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- TikToker Kate Mackz has garnered a massive following for her "Running Interviewer" series on TikTok, where she interviews celebs and strangers alike — while running throughout New York City
- She discovered her love of running after a life-changing injury forced her to quit competitive sports
- She's interviewed Jason Derulo, Jared Leto, Broadway stars, and others — including PEOPLE Editor-in-Chief Wendy Naugle
Kate Mackz was a competitive lacrosse player when tore her anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, when she was 14.
A year later, she got injured again and was told her lacrosse career was over.
But Mackz, who originally hails from Bergen County, New Jersey, didn't let her life-changing injury prevent her from finding a new hobby.
"I really had to pivot because once I tore my ACL for the second time, I was done playing competitive sports," Mackz, now 26, tells PEOPLE. "It was post-surgery that I discovered a love for running, because once you get surgery, you have to learn how to basically walk again."
Courtesy of Kate Mackz
She continued: "Once I started running again, I was like, 'I never want to not be able to do this.' So that's how I fell in love with running."
After moving to New York to study media and communications at Fordham University, she had the idea of combining her passions for a new type of TikTok account.
“Running has been a huge part of my life, but so has art and storytelling and journalism, so, you know, what you're really seeing with the running interview show is a beautiful combination of my passions and it really is a representation of me.”
Along with her fiancé Jeremy, Mackz started the "Running Interviewer" TikTok account in April of 2023.
“The show started out by us going up to strangers on the street in kind of hot running areas,” she said, like the West Side Highway, Central Park, or the East River. “I would just go up to people and see if they were up to go for a run with me in exchange for a pair of sneakers. I was working in advertising, making, like, no money and I was buying everybody the sneakers out of my own pocket."
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"I actually went into a little bit of credit card debt when I first started the show,” she tells PEOPLE.
Her quirky interviews with random strangers quickly took off: Mackz has more than 720,000 followers and 30 million likes on TikTok — and a month after its launch, it was so successful, she left her job in advertising to pursue it full-time.
Kate Mackz/TikTok
She's since run with stars like Jason Derulo, Bobby Flay, Shark Tank star and real estate icon Barbara Corocoran — and PEOPLE’s own Managing Editor, Wendy Naugle.
She even repelled down the Empire State Building with Jared Leto. “That was kind of a crazy experience” she said.
Mackz shares with PEOPLE which interviewees surprised her the most, who got the biggest reaction from the public — and the absolute best perk of her job.
Who has surprised you during a run?
“A few people have surprised me in different ways,” she tells PEOPLE. “I ran with Mary Kate Morrissey who plays Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway. I was super impressed by her because of her breath control. I learned that a lot of singers — especially Broadway performers — actually train for their roles by singing and running on treadmills. So their breath control is crazy good. That combination was really impressive because often times people are really breathy, which makes sense when they're running and talking. But her breath control was phenomenal.”
What’s it like to transition from a recreational runner to someone who runs for work?
“I would run in Central Park literally every single day. Those are very much, like, pinch yourself moments for me, when I'm doing what I have always done — like walking or running around the reservoir— and then all of a sudden I'm doing it with such an iconic person. That always feels really cool,” she said, referring to how she and real-estate icon Barbra Corcoran strolled around the reservoir for an interview.
“I was able to run up the West Side Highway with Jason Derulo and his bodyguards and tons of young girls kind of clocking us on the West Side Highway as we ran past them, which was, you know, just really eye-opening to see how famous somebody like Jason really is.”
Do people recognize you now and ask to go for runs?
“I'm definitely not Jason Derulo on the West Side Highway, he definitely could not go for a run on the West Side Highway by himself,” Mackz tells PEOPLE. “I can go for a run, put my headphones in and nobody will come up to me. When I have my equipment out and I'm interviewing someone else, then people kind of put two and two together. "
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'Running Interviewer' Kate Mackz Invites Strangers — and Celebs — to Run the Streets of New York - PEOPLE
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