The 2019 Golden Globes red carpet may have been the place to showcase eye-popping fashion and arm candy, but it was the “Fiji Water Girl” who really stole the show. If you watched the red carpet ceremony on Sunday (January 6), you noticed a young woman in a blue dress who was assigned to hold up a tray of Fiji Water bottles for the stars, but her placement to the side or in back of the photos for Amy Adams, Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, Idris Elba and more had Twitter laughing up a storm.
Now, less than 24 hours since the Hollywood ceremony, the identity of the “Fiji Water Girl” has been revealed and her name is Kelleth Cuthbert. While many of her appearances saw her unabashedly stare directly into the lens with a half-smile, the 5-foot-9 Canadian model made sure to laugh off the Internet fuss in an Instagram post. “Not the worst way to spend a Sunday,” she captioned a photo of her on the carpet with the hashtags #goldenglobesfijigirl and #fijiwatergirl. Unsurprisingly, Cuthbert is a model, who has worked for agencies across North America, including Wilhelmina in Los Angeles and Chicago, Plutino in Toronto, Heffner in Seattle and Donna Baldwin in Denver.
In an interview with Glamour, Cuthbert admitted that she’s overwhelmed by all the attention she’s receiving, including the sudden popularity on Instagram. “I do love a good meme, so I think it’s incredibly ironic and funny that I’m one now. The first meme of 2019, apparently!” she told the outlet. “My husband is laughing very hard about all of this. This is something I would go viral for. I feel like I’ve been photobombing people since I was a kid.”
Despite her professional accolades, Cuthbert said her appearance on Sunday was all done, courtesy of her own skills. “I wish now that I hadn’t chosen to sleep in a little longer,” she joked, adding that she did her own hair and makeup. “I thought, ‘I don’t need to put that much effort into myself. No one’s really going to see me.'”
