Like Austin Powers with abs, Mr. Fantasy emerged from the depths of TikTok last summer, all mop-top bob, funky teeth, and unnerving hip swivels. A pop singer with a British accent and an eye toward Hollywood, he romped through our social feeds — often shirtless, always undulating — and hip-thrusted his way into our reluctant hearts.
From day one, though, fans noticed an uncanny resemblance to the star of a similarly campy, horny TV show: New Zealand-born actor KJ Apa, who dutifully, painfully dyed his hair red for seven years to play Archie in Riverdale, a fever dream that made millennials feel funny about the comics they used to read in the grocery-store checkout line as kids.
Now, though, Apa has declared war on the foppish “fraud” at the very moment that Mr. Fantasy’s debut album, Fantasyland, shimmers on the horizon.
From Mr. Fantasy’s fateful TikTok debut to Apa’s fighting words on Instagram, here’s the complete timeline of this social media star.
Summer 2025: A Star Is Born
Mr. Fantasy burst onto the scene via TikTok on Aug. 19, 2025, with a video featuring him bobbing his bobbed head to a 2017 track by the Australian band Parcel. “Hello TikTok. Hello Los Angeles. Hello world,” he wrote by way of intro, but commenters weren’t fooled. The most-liked comment reads, “kj apa? what u doin queen.”
The posts came fast and furious after that, with Fantasy posting videos of the Hollywood Bowl and the famed Hollywood sign, with his manager, known only as “John,” behind the camera. Fans, again, played sleuth, noting that the musician’s tattoos appeared to be an exact match for Apa’s.
In late August, Fantasy released his self-titled debut single, dropping the accompanying video at the top of September. Synth-flecked and funky, neither the song nor the video play coy. “I can be your Mr. Fantasy/I see you looking my way,” he croons, while, in the video, he thrusts and pirouettes in a short bathrobe, tie-dyed Speedos, and a plethora of snazzy suits.
“Oh, did Jughead accidentally reset the universe again?” queried one commenter, referring, once again, to Riverdale and its propensity for mind-bending plot twists.
Whether it was penned by Apa or some Brit with possessed hips, the song soon took off. It has topped the Global Viral 50 Spotify chart and has over 10 million streams.
Fall 2025: Don’t Rain on His Parade
Those Johnny Come Latelies known as the media finally caught Mr. Fantasy fever following several weeks of TikTok fervor, and Mr. Fantasy started doing interviews — all fielded by the mysterious John. Prior to a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, John ominously informed the journalist that “the ‘silly actor boy TJ Apple’ [should] not be brought up” during the interview. So the writer gamely played it straight.
Mr. Fantasy was inspired to seek a career in Hollywood due to his grandmother, he told THR. “That’s where the story begins because she is my reason, and she fostered this gift that I had been given by the gods to create music.”
He decided to cross the pond, he said, “because America is this place, this magical place, where somehow, for some reason, you can be completely who you want to be. Any version of yourself seems to be accepted. … I mean, look at how many stars were made here. James Franco, for example, came to Los Angeles to pursue this dream, and I’m just another artist who’s out here doing his thing.”
He goes on to extoll the talents of Franco myriad times, for some reason.
As for his message? “Love. That’s really the main ingredient, and it’s not a conscious thing that I’m trying to concoct. It just sort of seeps out of me, like some kind of strange liquid. But that’s where the music comes from, it’s very natural.”
In October, he continued to spread that message with “Wayuwanna,” which my ace reading comprehension skills tell me could be about… sex? In the video, he sings about being “hot to trot” in a castle, as one does. Around that time, he joined Tinder, presumably on a quest to find someone to have sex in a castle with.
On Nov. 27, though, Mr. Fantasy was introduced to the world — and my nine-year-old niece — during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, where he undulated once more to his signature song, this time on a pirate ship populated by children. My niece’s review? “That was weird.”
He followed up that triumph the following day with “Catapult,” in which he shimmied in somehow even shorter shorts — and a sports car that can drive on water, much like Jesus.
This Means War: Spring 2026
Things were looking up for Mr. Fantasy at the top of 2026 — he has a real PR person now (they’ve sent me emails!), and thus announced the premiere of his debut album, Fantasyland, due out on June 26.
Then, on May 1, he premiered his new single and video, “Do Me Right,” with much fanfare — and a truly dizzying array of guest stars, including Alex Warren, Camila Mendes, Cody Simpson, Daniel Seavey, Dave Franco, Derek Hough, Frank Grillo, Isiah Hilt, Jimmy Tatro, Justice Smith, Kiernan Shipka, Lili Reinhart, Madelaine Petsch, Neal McDonough, Nick Jonas, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Pete Berg, Rob Lowe, Rufus Sewell, Sombr, Tyler Posey, and Zoey Deutch.
Eagle-eyed fans noted that the video — which sees Mr. Fantasy cavorting on horses, skates, and the beach — also included appearances from several Riverdale cast members.
Apa, it seems, took note. On May 6, he took to Instagram to address the resemblance between him and Mr. Fantasy for the first time, alleging that the mop-top is “hurting me and my career.”
He continued, “There was recently a music video that was released that included a bunch of people who are really close to me by a guy who’s completely and utterly stolen my image and misappropriated my image and my likeness, and I think we all know who we’re talking about, and it’s fucked up.”
He continued in this vein: “This person advocates for positivity and for kindness and for all of this stuff. Look in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re not a fucking liar and a thief, because that’s exactly what you are.”
This video appeared mere days after I asked his publicist, point-blank, if Apa would like to reveal himself as Mr. Fantasy exclusively in the pages of Rolling Stone. I am not so vain as to think I was the impetus for the Instagram video, but his publicist didn’t respond to multiple followups. Your move, KJ… er, Mr. Fantasy.
Courtesy of Martin Garrix
Louis Van Baar*
Liam Payne (left) and Harry Styles of One Direction onstage during the 2013 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 24, 2013
Harry Styles Finds the Right Words on Liam Payne Tribute Song
For the past seven weeks, Harry Styles has reserved two minutes at each of his Madison Square Garden shows to reflect on the last time he gathered this many people in this room. Four years have passed since he performed 15 record-breaking nights at the venue during his Love on Tour. Now, every night at the new Together, Together shows, which span 30 nights at MSG, he acknowledges that “a lot of life happened to me and landed on me in ways that maybe it hadn’t before.”
Styles doesn’t usually go into much more detail; he typically just describes those in-between years as “a great reminder for me of just how wonderful and beautiful, difficult and inspiring, and also how fragile a life can be.” He encourages the audience to look around at each other and celebrate the community they’ve built together. Then he dives into “Sign of the Times.” It happens every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. But when he delivered this speech on Friday, Oct. 16, there was a shift. It didn’t conclude in its usual way.
Instead, Styles turned his attention to the banner commemorating his 15 consecutive nights at the Garden in 2022. “It means a lot to be able to look up there at my name up there from the last tour,” he said. “There are so many people, friends and people that I’ve worked with, that I would’ve never been able to do this without.” Two years ago, he continued, he lost one of those pillars. Friday’s show fell on the same day as the second anniversary of the death of Liam Payne, a loss that time has not made it easier to acknowledge. “I’m sure a lot of you have been through something similar,” Styles said. “I hope you haven’t.”
A frequent assessment of Styles, both among his fans and those who’ve only encountered him at a distance, is that he often talks at length before getting to the point. He recognizes it himself on the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally song “Coming Up Roses,” where he sings about fumbling his words. But recently, comments about his long-winded way of speaking have started to feel like purposeful misreadings. There are clear and carefully considered thoughts present between his starts and stops. Anyone truly listening will pick up on those threads.
Styles cut himself off a few times during his speech on Friday. He tried to talk for a second about looking after each other, and repeated his point about the banner and the people who’ve supported him. He never mentions Payne by name, instead referring to him as a friend, which somehow became a point of criticism from some fans. The context is clear enough. Still, he seems to know it’s a gamble to expect understanding, especially when the conversation grows more complex and personal.
After about a minute and a half, Styles figured it best to show us what he means rather than tell us. “I’m gonna sing a song I wrote two years ago for my friend,” he said before premiering “Wise Enough.” The sullen tribute to Payne settled the room into a cool near-silence, punctured by quiet gasps and muffled crying. It was beautiful, devastating, and deeply exposing to watch Styles share his grief with 20,000 people in the best, and maybe only, way he knows how.
Earlier this year, Styles told Zane Lowe about the acute dread surrounding the expected performance of his mourning. “Full transparency, even the idea of talking about it, I struggle with that a little bit. There was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief, in a way,” he said. “I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware there’s maybe a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
Artists often describe the act of sharing new music as a change in ownership, something that is no longer their own once it has been handed over to an audience. “Wise Enough” feels protected from this. It would be confounding to see Styles ever record and release it in any official capacity. The song is openhearted in a way that exposes deep scars, anxious in a way that worries and fidgets about time and how it passes, and inconsolable in a way that doesn’t make the futile attempt to fight through anger, regret, or sadness.
“I can tell you what it’s like to bury friends on Wednesday nights/Gather in a garden around the fire,” Styles sings in a particularly cutting verse on the song, which concludes with an honest admission: “I’m not wise enough to call for a conversation/And then back it up, right?/Like you’re in the sky.”
Celebrity doesn’t obscure grief. It doesn’t come with a script for what to say when someone is sorry for your loss, or when they recollect their own version of the person you knew. No one really has the right words for these moments. Over the weekend, fans debated whether “Wise Enough” is actually titled “What Is Enough?” Styles introduced the record so briskly it was hard to decipher. The question of adequacy feels similarly impossible to answer.
Grief is so plain in how universal it is, but so complex in how and when it chooses to present itself. It can be policed only as much as it can be predicted, which is to say barely at all. That Styles let us into his now yearslong search for some semblance of understanding — knowing how his words have been picked apart before for far lesser things — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Styles never acknowledges that banner at MSG. It’s not for lack of gratitude — he cried when it was unveiled. But the point he has reiterated every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday since the end of August is that the achievement is something that must be shared because he couldn’t have done it alone. He talks about being on stage as if what happens in that room exists far beyond and outside of himself, something that endures even in his absence.
It’s true in a way. There’s muscle memory tied to the music. It’s in the spinning, dizzying way fans dance to “Satellite,” or the way they wildly kick their feet and make the building shake during “Kiwi,” a song he brought back to the set just for New York. It’s just like before, but still so different.
Friday night continued as usual after “Wise Enough.” Styles belted out “Sign of the Times” in the sobering way he always does, then “Aperture” let in a cathartic flood of strobing lights and pulsating beats. The emotional whiplash took physical form as fans consoled one another, holding out their hands to help up friends and strangers who crumbled to the floor at the conclusion of the tribute. Some were crushed by their memories of loving One Direction, and the care they hold in their hearts for Styles. Some were just as wrecked by their own personal losses.
A lot of life and loss can happen in four years, as Styles says each night. For some people who were at MSG on Friday, there are friends present in their memories from the last tour who are missing from the new ones they’re making. The lyric “You dance until you’re tired/No, you don’t, and now you never will/Will you?” surfaces their own devastation completely separate from what inspired Styles to sprawl those words on a page. How do you dance to “Aperture” — the beating heart of this show in its declaration that “we belong together” — after hearing something like that?
You take the hand of the friend or the stranger who pulled you from the ground and use it to lead each other back to the dance floor. When Styles talks about community and stresses the importance of caring for one another each night, he reminds everyone of the fragility of a moment, and urges them to cherish every second they get. To dance wildly and sing loudly and wrap their arms around each other. To hold tight to what’s here right now.
It’s all any of us have, so it has to be enough.