Drew Harding set out to find Marissa Meizz after he overheard her friends talking bad about her. Now he and Marissa are pals, and they are using their newfound TikTok fame to help others feel a little less lonely.
Drew Harding and Marissa Meizz are new besties, and the story of how that came to be is quite extraordinary. Drew was on his lunch break walking around a New York City park when he overheard two women talking about rescheduling a birthday party to a time when their “friend” Marissa couldn’t attend.
“I know I’m about to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong,” Drew said in his now-viral plea. “I need to tell you that the weekend you’re away is not the only time they can do their birthday party. They are choosing to do it the weekend you’re away. TikTok, help me find Marissa.” The millions of people on the Internet who got invested in his story not only heard his call but delivered.
Now that he and Marissa are pals, they are using their newfound TikTok fame to help others feel a little less lonely. They chatted with Inside Edition Digital’s Stephanie Officer to give the scoop.
“So essentially, as any other New York City employee, I took my government-sanctioned lunch break,” Drew says while telling the story. “And I was walking around, and I had my headphones in.” And when the music stopped, his saga began as he passed by the two women.
“I was like, ‘that's funny.’ I'm going to post it, “ Drew adds. “And then instantly boom.”
Marissa Meizz explains that she knew she the person Drew was looking for when people began contacting her. “So I was sitting at dinner with my friends, and my phone just started going off the rails.”
She then watched the video and asked Drew to reach out to her.
“And then once we got in contact, he said, ‘What area do your friends go?’ And it was the exact area that my friends go to lunch and stuff and brunch. And he clarified, it was Memorial Day weekend. And I'm actually out of town that weekend for something. And it's my friend's birthday. So I was like, yikes. He gave me a description, and I was like, oh, no.”
Marissa says that she and Drew met the next day, but he felt bad. “I mean, we talked about it for a little bit, and he felt really bad. Like he was like, ‘I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to put you on blast almost like this.’ Drew adds that he was mortified.
But it all worked out because now Marissa and Drew are close friends.
And as for her old friend group, Marissa has reached out to one of the girls about what they said. “She basically said like, ‘yeah, they were talking bad about you, and I didn't back you up.’ And she didn't say sorry. She said basically like, I didn't say anything else. That's my bad kind of thing. You know?”
She adds, “And that was the one thing that none of the people in the group have reached out to me about it. No one's even said anything.”
Marissa is new to New York City. She came from California in 2020, and this group of five women she worked with became her first friends in the city.
And although Drew exposed the relationship, it all worked itself out. “So I felt really bad,” he said. “But I think in the end, right, there's a total silver lining here. I think it makes me happier that Marissa has kind of made peace with it and has engaged such a good community. And now we're friends, of course.”
The pals have now planned a meet-up in the park. People are coming from all over in the hopes of finding new friends.
Marissa said, “And so I kind of talked with Drew, and I was like, hey, does this date work for you? XYZ? And so, yeah, June 5th, 2:00 PM in Central Park, Cedar Hill, we're doing a basically whoever wants to show up, shows up, and I've gotten DMs with people's flight info that they're flying in.”
Now, with her newfound TikTok fame, Marissa has created the Instagram page, “No More Lonely Friends.” Not only does she hope to connect those who have felt more like an island during this pandemic, but to highlight the importance of taking care of your mental health.
“I want it to be about us kind of creating like a whole safe space for people to make friends and just kind of like branch out of their comfort zone or take something bad and make it great,” she said.
And as for Drew and Marissa, the friendship is solid. “Drew, imma hype you up for the rest of your life,” Marissa lastly said. And his reply: “And I you Marissa. I you.”
