ZaiLetsPlay

Zaira "Zai" (born: ), better known online as ZaiLetsPlay, is an American gaming YouTuber known for her Roblox roleplay videos. She formerly played Minecraft and The Sims.
==Content==
Zaira was born in California and worked as a preschool teacher while starting YouTube. In 2018, she married her fiancée Ricky, better known online as Biggs87x. In 2019, she moved to London, England to live with Ricky. On December 11, 2020, her child, Jaden was born.
Zaira and Ricky own a vlog channel called Ricky And Zai. She owns a second Roblox gameplay channel called Ellie.
==History==
===Early life===
Zaira was born in 1991 to her mother and father in East Los Angeles. She grew up with her mom, Teresa, and sister, Anahí. She has said that as a child she was a bit of a tomboy, and she would even roll around in the mud sometimes. She also enjoyed gaming which is why she started her YT channel. She also grew up with Mexican culture and she can fluently speak Spanish, making her bilingual. She has said that in college she got a degree in child development and she went to California State University in Long Beach. She has also said that she used to work at a daycare, and was a preschool teacher during her early years of being a YouTuber.
===Beginning of her Career===
On June 14, 2012, she created her YouTube account ZaiLetsPlay, and posted her first video on July 14, 2012, titled "Slender - Ep 1 - Peed My Pants!", She would continue her Slender series for 15 episodes, and also play other horror games such as "The Walking Dead", and her channel steadily gained a fanbase, as people were entertained by her reactions to these horror games. And she would usually consistently get 10k views.
===Early Fame and Ricky===
Earlier, she played Minecraft with her Family. Around 2013, Zai stopped playing horror games and switched to doing strictly Minecraft videos, and around this time began to date Ricky, who had his own Minecraft channel called "Biggs87x", and they would do collaborations on each other's channels. 
In around 2014, Zai started a series called "Minecraft BF vs GF" that became fairly popular, and caused her to gain a lot more fans. She then started another Minecraft series "Minecraft Comes Alive!", that really blew up and got her the most amount of views she had ever gotten, that had 200,000 + views on a lot of the episodes, and was her most popular series yet. 
By late 2014, she started playing some other games along with Minecraft like "The Walking Dead - Season 2", and "The Sims 3", which was fairly popular getting usually about 30,000 views. Her "Minecraft Comes Alive" series eventually began to dip in views and usually got between 38k - 50k views. However Zai was gaining more and more subscribers, and was starting to become a somewhat well-known Minecraft YouTuber. By 2015, her "The Sims" series became more popular, and her "The Sims 4" gameplay usually maintained about 40k +views and occasionally 100k. And she was still also posting a ton of Minecraft videos with over 100 "Minecraft Comes Alive" episodes. 
Mid 2015, she started a new Minecraft series, "Minecraft Comes Alive 2", which was very successful, and it's first video has over 550k views, and was her most popular video at the time. And for a while consistently got over 100k views before just like her first "Minecraft Comes Alive" series, each episode began to dip in views. None the less, it was still her most popular series and usually got over 50,000 views. Eventually though, the series dipped to about 38k - 50k views just like the first one did. However, after episode 30, the series became popular once again and started getting 77,000 to 120,000 views. She also started a "Minecraft With Love" series with Ricky that usually got 50,000 views. Her "The Sims" series was also doing fairly well usually getting 30,000 views. Her "Minecraft Comes Alive 2" series also once again began to dip in views. She then started "Minecraft Comes Alive 3" series, which initially got 100,000 views, but then also declined like it did the first 2 times. And besides her Sims series and "Minecraft Comes Alive 3" series, most of her vids didn't do that well and struggled to get over 10,000 views. Throughout the rest of 2015, the only videos even getting above 10,000 views were her "Minecraft Comes Alive 3" videos, and "The Sims 4". She also started one more series that did fairly well called "STRANDED RAFT - Minecraft: Adventure Role-play. She also started to do some videos on her main channel besides gaming such as "Shout-out Tuesdays", unboxings, etc.. 
=== Ricky and Zai ===
Throughout 2016, on her main channel her videos still weren't too successful, besides Minecraft and The Sims, she also played a few other games that didn't do very well. She and Ricky also started their own couples vlog channel, called "Ricky and Zai", that was arguably more successful than their own main channels. This gave us a more in-depth experience of their personal lives. And they would occasionally play games like Akinator, but they would mostly do vlogs, and they started a "DAILY VLOGS" series. It's through this channel where we also found out about Zai getting engaged, after Ricky proposed to her. They would get married in 2018.
===Playing Roblox===
In 2016, Zai played Roblox for the first time, playing the "Escape McDonalds Obby", and the vid got a lot of views. She played multiple other games on Roblox and her channel started to become more and more popular. She stopped playing much Minecraft and Also started playing more of "The Sims 4" and those videos started becoming more popular as well. By 2017, she started to become a pretty popular YouTuber, and she started a series of playing "Welcome to Bloxburg", which was very popular, and she got the most views she had ever gotten with 1.8 million views on the first one, and 1 million on the third episode, and they were consistently getting over 500,000 views, and it was the most popular series she had ever done, and her channel blew up. Eventually she started doing a lot of Bloxburg live streams, and started the "My Stalker" series when someone was apparently stalking her on Roblox. She also had some of her most popular vids ever on her channel playing different Roblox games. Including her most viewed video "I Made The Easter Bunny Angry! - Escape the Evil Easter Bunny in Roblox", which currently has 14 million views. She also made a lot of phone app game videos that were very popular at one point, and a lot of the videos got over 2 million views. Eventually though they stopped being very popular.
===Dawn of Baby Keisha===
On July 10, 2017, Zai started her first ever Roblox role-play series, called "My Annoying Little Sister", following the life of teenage Zai having to take care of her sweet, but annoying, little sister Keisha. This series put Zai on the map, and was very successful usually getting 500,000 views. And by its 4th episode got 1.5 million. It got very popular, and Zai once again got the most views she had ever gotten on the episode "OUR MOM IS BACK HOME & NOW MY ANNOYING LTTLE SISTER HATES ME!", which is the iconic episode where we find out that Keisha isn't Zai's biological sister, and the episode got 2 million views. The series got very popular and for a while was consistently getting a million views. Eventually the series settled down a bit and consistently got about 150,000 views, and occasionally went up a lot. After the insane popularity of the "My Annoying Little Sister" series, Zai started another series to go along with it, called "My Crazy Best Friend" (now named "My Best Friend"), following the life of 2 teenage girls, Zai and her "boy-crazy" best friend Jess, as they adventure through high school. This series also did very well, and the first episode got a million views, and the second got 900,000. While not quite as popular as "My Annoying Little Sister", the series still did very well, and usually got 500,000 views, and every now and then more, and even a million. She also started another popular series around the same time she started the "My Best Friend Series" simply titled "Royale High School", following the life of "Emma", played by Zai, and her journey throughout Royale High School with bullies such as Amanda, and then later Beth. The series did very well just like the first 2 with it's first episode having 1.7 million views. And it's fifth titled "MY BULLY GOT KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL!", garnering 1.5 million views. The series did very well, and overtime became Zai's most popular series, with one of it's episodes getting 5 million views in the episode "I BOUGHT THE PRETTIEST PROM DRESS TO MAKE MY BULLY JEALOUS!".
===Roleplays and Roblox===
Throughout 2018, all of her role-plays did very well, but the Royale High School series really broke out, with most of the episodes getting over 800,000 views, and 19 of the episodes throughout 2018 getting 1 million views, and it became by far her most popular role-play yet and arguably the series she was most known for. The "My Best Friend" series, and the "My Annoying Little Sister" series were still going strong as well. The channel became so popular that Zai even released her own merchandise, with ZaiLetsPlay T-shirts, a ZaiLetsPlay pillow, and even a Baby Keisha plush toy. And she would only become more popular, with another series coming out becoming arguably just as popular as the "Royale High School" series was at it's peak, called "My Cute Family". It all started when Zai and Ricky were playing "Adopt Me!" on the Biggs YT channel and he had to become a kid so Zai would adopt him in the game, so the "Baby Biggs" character was born. Zai made a few other videos with Baby Biggs in them in 2017, and in 2018, the "My Cute Family" series was created with Zai as the mother of 2 children, Baby Biggs, and Ellie. The series was very very popular, with the first 5 episodes getting a million views, the first one getting 4 million. The series would maintain it's popularity, and would get a million views every now and then. Zai had now established 4 very popular role-play that were all pretty successful. Zai also started a "The Sims 4" series called "My Life", and also played multiple app games. And at this point Zai had over 1.5 million subscribers.
===Moving Countries===
Zai now having established a large fanbase and 4 different role-plays, Zai continued being one of the most popular Roblox youtubers, and began to do other role-plays such as the "My Senpai" series in Yandere High School, and little miniseries in Royale High School such as the twin sisters. "My Cute Family" became her most popular series and her channel was in a very good spot. She also did certain special vids in Adopt Me! and Royale High, and even did a "My Annoying Little Sister" and "My Cute Family" crossover, where Baby Biggs tried to date Keisha. She also moved to London in 2019 to live with her husband Ricky. By the end of 2019 she ended up getting 2 million subscribers. She even had her own YT group called "The Sunflower Squad". She eventually stopped making "Royale High" vids, and shrunk down to only doing 3 role-plays, and on the other days of the week she would play games with Ricky on her channel, similar to what they do on the "Biggs" channel, along with weekly live streams on both her and Ricky's channel.
===Pregnancy===
On June 20, 2020, Zai announced on her main channel that she was pregnant in real life, and in her video "The OFFICIAL GENDER REVEAL! *BOY or GIRL?*", she announced her baby was a boy. She made videos following her pregnancy on the "Ricky and Zai" channel, and even incorporated it into the "My Cute Family", and "My Annoying Little Sister" series on the "ZaiLetsPlay" channel, where she tells Baby Biggs and Ellie how she's having a kid in real life, and how they're gonna be it's siblings, and told Keisha as well. She was still gaining lots of subscribers and was at 2.5 million, and her vids consistently got over 100,000 views. Zai and her husband Ricky would make day Roblox videos where they would play Roblox games on Ricky's channel, and do role-plays on Zai's channel, with characters that Ricky would play as. Every now and then Zai would miss a video due to the baby, but for the most part her channel was still going strong, and Ricky's channel was becoming more and more popular as well, with 600,000 subscribers. On November 30, 2020, for the first time since she started her YT career, Zai announced that she would be taking a break from YouTube since her baby was due any time during the month of December. While she wasn't taking a complete break from uploading, for the time being, Zai decided that she wasn't going to be able to continue doing daily uploads and instead uploaded 3 times a week. On December 11, 2020, Zai's long-awaited child was offcially born.
=== Mother and YouTuber ===
After the baby was born Zai took a 2 week long break from posting, which wasn't initially the plan, but Zai needed some time before she started regularly posting videos again. Zai posted on her channel for the first time after the baby was born on Christmas Day in an emotional update video where Zai addressed what had been going on and what would happen from here in "MEETING OUR BABY! | My Birth Story". From there, Zai posted about once a week on her channel although they weren't role-play videos they were mostly baby-related content such as revealing her son's name which was Jaden, and making her son a Roblox account, and going over her morning routine, and building her baby's room on Roblox. However, on her husband's channel they posted pretty frequently doing the same as usual with a good amount of them being pre-recorded. This went on throughout the month of January. Zai continued to mostly make baby update videos throughout February (and a few random Roblox videos) on both her main channel and on the Ricky and Zai channel. By March Zai began to go back to normal so to speak, and began posting role-play videos again for My Best Friend, My Annoying Little Sister, My Cute Family, and even started a new role-play series of adopting a baby in Brookhaven, a new popular Roblox game. Eventually Zai would go back into the groove of full-time making role-play videos on her main channel with some stuff with baby Jaden, while on the Ricky and Zai channel about every week they would make vlogs about Jaden, and by this point her channel amassed over 2 and a half million subscribers. 
== Current Life from 12-22 ==
After a few months, Zai's youtube uploading schedule was up and down. When she wouldn't post for a period of time, she let people know she could be watched with her husband, Ricky on his channel, Biggs. She uploads more 'My Cute Family' videos and will occasionally do Episodes. Her baby is 1 year and 2 months old as of February 2022. She made a short-lived vlogmas series with her new family on the Ricky and Zai vlog channel. She uploads daily and has a steady uploading schedule. She will give updates on her life every few months. As of Early 2022, Zai has 2.64 million subscribers and the number is climbing.
== Trivia ==
Category:Gaming YouTubers
Category:Vlogging YouTubers
Category:American YouTubers
Category:Users who joined in 2012
Category:One million subscribers
Category:Two million subscribers