ByteVibes

CLEMSON, S.C. — Trevor Lawrence sat down with Clemson’s social media team last month to open up a laptop and review what he thought would be game film.

It was a Monday morning, which usually means Lawrence will re-watch flashy plays his teammates made during a game the Saturday before, then react in real time so Clemson can capture it and post it to Twitter.

Advertisement

But not this time. The Tigers’ staffers had something funnier in mind.

The clip that appeared on his screen featured a teenage girl who has made a series of videos of herself while wearing Lawrence’s white Clemson jersey, posing to imitate some of his most memorable moments captured in photographs. With the long blonde hair and a headband, there is a striking resemblance.

Once the images were posted to social media platform TikTok, they quickly went viral.

She’s killing me 😂 pic.twitter.com/usVN5KpzXt

— Woody Whitehurst (@woodywhitehurst) November 2, 2019

“She does look like me,” Lawrence said, laughing.

“I’ve seen a lot of those. It’s crazy. That one girl actually does look a lot like me so it’s kind of crazy. But it’s funny.”

The girl behind the videos is a bubbly 16-year-old named Bella Martina, from Alpharetta, Ga., just outside of Atlanta. Her face has been all over the Internet, but the backstory of her strike-a-pose fame has largely been unknown.

Her hometown is about an hour from where Lawrence grew up in Cartersville, Ga., but the two have never met. She is not necessarily a big Clemson football fan, but she did attend a Clemson volleyball camp two years ago, where she bought a Tigers sweatshirt.

She also rooted for Clemson when the Tigers won the national title in January. Her parents went to Florida and Mississippi State, so cheering for Alabama was out of the question.

“I don’t know what I would say to him (if we ever met) because I don’t know how he would react,” Martina said. “I’d be like, ‘Hi! My name is Bella. You’ve seen my TikToks. We have the same face.’ I’d be so overwhelmed. I might just squeal.”

This all started in U.S. History class.

Martina, an AP student who thinks she might like to be a journalist one day, was sitting in class at Centennial High when one of her friends on the boys soccer team tapped her on the shoulder.

Advertisement

His younger brother had just seen a picture of Lawrence on Snapchat, another social media platform, and took a screenshot of it to send along.

“(My friend) taps me and he’s like, ‘My brother just said you look like Trevor Lawrence,’” Martina said.

“I was like, ‘What?! I look like Trevor?’ and they’re all going ‘Yeah, yeah,’ and so then we started showing everybody in the class. They were all like, ‘Oh my gosh. Yeah. You have to do a side-by-side.”’

As she continued to investigate if she actually resembled Clemson’s quarterback or if her friend just had a funny hot take, Martina took an informal poll. She posted to her Snapchat a split-screen image, with her picture on one side, and Lawrence’s on the other.

“People say I look like Trevor. Y’all agree?” she captioned her post.

The replies flooded in.

“Everybody was like, ‘Oh my gosh. It’s kind of scary the accuracy.’ Everyone was freaking out,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I do look like him.’ It was so funny.”

From there, Martina shared the news of her discovery with her mother, Lisa, who went all in and hatched a plan. Martina had already been brainstorming a Halloween costume to wear to school. Almost immediately, Lisa went online and bought Lawrence’s No. 16 Clemson jersey.

She also even went to the internet to find photos of Lawrence’s mother, Amanda, to see if the two of them also looked alike.

“We just look like normal moms,” she said. “But it’s so funny that our kids look so similar.”

Once Martina got the jersey, at the urging of her volleyball teammates, she threw it on with a headband that resembles the one Lawrence wears to push back his hair in games. She found the picture of Lawrence she wanted to recreate, fixed her hair accordingly, posed identically and posted it with a simple caption: “they call me qb.” GoldLink’s “Crew” song played with it.

Advertisement

Not long after, her 12-year-old brother informed her she had become famous.

“Bella, you’re blowing up,” her brother, Nick, told her at the time.

“I was like, ‘This. Is. Insane,’” she said.

The video currently has more than 238,000 likes after four weeks. She currently has more than 40,000 followers on the app. 

But that wasn’t the end of it.

When Clemson staffers saw her video, the Tigers’ own TikTok account “dueted” with her, meaning they posted a video to their own page of Lawrence watching her in the original clip.

“She does look like me.”

For more, follow us @ClemsonFB on @tiktok_us #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/mKCGXu0gWF

— Clemson Football (@ClemsonFB) October 22, 2019

YOU. GUYS. pic.twitter.com/yeLnrArgGi

— Jim Weber (@JimMWeber) November 5, 2019

Martina was in physics class with her phone on silent when she learned that Lawrence had seen her video, which prompted a quiet-but-ecstatic freak out.

“I see his face and I was (gasping) ‘Oh. My. Gosh.’ I couldn’t make any noise because (my teacher) was teaching so my eyes just got really wide and I literally gasped in the middle of physics. I show my friend next to me, I’m like, ‘he dueted it’ whispering and pointing to the phone,” Martina said. “The news quietly spread around the class in the span of like, two seconds.”

It is Martina’s second and most recent Lawrence video that has gone the most viral, gaining more than 345,000 likes. It’s a five-clip piece she captioned “ok i promise i’m done stealing this man’s identity” that highlights her going through a progression of Lawrence pictures and poses.

“I love to make people laugh and have a good time. Love to make fun of myself,” she said, adding that it makes her happy she can spread joy on social media. “The feedback has actually been really, really good. There’s been little to none negative comments. You would think there would be more because of how social media is these days, but everyone has been actually very positive.”

There’s an unexpected twist to this story, too. Back in January, Lisa actually had a conversation with her daughter about trying to be like Trevor Lawrence.

Advertisement

After Clemson dismantled Alabama 44-16 in the championship, Lisa made Bella keep watching the broadcast through the trophy presentation so that her daughter could see Lawrence’s postgame interview.

Lisa admired how the then-freshman from only a few towns over handled himself. Because Martina is an athlete — she plays both court and beach volleyball as a front-row threat — Lisa hoped her daughter would get something out of it.

“It’s just nice to see someone who had a lot of humility. He was very appreciative of not only his team but his coach,” Lisa said. “It was just nice to see that obviously he comes from a very good upbringing with parents where he respects the game, respects the people that support him and coach him, and obviously his parents.”

As a junior in high school, Martina is thinking about where she’d like to go to college and plans to schedule a tour of Clemson. She loves to travel and has a hunch that she’d like to go out of state.

In the meantime, attending a Clemson game and meeting Lawrence one day so Lisa can get a side-by-side photo is on her bucket list.

Martina is enjoying her brush with fame. She jokes that every time ESPN or any mega news outlet slides into her Instagram direct messages and asks her for permission to share her videos, she technically has to direct them to Lisa.

“I”m under 18,” she said she responds. “So … contact my mom.”

(Photo: Mike Comer / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kGxscmpga3xzfJByZmppX2WEcK%2FLnqSsp55is7C705uYpaRdqb%2Bmws6rZKWZp6eyr6%2FEZqCmqKKawLS1zqeqZqWVmsFus8iro2afn6OybsLIq5ilZw%3D%3D