Milana Vayntrub: More Than Lily From AT&T – An Actress With a Voice

Again and again, we hear women in the spotlight speak out against the ridicule and negative remarks directed at their bodies.

Too fat, too skinny, too much cellulite, too many wrinkles… just a few of the comments internet trolls make on social media and online threads. This is not new; it’s a sad phenomenon that has targeted women and celebrities for decades. Fortunately, fewer people will stay quiet and stand up for themselves.

Milana Aleksandrovna Vayntrub, the talented actress who starred in Ghostbusters, Californication, and as AT&T spokeswoman Lily Adams in television commercials, was recently the target of such ridicule and took a stand to put a stop to it.

Milana Vayntrub: Early Life and Career Beginnings

The actress was born in Uzbekistan on March 8, 1987. At the age of two, she moved to the United States with her Jewish parents to escape religious persecution and settled in California.

Milana Vayntrub, pictured at the 2014 Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards, moved to the US with her Jewish parents to escape religious persecution (Credit: WENN / Bridow)

She started her career at the age of five, taking on minor roles in Barbie commercials. These minor roles helped pay the family’s bills but weren’t life-altering. She landed her first big break in ER at eight years old and later appeared in other shows like Days of Our Lives and Lizzie McGuire.

Vayntrub dropped out of Beverly Hills High School to advance her education faster. She took and passed the California High School Proficiency Examination and went on to the University of California in San Diego. Here, she earned a degree in communication.

During this time, she took a break from acting, considering moving into a field that was a little more “realistic.” However, her college days were filled with “boredom and sadness,” which drove her to start taking theater classes again.

Rising to Fame: Milana’s YouTube Success and AT&T Role

It wasn’t until she started her YouTube channel, which quickly gained millions of views, that she began to see success. The YouTube comedy show featured her and Stevie Nelson. The two would write and act out funny shorts displaying her superior comedic abilities.

This helped Milana land her now-infamous role as Lily Adams in AT&T commercials. The long-running ad campaign features Milana as an AT&T saleswoman named Lily, who is friendly and a bit quirky at times.

The commercials first aired in 2013 and ran until 2016. They returned with refreshed pandemic-related material in 2020.

The commercials were so popular that they kept shooting new ones, and there are now more than 40 ads with Vayntrub. The most recent commercial features Lily as a “relic expert,” swapping a 2015 smartphone for a brand new Samsung Galaxy S23.

Milana Vayntrub is known for playing AT&T salesperson Lily James in AT&T commercials (Credit: YouTube / AT&T)

Diverse Acting Ventures: From Californication to Marvel Comics

In 2014, she appeared in one episode of Californication alongside David Duchovny, and between 2016 and 2017, she played Sloane Sandburg in the award-winning television series This is Us.

She also guest-starred as a vampire on Key and Peele between 2012 and 2015.

Milana Vayntrub as Sloane Sandburg and Justin Hartley as Kevin Pearson in the American family drama television series This Is Us (Credit: NBC)

In July 2017, she was cast in the lead role as Marvel Comics superheroine Squirrel Girl in New Warriors.

This was a television series meant for Freeform, though they ended up passing on the show and could not secure another network, ultimately canceling it. Although only featured in the pilot, she voiced Squirrel Girl in the Marvel Rising franchise.

Milana Vayntrub dresses as AT&T salesperson Lily James at the Wondercon 2019 Marvel Rising photocall on March 30, 2019 (Credit: Tony Forte / WENN)

In addition to the big screen, Milana has a prominent web career. She has appeared in several CollegeHumor originals, Daddy Knows Best, and Wrestling isn’t Wrestling, in addition to her own series, Let’s Talk About Something Interesting, on her channel LivePrudeGirls, which has featured plenty of guests, including Matt Damon and BJ Novak.

Although the channel still exists, the last video was published in 2013. Sadly, these videos are now getting the attention of the wrong people and for all the wrong reasons.

Confronting Online Harassment: Milana’s Personal Struggle

Milana has always kept a pretty low profile but started receiving unwanted attention and remarks after returning to her role as Lily Adams in the AT&T commercials in 2020.

Frequently asked for nude photos and harassed with sexist comments and memes reinforcing gender stereotypes, on March 20, 2021, she addressed the unwanted sexual attention on Twitter.

Milana Vayntrub hits back at bashers for unwanted remarks about her body following the release of her AT&T commercial

Despite saying she didn’t want to receive comments about her body, the tweet received over 2000 replies, with many comments on her hairstyle and calling her “beautiful,” “cute,” and “sexy.”

This isn’t the first time she has dealt with online harassment. A year earlier, revealing college photos were published online without her consent. They were taken at a pool party over a decade ago, and she went on her Instagram Live to say how she didn’t consent to this.

“Maybe it just has to do with being a person on the internet, or maybe it’s specific to being a woman on the internet,” Vayntrub said.

“But all of these comments — it hurts my feelings. I’m hurting and it’s bringing up, like, a lot of feelings of sexual assault. I am just like, you know, walking my dog and getting messages from people who have distorted my pictures to get likes on their accounts.”

Milana added, “I am not consenting to any of this. I do not want any of this.”

In her 2021 AT&T ad campaign promoting the NCAA Tournament, she is seated behind a desk, only revealing the upper half of her body.

This differs from previous ads where she stood in front of the camera. After this move, some speculated that this was all because she was hiding a secret pregnancy or weight gain.

Milana Vayntrub is best known for playing perky saleswoman Lily Adams in a series of AT&T television commercials (Credit: FayesVision / WENN)

AT&T has stood by Milana through this ordeal. The Director of Corporate Communications at AT&T released the following statement:

“We will not tolerate the inappropriate comments and harassment of Milana Vayntrub, the talented actor and director who portrays Lily in our ads. Last summer, we disabled or deleted these comments on our social sites. We continue to fight to support her and our values, which appreciate and respect all women”.

AT&T also shared a picture of Milana on their Instagram page, which was soon flooded with sexual harassment and lude remarks.

The company eventually turned the comments off. In the past years, several objectifying memes and edited personal photos have been circulating the internet. It’s been disturbing and unsettling for Milana and anyone who witnesses it.

There are recent comments on her old YouTube channel sexually harassing Milana on videos nearly a decade old. Those engaging in the harassment often comment “milk” or leave milk emojis, a remark directed at her breasts.

Beyond Advertising: Milana Vayntrub as an Activist and Creator

Although most recognize Milana as the AT&T spokeswoman, she is also an activist. In January 2016, she visited Greece and met with refugee families who had fled the Syrian Civil War.

Upon her return to the US, she co-founded a website and social media movement called #Can’tDoNothing to direct attention to the European migrant crisis.

She has said that her own family’s history has helped fuel her initiatives. Milana was just two years old when her Jewish parents were forced to flee Uzbekistan. In 2018, she sat down during Social Media Week LA for a panel discussion on using social media platforms for advocacy.

At this panel, she was asked about trolls, and after acknowledging how they can be exhausting, she said she tries to approach it with the understanding that people operate from different values.

Her outlook seemed more understanding in 2018 as she had not yet experienced the disgusting displays of harassment that would follow.

Milana Vayntrub, the actress who appears as “Lily” in AT&T commercials, broke down in tears on an Instagram Live video after being bombarded by comments about her body, specifically the size of her breasts (Credit: Faye’s Vision / Cover Images)

When Milana was asked about being an activist, she said, “One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot more is how we talk about ourselves as progressives or people fighting tolerance. A lot of people on the Left think that we’re ‘fighting the good fight.’ But we can’t be the good guys and fight dirty. You have to check yourself. If we’re fighting for inclusion for people of color, the LGBTQ community, and refugees, just to name a few, you have to actually include them in your life and put yourself in places rather than just tweet. We need to make sure that our in-real-life values line up with our social ones and vice versa”.

Milana has a strong social media presence and shares posts on various social and political issues. She has just under 1 million followers on Instagram and mostly keeps comments on, although they are likely filtered.

On TikTok, she currently has 730,000 followers – an awe-inspiring feat considering she has only posted a few videos, including a behind-the-scenes look at filming an AT&T commercial.

Her most recent TikToks don’t show her body either. Although older TikToks are still up, the recent videos are just of her face speaking into the camera.

These days, Milana is not only starring in AT&T commercials but also directing them. In 2016, she directed her first commercial for Cracker Barrel’s Macaroni & Cheese through the company that produces the Lily ad, Hungry Man.

“Been getting a lot of ‘Why are they placing her body like that in those ads?’ Well, I direct the ads. I place myself like that,” she tweeted in 2021 in response to her new ads that don’t highlight her breasts. “And it’s because of the thousands of unwelcome comments I receive about my body. You’ve lost the privilege of looking at it until I feel safe again.”

On a more personal note – Vayntrub is also a mother of one and a wife to an unknown husband. Her Instagram features a post that mentions she gave birth to a baby boy around May 2021.

“I was honestly a little judgmental of moms before I had a kid, just because I was so ignorant,” she told Rebecca Lee in an episode of her podcast, How The F*** Did You Bounce Back?

“If they’d talked about how hard it was, I would judge them for being, like, I dunno all sorts of things, like, yeah well you sound a little selfish or you sound like you’re probably doing this wrong.”

“If, pre-baby, I had heard myself, I would judge myself,” the Marvel Rising star shared. “There was just so many things that I wasn’t prepared for. I was unprepared for the time commitment.” “I’m so in love with him and I think he’s so funny and cute,” she added.

“The complicated thing is that I both want to spend all of every minute with him, and I also am very grateful when I have time away, so it’s complicated.”

“We’re just better parents when our couple needs are being met, when our individual needs are being met,” she said.

“I grew up with my parents not getting along and that was really hard, duh, like if anyone sees their pillars of safety fighting each other it probably destabilizes your sense of security, your sense of self your sense of home.”

In July 2022, she wrote on Instagram, “I know my son one day won’t want to fall asleep cuddling me. The last time could be today. Although sometimes I wish I could just put him to bed and get on with the list of things I have to do, sitting here with him, I treat this moment like I’ve chosen to time travel to it.”

Milana Vayntrub: Career Achievements and Net Worth

With a long-standing career, Milana Vayntrub has done quite well for herself. Because of her commercials, acting, writing, and directing roles, her estimated net worth is around $3 million.

From her social media, it looks as if she also takes on advertisement gigs and promotes posts for different companies.

In 2022, she starred as Eliza in Out of Office, a comedy television film. It aired on Comedy Central on September 5, 2022.

Milana Vayntrub has an estimated net worth of $3 million (Credit: WENN / FayesVision)

Although it doesn’t appear as though sexual harassment has stopped completely, it does seem to have died down a bit. Regrettably, she felt she had to take the action she did by hiding her body in AT&T ads.

Milana is supported by a large community of fans who want the best for her physical and mental well-being and will continue supporting her no matter what.