Lee Newton

Early life

Lee Newton was raised in Coarsegold, California. She believes that she is "a blend of her Father's wit and sarcasm and her Mother's absolute absurdity." She also has a brother and a sister. Her brother, Jake, is a musician, and has his own YouTube channel. On March 2, 2012, a video was posted to her brother, Jake Newton's YouTube channel of the two singing a song cover of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody".

Newton was born with several congenital heart defects, including a ventricular septal defect, an atrial septal defect, transposition of the great vessels, and pulmonic stenosis. She has undergone 4 open heart surgeries at the ages of 14 days old, 13 months old, 7 years old, and 13 years old. Due to this, Newton has often said that she is an advocate of people donating organs.

Newton studied theatre in college after receiving a theatre directed scholarship.

Newton is a comedian who performed short skits and improv at the Gym Comedy Group. Newton is also known for being an alumna of The Groundlings' Sunday Company.

SourceFed

Newton rose to fame as a full-time co-host of SourceFed, a YouTube pop culture & news channel. The channel was one of the first 100 YouTube premium channels. She is also seen on the SourceFedNERD spin-off channel. On the series, Table Talk, Newton revealed that "Lee" was just a nickname and that her real first name is Ashley.

Newton has been interviewed on two occasions by New Media Rockstars, along with her SourceFed co-hosts. In an interview with the online publication, Newton stated "I think we lucked out having a team of hosts that really got along very well and had Phil’s vision, and we’re able to piggyback on that really quickly because he has such a clear vision, and he knew exactly what he wanted and such a concise idea of what he wanted and then having four people who really like each other and who can write really well. It was just energy. It was a collaboration that really started to take off." The statement was in response to the SourceFed YouTube channel reaching 500,000 subscribers. Newton announced on March 28, 2015 during SourceFed's segment "5 Things You Missed This Week," with former host Ross Everett, that she was appearing in her last video before her resignation.

Maxim's Hot 100

On February 6, 2012, Lee Newton's fellow co-hosts, Elliott Morgan and Joe Bereta, released a video to the SourceFed YouTube channel, concerning the list of Maxim's Hot 100, which is released every year. Without Lee knowing, her co-hosts encouraged the viewers to vote for her as a 'write-in'. The decision to do this was the overwhelming response from other SourceFed videos; specifically AskMen's Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2012. The feedback contained comments that thought Newton should be included in these lists. The Maxim voting website added a CAPTCHA after a flood of votes for her. On 3 April 2012, Maxim posted a list of the most popular 'write-in' candidates, and included Lee Newton, writing that she had 'list potential'. In result, she reached #57 in Maxim's Hot 100. The following year, Newton received a Maxim profile.

Appearances outside SourceFed

Newton has made guest appearances in Toby Turner's HEELY COPS video and in The Fine Brothers' webseries MyMusic. In March 2013, Newton appeared alongside SourceFed co-host Steve Zaragoza and creator Philip DeFranco in a Taco Bell advertisement.

Newton appeared in an episode of the Fine Brothers's YouTubers React, alongside SourceFed co-host, Steve Zaragoza. Newton would again work with the Fine Brothers as she joined the cast of MyMusic for its second season. On the series, Newton played the character of Country, Idol's cousin.

She also voices Tanya Burkowitz and Katelynn Zales in the stop-motion animated web series The Most Popular Girls in School. Newton also appeared in the ninth episode of Rhett and Link's The Mythical Show, along with co-hosts Joe Bereta and Elliott Morgan. Newton also appeared on the April Fools 2014 episode of Tosh.0. In July 2014, Newton was announced to be included in the cast of Comedy Central's series, CC: Social Scene.

Newton currently hosts the Lip Sync Battle Preshow with Elliott Morgan for Spike.