Meet Gabi Butler — Star Of Netflix's 'Cheer' Docuseries And Navarro College Cheerleader
People knew about her way before the show.
nullplus / shutterstock In the weeks since it was released, it seems like everyone's talking about Netflix's new docuseries, Cheer. It's already pretty clear that Gabi Butler, one of the cheerleaders on the Navarro College team, is quickly becoming a breakout star from the series, and she's just getting started.
So who is Gabi Butler? Here's everything fans need to know about this college student who is already on her way to being known as a legend.
1. Who is Gabi Butler? She's all about cheerleading, and she's helped lead Navarro to victory.
Butler's been cheering since childhood and it's a huge part of who she is. In fact, her Instagram bio boasts she's a two-time champ with Navarro College — not too shabby at all but after having seen the show, it's no surprise.
The vast majority of her Instagram posts consist of cheer-related photos, and when she's not cheering with her college, she's cheering with a competition team called Top Gun.
2. Cheer isn't her first show about the sport.
Actually, Butler has been sharing her skills on TV on multiple occasions — Cheer just so happens to be the latest. In 2012, Butler was in Secret Diary of an American Cheerleader, a web series where she appeared as herself for an episode, and in 2013, she starred in Cheerleaders, a show that followed her team at the time: the California All-Stars, after they won the 2012 World Champion title.
3. She's a bit of a social media star.
Anyone who decided to follow Butler after Cheer has probably noticed she already has quite a few followers. More than 870,000 people follow Butler on her Instagram, and that's just the beginning. She also has her own popular YouTube channel with almost 70,000 subscribers, and she recently started sharing vlogs again.
Her channel consists mainly of cheerleading footage, including workout videos and videos from her competitions. It's definitely good for any aspiring cheerleading stars to follow along with ... or for fans of Cheer In general.
4. Butler is known as a "cheerlebrity."
In 2013, an article came out exposing the lives of "Instagram cheerlebrities," and Butler happened to be one of them. She was in tenth grade at the time, and said that people didn't recognize her much when she was out in public, even though she had a lot of Instagram followers.
Now that Cheer has been released, though, there's a very good chance that might change. "Nobody's ever really been like 'Oh, you're Gabi Butler' ... I mainly have like, cheer followers. I'm sure there's a handful of school people [who follow me]," she admitted in the article.
5. She wants everyone to know the truth about her parents.
Although some might think of Butler's parents, Debbie and John, as overbearing after watching Cheer and seeing how involved they are in her life, that's not what Butler thinks at all, and in a recent interview, she attempted to clear the air.
“I feel a lot of people are saying my parents are overstepping the line," she said. "But there is a fine line between overstepping parents versus caring parents. Their intentions aren’t bad. They aren’t taking anything from me and have helped me more than anyone knows. I don’t need rescuing like people are saying, I think they don’t understand our family. My family is very different, we’re a very close, tight-knit family. My parents definitely care.”
6. In the end, Butler's just another college kid pursuing her passions — and having fun doing it.
It's clear Butler's life is all about cheerleading, and it's been like that for a long time — and as far as Butler has let on, it doesn't look like that's something she'd ever want to change.
Between her college cheerleading career and her competition team, this is one busy lady, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how she continues to make cheerleading a part of her future. And hopefully, that future will be documented in another season of Cheer.
Nicole Pomarico is an entertainment and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in Cosmo, Us Weekly, Refinery29, and more.