Model from Justin Bieber's 'Boyfriend' music video reflects on 'hilarious' experience 8 years later

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The last 12 months have been full of milestones for Rocky Barnes.

In addition to becoming a mother last January and moving into a new home, which is still under construction, the model also debuted a clothing line called The Bright Side after overhauling its first collection because of the pandemic.

According to Barnes, who appears on the latest episode of In The Know’s pop culture interview series We Should Talk, 2020 was the best time for her to begin navigating motherhood.

“Honestly, this couldn’t have been a better year to have a baby. Everyone’s catching on, because everyone’s pregnant right now,” Barnes laughed. “This is actually an amazing time to have a kid. Before 2020, my husband, Matt, and I were doing maybe three international trips a month. […] Because nothing is going on, I am actually able to just devote myself full-time to my baby and being with him without a care in the world, which is such an amazing feeling. It’s taken away all of my distractions.”

During our interview with Barnes, she also shared her thoughts on “stupid” influencer drama, being one of the first true Instagram influencers, how she looks back on being in Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” music video and why she decided on unisex loungewear for her first collection for The Bright Side.

Listen to Rocky Barnes’ full episode of We Should Talk below, and keep reading for highlights from the interview:

On influencers getting into controversy: “Not all influencers are the same. Let’s compare it to the dynamic of the celebrity world: You have the Brad Pitts and the Cate Blanchetts of the world, who are movie stars and they do their own thing. Then you have the Kardashians and the reality TV people, and they’re all on TV, but in very different ways. There’s a spectrum. There are people who are very serious business influencers that are amazing content creators and are able to share their world in a really, really beautiful way, and I think it’s purely a job for them. Then there are people that share their entire lives with everyone, down to, ‘I just woke up.’ Everything. All the drama. There’s an audience for everything; there’s an audience for the really curated, and there’s an audience for the reality TV-type people. I just hate being all grouped into one, because I like to think everyone has their own voice and is very different. The people that are getting called out and are drama, it’s so stupid that they think they can act the way they’re doing and not get called out. […] If you’re gonna be stupid, you’re gonna get called out. Behave yourself!”

On her clothing line, The Bright Side: “I have partners at Reunited Clothing, and I have all of these ideas that they help bring to life. I have an amazing team behind me. We started this in 2019, and the vision for it is my dream outfits, my dream closet. It’s very vintage-inspired with a masculine-feminine balance. It was supposed to be dresses and skirts and all these things you would take on summer vacation. It was supposed to launch last April. Obviously, when Covid hit, it just didn’t feel right. The environment was different. We put that collection on hold, which we’re hoping to launch this Spring/Summer, and instead we designed a collection that felt right. It’s something my husband could wear, I could wear, my baby could wear. I’m a huge fan of hotel pajamas, so [I loved the idea of] doing a leisure suit based on the classic hotel pajamas that you can be super chic at home in. It’s all unisex and oversized, and I did it all in really fun prints.”

On being in Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” music video: “I think it’s hilarious. It was such a fun moment for me. What makes it even funnier is that I was 26 when I did that, and he was 18. I’ll take it as a compliment that they thought I looked 17 years old. I was like, ‘I’ll take it!’ I was, like, 8 years older than him, so it was kind of a joke that I was his girlfriend, but it was really funny. We weren’t allowed to have our phones on set at all — they took all of our phones on set and put them away — so we couldn’t post anything or do anything behind the scenes. I think at the time I had, like, two thousand followers, so it was really early on, and I hoped that it would give me more followers, and it never really did.”

On navigating motherhood amid the pandemic: “Honestly, this couldn’t have been a better year to have a baby. Everyone’s catching on, because everyone’s pregnant right now. This is actually an amazing time to have a kid. Before 2020, my husband, Matt, and I were doing maybe three international trips a month. We were gone more than we were home. If that was still happening — motherhood, as amazing as it is, I also love my job, so it would’ve been hard — I would’ve had horrible FOMO. Because nothing is going on, I am actually able to just devote myself full-time to my baby and being with him without a care in the world, which is such an amazing feeling. It’s taken away all of my distractions.”

Watch our full interview with Rocky Barnes below:

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