Cosplayer Feature: Taya Miller

Taya Miller, Iowa native and Waukee High School alumni, is a 22-year-old cosplayer based in California, who has exploded in popularity in recent years by posting cosplays of various characters from Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and other staples in pop culture.

She has amassed 4.5 million TikTok followers and has about 658,000 followers on Instagram. Miller attended Iowa State University before moving cross-country to attend the University of Central Florida. Miller began cosplaying in 2019 when her roommate at the university prompted her to attend MegaCon. She dressed up as Spider-Man, her favorite superhero, for the convention. “That convention felt like heaven on earth for me,” Miller explained. “I walked in the doors and I was like, ‘This is home’.” After the convention, she created a TikTok account and began to post various different cosplays. “I was pretty set on the whole college thing and…in October of 2020, I dropped out of school, because I got my first ‘paycheck’,” Miller shared. “I realized [that] you can monetize off of social media. It’s such an up-and-coming career path and it’s so valid; I make a living off of it. I make a living off of what I love to do. That’s wild.” 

“That convention felt like heaven on earth for me,” Miller explained. “I walked in the doors and I was like, ‘This is home’.”

Taya Miller

There are many ins and outs of social media monetization. In Miller’s case, she receives a TikTok and Instagram Creator Fund, posts YouTube vlogs and sells Etsy prints of her many cosplays. She says the most money, however, comes from brand deals. One of her biggest brand deals was with the brand LG, who emailed her asking if they could send her a TV to promote The Book of Boba Fett, a spin-off of The Mandalorian on Disney+. “They sent me a TV and they paid me on top of that…it’s money that I have never seen and never thought that I would see in my life.” To help her accept said brand deals, she has a manager she’s dubbed her “Hollywood Dad”; he helps her develop not only her brand on social media but her own self. 

With a large percent of her job being online, Miller tries to be as authentic and ‘real’ with people on social media as she can. “I think something people say so frequently is that social media is a highlight reel of their life, and I never want my social media to be like that for someone; granted, I post going to the No Way Home premiere and I post going to screenings and events…but at the end of the day, I’m also a human being,” Miller stated. “…I have struggles…and I don’t want somebody to get the wrong impression that I don’t.” Miller used to post thrice daily on social media, which generated the most growth on her account; yet, she began to struggle with creative burnout. “Work ethic is good, but I also think placing boundaries for yourself on how hard you do work is necessary,” Miller admitted. Self-employment for Miller has been non-stop, but she has created a schedule where she can step away from the screen and have downtime outside of her Internet-heavy job. 

Outside of the screen, cosplaying has presented opportunities to Miller in the form of premieres. She has recently moved to California. She loved Orlando when she lived there–“I’m actually taking a spontaneous trip there tomorrow!”–but she strove for more opportunities in her career. She explained that right when she moved to California, people contacted her to attend premieres. Traditionally, influencers like Taya have a management company with connections to various studios, such as Marvel or Sony, who will then recommend their clients to these studios. With Miller, studios reach out to her individually to invite her to film and television premieres. Specifically, Miller attended the Spider-Man: No Way Home premiere in Los Angeles on December 13th, 2021. This movie had fans waiting eagerly leading up to its release; Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently the eighth highest-grossing film of all time. The content creators were able to walk the carpet before anyone else did, which made this premiere different from others Miller had attended in the past.

“[Before this interview], I was thinking about what I would tell myself back in high school, so if I were to, I would tell myself to stop seeking validation from other people and instead do what makes me happy and brings me joy.”

Taya Miller

“I think my favorite part, though, was post-premiere. All the creators…we love each other, we support each other, we’re friends. We all went to a hotel suite that we got for the night just to kind of soak in it,” Miller gushed. “I just remember sitting on the bathroom floor with Supes and Straw Hat Goofy (Matt and Juju) and just talking about it. That was one of my favorite nights I think ever just because everyone was on like, a high. Just having that experience together was amazing.” She explained that in 2019, cosplay TikTok was not intermixed with the rest of the platform, but content creators had special group chats to interact in. “We had a Spider-Man group chat and then a separate Star Wars group chat, and so I met two of my best friends [through these groupchats],” Miller stated. Subsequently, Miller spent her second-ever convention with these two friends, saying conventions ‘hit different’ with the people she loves to be around.  Miller has cosplayed a variety of different characters, but her favorite character to cosplay is Wonder Woman. She says this is purely because nothing beats a little girl coming up to her at a convention and being excited to see Wonder Woman in real life. Miller has also constructed some of her own costumes to cosplay in. Her favorite costume she ever made herself was Himiko Toga from the anime My Hero Academia, which she completed in one night. It is tough for Miller to create costumes from scratch, so she has started to order pieces she needs for cosplays and puts them together in the ways that she needs. Miller’s advice to anyone who wants to start cosplaying is to start with the character that you love, not the character you think you look like or you think will do the best online. “[Before this interview], I was thinking about what I would tell myself back in high school, so if I were to, I would tell myself to stop seeking validation from other people and instead do what makes me happy and brings me joy,” Miller concluded.