Before Obsession made her famous, Inde Navarrette was streaming Call of Duty killstreaks in a Toad hat

Inde Navarrette — star of Obsession, the box office horror hit racking up records — was a thoroughly relatable Twitch streamer before any of that, grinding Call of Duty killstreaks in a Toad hat with the kind of completely unclenched energy most of us can only aspire to.

In an interview with GQ, Navarrette traced her gaming roots back to the family PS2, playing Shrek games in Big Head mode with her mom and brother Amani before branching into Call of Duty, Red Dead, Fallout, and campaign games on her own. Her Twitch era kicked off during COVID lockdowns, inspired by YouTube creators like Markiplier. She built her own PC and described streaming as a natural overlap between two things she already loved — working on set and playing games: "If I'm not working on a show and I love playing videogames by myself and I love playing with friends, then why not stream? It became a lot of fun."

Archived footage of her playing The Last of Us went semi-viral in gaming circles after PC Gamer's Tim Clark flagged it — highlights include her stopping to admire Joel immediately after he totals his car, and a desktop "Activate Windows" watermark that the top YouTube comment was quick to clock. Both details landed exactly as well as you'd expect with the internet.

It's a good reminder that plenty of people now doing big things in entertainment grew up on the same games as the rest of us — most of them just didn't have a Twitch channel to prove it.