As a pretty confident individual, there are few people who intimidate me. Aside from obvious figures like my mother, grandmother, and high school choir director, there’s another person whose confidence never fails to leave me in a state of awe — and that’s the Queen Of Confidence herself, Serena Kerrigan.
If you’re a social media user, Kerrigan is bound to have appeared on your feed at some point. A true multi-hyphenate, Kerrigan is a content creator, actress, director, and producer who uses these platforms to promote, you guessed it, confidence. Through both social media content and live shows, Kerrigan’s focus is on her audience, and how she can encourage them to be their best — and most badass — selves. “I’m here to help women, empower them — and I feel like I’ve done a really good job prioritizing my community,” Kerrigan tells Her Campus. “For me, it’s about really connecting with my audience and having them be able to connect with each other.”
In 2020, Kerrigan skyrocketed to popularity after creating the first-ever reality show on Instagram Live, Let’s F*cking Date. In the viral series, Kerrigan sought to date two men every week for 30 minutes on IG Live. After three seasons of the show, Kerrigan dated a total of 50 men, racked up over 5 million views, and garnered over 700,000 followers across platforms.
“After Let’s F*cking Date, I remember one woman who was like, ‘If only you could be on every first date with me, so it wouldn’t be so awkward,’” Kerrigan says. “And I was like, ‘Wait, what if I could? What if there was a way for me to be on everyone’s date?’ And so that’s how I created my first card game, Let’s F*cking Date.”
Following the success of Let’s F*cking Date, a question-and-answer-style card game designed to break the ice on a date, Kerrigan went on to release Let’s F*cking F*ck, which features ~spicier~ questions, and Let’s F*cking Play, which is all about playing… with yourself (or others, it’s your world).
Recently, Kerrigan released her fourth card game, Let’s F*cking Go. In contrast to her other games, Let’s F*cking Go is all about having fun, letting loose, and getting deep with platonic friends, coworkers, or loved ones.
I had the opportunity to talk to Kerrigan about the release of Let’s F*cking Go and her tips on doing it for the plot, and even got my own personal pep-talk in confidence from the Queen herself.
The following responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What drove you to start making card/party games in the first place? What games inspired Let’s F*cking Go?
It’s really a communication tool disguised as a game. And there are obviously other games on the market, but I feel like mine is very cheeky. It’s very on-brand for me, and it’s really about opening up. But the three games that I’ve done thus far are very sexual, mostly for romance and dating. You could theoretically take out questions that are a little too spicy if you’re playing with friends, but I realized that there needed to be one more game that was in that [Serena F*cking Kerrigan, or] SFK voice, but wasn’t necessarily about anything romantic or sexual. And that’s where I came up with the game Let’s F*cking Go.
A lot of the card games I see nowadays are either drinking card games or sexy ones that you play with your partner, but I really like how this one is focused more on having fun with your friends.
I’m an extreme extrovert — I go to events all the time alone, and sometimes even I feel like I have social anxiety. And I was like, “What if I created something where you could walk into any room and have a golden ticket that will immediately help you break the ice?” The idea is that anyone who has it in their pocket will have the best night of their lives.
I’m definitely going to start carrying a pack around. I’m so awkward.
First of all, let’s stop for a second. What we say about ourselves is who we are. So you stop saying that you’re awkward because you’re not. And I’ve been on the phone with you for four minutes and you are not awkward at all.
Oh my God. I’m sweating.
It’s OK to feel awkward, feelings go away. But when you’re like, “I’m so awkward,” suddenly that’s who you become and you decide the identity of who you are.
You’re like that voice in my head that I need all the time. Was the Queen Of Confidence persona something you were born with, or was “main character energy” something you had to learn?
Everyone is born with confidence. We all are born with this blissful ignorance when we come into the world. But as we get older, all of us become infected with insecurity and infected by the media that we consume, or someone making a mean comment, or merely just being a woman or, for some, being a woman of color. Suddenly they start to see themselves within the world and think they’re not good enough. But we can’t live at the potential of someone’s thought.
I can’t be so self-conscious and care so much about what people think because I’m going to be so unhappy. And so I created that persona, SFK, who is the main character to keep tapping into. She doesn’t give a f*ck. And to this day, I still tap into her and she’s an extension of me.
It’s very Beyoncé and Sasha Fierce, right?
Yes, 100%. And so when I said on my Instagram bio, I think in 2018, that I’m the Queen Of Confidence, I wasn’t. I wasn’t the Queen Of Confidence then. I don’t even know if I am now. I think that confidence is a wave, and sometimes it goes up and down and it’s something you have to keep flexing and working on. But it was someone, or something, that I wanted to become.
By saying, “I am the Queen Of Confidence,” it’s the same way I told you you should stop saying “I’m awkward.” You are what you think about yourself. It’s like manifestation in a way.
The SFK persona is all about doing it all for the plot. Do you have any tips for having the confidence to just say, “F*ck it?”
Doing it for the plot is realizing that your whole life is one story. It’s like a movie, and the main character is going to have different plot twists and turns, and everything is for the development of her journey. I think it’s about being safe and not doing dumb ass sh*t for the plot, but realizing you can do a lot of things. I said yes to a lot of experiences that were scary or daunting, but I realized this was just going to make a really great story for my memoir. That was always the mentality, and it always made me stronger and a better person. And even if the experiences weren’t the best, there’s always a takeaway. There was always a learning lesson from them.
Your card games are all very sex-positive. Why is sex-positivity important to you, as well as your brand?
Sex either can lead to an orgasm, hopefully, or a baby. So, both are very positive things — assuming everything is consensual. It’s a very puritanical and extremely patriarchal view that sex is a sin — and I really, really, I reject that completely. It’s total bullsh*t. When I launched Let’s F*cking Play in 2021, I felt like I took a really hard stance on sex positivity. I created a whole game about masturbating. I just felt like there had to be someone telling women it’s OK to want to have sex and want to masturbate. Men do it. We’re supposed to do it. It’s a natural thing. Everyone go masturbate. I do it every day.
Finally, any advice for college students who are timid when it comes to putting themselves out there, especially in personal relationships/friendships?
One, get my card game — because that’s going to be helpful to have, and that’s why I created it. It’s like your little SFK armor.
I also would create a character: Create an alter ego, a name, or someone that you could just tap into and also talk to yourself in the mirror. And really hype yourself up. Get the f*ck out there, because that person in the mirror is your best friend. That person in the mirror is the one constant in your life.
You can connect with Serena Kerrigan online or catch her at her upcoming show at the Chelsea Music Hall on Nov. 15 in New York City.