As she gears up to kick off her VIVA LA LISA residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Nov. 12, BLACKPINK‘s LISA sat down with Jake Shane on his Therapuss podcast on Thursday (Oct. 29) to talk first night jitters, working with Rosalía and how she went from never hearing of Labubu dolls to helping to launch a worldwide phenomenon and being fully overwhelmed by the adorably ugly collectible plushies.
Coming off of her 2026 MTV VMA win for best pop for “Dream” from her debut solo album, last year’s Alter Ego, LISA said the boost she got from snagging her own Moon Person and debuting her single “SaWaDiKa” at the show amped her up for the Sin City run. “Now I’m like, ‘OK, I’m looking forward to my residency,” she said, confessing that she was having butterflies about the residency before her VMA performance. “I was so nervous,” she said as she’s gearing up for intense rehearsals for the six-show run that kicks off next month.
“SaWaDiKa,” which debuted at No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100, appears on LISA’s recently released six-track Press Play EP. The singer said it made perfect sense as the first single from the EP because the phrase is the “first thing you say when you say ‘hi’ to people” in Thailand and it fits with the influence of her home country on the album.
The 29-year-old singer/actress said she spent six or seven months in Thailand reconnecting to her roots — enjoying the food, friends, family and weather — after living in Korea since she was 14. “It feels so good to be back home. Home there. Real home,” she said. “So, when we’re doing this EP, we’re just like, ‘OK. I have so many, inspiration from my hometown.’”
That included putting one of the nation’s ubiquitous three-wheeled tuk-tuk motorized rickshaw’s in the “SaWaDiKa” video and filling her mood board with “so many” Thai-inspired ideas. “And then we’re always talking ‘oh, what if we put a Thai sound and mix with a pop sound?,’” she added about the EP’s closing track, the Britney Spears-like burner “Sweat,” which features a mix of sultry beats and Thai guitar.
Speaking of Spears, LISA said she was obsessed with the “Gimme More” singer as a kid thanks to a cousin who was a huge Brit booster. She listed off “Toxic” as one of her favorite Britney songs, as well as the 2008 Circus album, which featured the title track single, as well as “Womanizer,” “If U Seek Amy” and “Radar.”
LISA revealed the origin of another obsession to Shane as well, one she stumbled on by accident, but which has since become a bit of a problem. The singer said at first she’d never heard of “this little cutie,” in reference to the plushies that she helped turn into a global phenomenon when she was spotted carrying one of the toothy Labubu dolls attached to a luxury handbag in 2024.
But, when she went to visit Thailand a few years ago with some friends and popped into a Pop Mart in search of the dolls she was told were completely sold out.
“I’m like, ‘is that so hard to get?’ She’s like, ‘yes girl.’ Like ‘where have you been?,’” she recalled the store employee telling her. Her friends showed her the Labubus they wanted and the K-pop superstar immediately honed in on the green matcha-colored one. “I was like, ‘I want the green matcha! … I ended up buying a whole box. I mean, getting a whole box.”
From there, she kept getting updates from a friend about the most limited-edition ones, which she took as a challenge. Now, however, “I have no space to walk in my house,” because she said there are Labubus everywhere she looks smiling at her.
Elsewhere in the interview, LISA reveals her favorite BLACKPINK song and what it was like working with Rosalía on the video for the Alter Ego song “New Woman.”
Watch clips from LISA’s Therapuss appearance here.
