and pretty much any negativity was quickly drowned out.

6 months on HRT!!🥰 pic.twitter.com/M5r3gPEszX

— Kris (@kristyson_) July 30, 2023