Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
If you’ve been anywhere near TikTok in the past few months, you have probably encountered a Nara Smith video, either in the wild (your FYP) or in meme form. The 22-year-old influencer and wife of model Lucky Blue Smith is known for her massively popular home-cooking videos, in which she painstakingly re-creates all walks of snacks she could easily buy at the store. But now, a TikToker based in South Africa claims Smith has stolen some recipe ideas from her account. What in the homemade Cheez-It is going on? Let’s dive in.
Who is Nara Smith?
Smith is a model who was born in South Africa but grew up in Germany and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband of four years, fellow model Lucky Blue Smith. In the past six months, she’s accrued a 7.8-million deep TikTok following making highly involved from-scratch meals for Lucky and their three young children: Slim Easy Smith, Rumble Honey Smith, and Whimsy Lou Smith. There’s some debate over whether her videos are Mormon propaganda — Lucky was raised in the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and Nara has casually referred to doing “scriptures” and once included a baby-pink-and-gold Book of Mormon in one of her Instagram Reels.
Since she was canon-blasted out of algorithmic obscurity, Smith’s recipes have gotten more outlandish, her collars more frilly, and the coif of her ’50s housewife bob more immaculate. In the past eight weeks, she has made toothpaste, ketchup, lollipops, and bubble gum from scratch.
Okay, and who is Onezwa Mbola?
Mbola is a South African TikToker who also posts videos of herself making food and drinks from scratch. Her vibe is different from Nara’s — where Smith cooks from a minimalist L.A. kitchen in polka-dot Reformation dresses, Mbola appears to live on a farm in South Africa and uses ingredients that she says she’s “grown, raised, or foraged.” Mbola’s following of 500,000 is also a small fraction of Nara’s millions, though her commenters do seem to frequently compare her to Smith. In a February video that opened with a clip of her milking a cow, Mbola said in a voice-over that she’s been “likened to a content creator with a huge following … because that’s who people associate cooking from scratch with on this app.” Citing accusations that she had stolen the idea for a recent cheese video from Smith, she said, “Neither Nara Smith nor I are the first people to make mozzarella from scratch,” adding that she had posted her mozzarella video one day before Smith’s appeared. “I don’t need to steal content,” she said. Still, the video caption clarified that she had “all love for Nara Smith” — she just didn’t want to be compared to her or accused of stealing her ideas.
What is Mbola saying now?
Recently, Mbola appears to have changed her tune on Smith. In a video she posted last week, which has since been taken down but circulated on TikTok via screen recordings, she accused Smith of copying her videos without crediting her. “For months now, I have watched a very, very popular content creator use my ideas,” she said, announcing that she’s stepping back from making anything new. She noted that, unlike Smith, she can’t get paid for views in South Africa, claiming the model “has been making money off stealing my content.” (TikTok pays popular accounts through its Creator Fund, which is only available to users in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, or Italy. It’s unclear if Smith receives payment through this fund, but she’s certainly eligible, and considering it pays participants based on how many views they get, she could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars.)
Though Mbola claims Smith has been copying her for months, her breaking point appears to have been a rooibos boba-tea video that Smith posted on June 12 — two days after Mbola posted her own video making homemade tapioca bubbles with guava tea and goat milk. In her video, Mbola called this timing “a coincidence that happens very often,” though she didn’t cite other examples. She added that Smith “always manages to change the videos just enough so that I cannot say that they are my ideas.”
Other fans of Mbola’s claim her videos inspired Smith to start using the same hushed, even-keeled voice — which, to be fair, is kind of a TikTok cooking staple by this point:
What does Smith have to say about all this?
Responding to comments on her own boba video accusing her of stealing the idea from Mbola, Smith wrote, “I’ve never seen her videos nor do I follow her … I’m not the first or last person to make boba.” According to some TikTok sleuths, that may not be entirely true — screenshots have surfaced that suggest Smith did venture onto this woman’s account at some point. They appear to show Smith commenting on Mbola’s video about being compared to her: “I’m so sorry you have to deal with these comments … your content is so inspiring.”
On Wednesday, Mbola tweeted, “Nara is threatening to sue me,” and posted what appeared to be an email from Smith accusing her of defamation. A representative for Smith denied that the model had contacted Mbola or threatened legal action, telling the Cut that “this letter has been fabricated.”
🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/CVUm7nnIyr pic.twitter.com/MxprCVqnur
— ✨gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss✨ (@onezwambola) June 19, 2024
Meanwhile, both women have been cooking and posting through it all. Who knew there were so many TikTok pages where you could watch a woman strain her own cheese?
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