In a recent episode of Baylen Out Loud, the hit TLC show about a charismatic 22 year old with a severe case of Tourette syndrome, Baylen Dupree stands on the banks of the sun-drenched Potomac and gushes about her love of DC. Suddenly, she’s struck with a particularly elaborate verbal tic, one that involves “vaginas hanging from the White House” and Joe Biden being buried in her backyard. “I can promise you, I have no idea what the president’s activities are or where he’s buried,” she later deadpans. “And he’s still alive, so that’s good. Let’s just pray that it doesn’t get me in trouble when I live here.”
Baylen does, in fact, live here now; in August, she moved from her parents’ house near Harper’s Ferry into an airy apartment in Arlington, which she shares with her fiancé, Colin Dooley. The show’s first season, whose finale airs Monday, chronicled the stress of the move, which exacerbated Baylen’s tics. Those tics range from mild to debilitating—motor and vocal tics, but also coprolalia, which is the rare Tourette symptom where one involuntarily utters obscenities. The show is a plea for empathy, but it’s also a lot of fun and was recently renewed for a second season. On Friday, we caught up with Baylen via Zoom while she was in Roanoke visiting Colin’s parents. Except where relevant, we’ve left out the tics.
Now that you live in DC, what’s your day-to-day life like?
It’s pretty simple. With my OCD, I struggle a lot to leave the house because of rituals I do. So I do a lot of cleaning at the apartment, and just exploring the city with my friends—like, I’ve made a lot of good friends. We will meet up for lunch or for certain things like that. Also being involved in a gym environment really helps with my tics and my anxiety.
Oh, how did you make friends so quickly?
If anyone says that they’re able to make friends in their 20s easily, they’re lying to you. It’s very hard. But when I moved I decided to get on BFF Bumble and I’ve met several people—like my best friend, I met her on BFF Bumble. It’s just amazing that I was able to find her as a friend.
Where do you guys like to go?
We go out to brunch a lot. We’re foodies. We just got done having breakfast this morning at Call Your Mother. Such a cute place, I love the pink. I love Gravelly Point. I think it’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s like five minutes from the house.
Do people recognize you when you’re out in public?
Yes, and I love it so much. So, for example, I took pictures with people today at Call Your Mother. They were like, “Oh, my God, we have to take a picture. My mom would actually hate me if I didn’t.” I love being able to meet people and see there’s a face to a supporter. It means a lot. And when people come up to me instead of, like, staring at me, it makes the environment better.
Yeah, I wanted to ask if it feels easier to be out in public now that you’re really publicly associated with Tourette.
Yes. I mean, yes and no. Like, mentally, it’s really hard for me to leave the house with my rituals and my anxiety and things like that, but being out in public is easier, because people look at me and they’ll be like, “Oh my God, I know who you are,” versus, like, “Oh my God, you’re an animal.” Don’t get me wrong, I do get both. Some people still don’t know who I am.
What do you wish people understood about Tourette that they don’t understand?
So Tourette syndrome is a very misunderstood, complex condition. It’s on a spectrum, it ranges from unnoticeable to severe. It looks different in everybody. But Tourette is not the swearing disease. One, it’s not a disease, so there’s that. And coprolalia, which is the swearing, only appears in ten percent of cases. So it’s not common. But I just wish that people knew that we don’t tic 24/7, and that we can’t control what we say. And I wish that people knew not to copy my tics.
What do you mean? How do they copy them?
Since people don’t know about Tourette, they don’t know that the things that I say—they’re not catch phrases, they’re not quotes, they’re tics. So the same type of tic where I have to hit my head is the same type of tic where I have to say—[gasp] wind it up. So I wish when people came up to me, they didn’t refer to me as my tics.
I mean, if a random person was in the store and you noticed that they had Tourette, would you mock them or laugh at them or say their tics back to them? The answer is no. But there’s a lot of people who think that doing it to me is okay, and it just doesn’t make sense to me. But then there’s people that say, well, you decided for this life. You decided to put yourself in the social eye, so people can do whatever they want. And you’re right. People can do whatever they want, but my job is to educate and say that this isn’t right.
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that. Watching the show, it’s clear that your tics cause you a tremendous amount of pain. But also, there are moments where it’s hard not to laugh, like your Joe Biden tic is so—
[Unintelligible tic about Joe Biden]
And then when you do that, I’m like, right, it’s not funny at all. So is it okay for people to laugh?
With my family and Colin and close people, I do find humor with it. It’s finding a good and positive thing out of this horrible, painful condition. But when laughing is involved, it’s only appropriate at certain times. My family knows when to laugh and when not to. So when I’m ticcing and I am in pain and I am not laughing, it’s not funny.
I wanted to ask about the specific political tics, but I’m not sure if that’s rude.
When I talk about my tics, it sets them off very badly, so like—
Okay, let’s not do that.
Okay.
That’s helpful. I mean, when people encounter you ticcing in public, how do you wish they’d react?
Just kind of ignore it and pretend like it’s non-existent. Every single time I get into my Uber, I basically tell them, “I have Tourette syndrome. It’s an involuntary motor and vocal disorder. If you hear me say anything out of the ordinary, just ignore it.” And usually, for the most part, it ends up working—until I tell them that their mom’s a cunt or something. Then they stare at me, and I have to be like, “That’s a tic. Your mom’s great.”
Why did you agree to do the show and what did you want people to see?
The only thing that I’ve ever wanted to get out of this show is education—for people to understand that when I leave the house, I’m uncomfortable 24/7. If the world could just understand what I’m going through, then maybe going to the grocery store could become a little bit easier for me and for other people with this condition. And I also hope that the show helps diagnose people with Tourette or tic disorders, because a very high percentage of people go undiagnosed.
How has the show changed your life?
My life, honestly, hasn’t changed a lot, other than going into places and meeting people. But what makes me realize that I’m making a difference is the people that come up to me and tell me personal stories. So, for example, the other day I was at Chipotle, and this guy comes up to me and he’s like, “my wife is in the education system and she’s waited 25 years for there to be a show out there to help kids that are neurodivergent”—or that are different, I can’t remember exactly what he said.
And when I met with these kids at the [Tourette Association of America], I was told that when they were going through TSA, the TSA agents were like, “Oh my God, you have Tourette, like the girl on Baylen Out Loud.” So that’s the only way that the show has changed my life, is that it’s helped me and other people with TS a lot.
Congratulations on your engagement. Are you wedding planning?
Thank you so much! We currently just started, so we’re minimally wedding planning. For example, we’ve come down to, like, four venues, and that’s hard because I’m, like, “Colin I want all of them!” I don’t know what to choose. I’m very indecisive. It’s bad.
How are you going to decide?
Well, for example, one of them was 90 grand. I’m going to say that one’s off the list.
Will the wedding be in DC?
No. It’s come down to Tennessee and Virginia. We’ll probably change, but you never know. We’re thinking barn-style wedding. I just really want a beautiful view with a cross in the background. That’s the only thing I’m envisioning when I see myself walk down the aisle.
I know you’re with Colin so I’ll let you go, but what has been your favorite night out in DC?
Probably at Ballroom in Clarendon. We’ve done a couple bar crawls, too. The first time I went out was with the friends that I met through Orange Theory, and I just had a blast going barhopping for the first time ever. It was on Halloween in Dupont Circle. Me and Colin were mobsters, like people in the mafia. I was looking around and I was like, “Colin, it’s so crowded that no one cares about my tics!”
