When Variety reported last year that, for teenagers, the five most influential celebrities all made their name on YouTube, you could hear the alarms from Hollywood Boulevard to Madison Avenue. This year Variety did the study again: Now 8 of the top 10 stars are YouTubers. From casting to creative to CEO, memo received.
Enter Tanya Bershadsky and her new company Casting Influence. Someone who describes herself as drawn to the “bleeding edge,” the Russian-born and Brooklyn-reared producer and writer was drawn to YouTube early. Over the past decade, she has befriended and helped many early YouTubers, including some on those Variety lists. More recently, she served as a producer and booker for Larry King as he made the transition from traditional to digital, and her latest idea is pointed in the other direction. Casting Influence, described as a “casting, booking, and talent strategy company specializing in digital celebrities and innovators,” is opening the lanes for stars from YouTube and other digital platforms to enter traditional entertainment.
In this email interview, Bershadsky discusses what her clients are seeking in digital celebrities (it’s not always massive audiences), how the larger culture is starting to wake up to their influence and the sacrifices YouTube stars make to stay relevant.
What makes a YouTube celebrity appealing to a show or brand? Are there certain qualities, beyond audience of course, that you notice works for entertainment outside of YouTube?
For brand deals, the most important thing of course is the talent has to fit the brand. Depending on what the brand is, I have to search out talent that has whatever number of subscribers/views/etc someone has, plus no cursing, no talking about sex, no anything that would raise any eyebrows. And then say for a pet brand….have a cat. You’d be surprised how few YouTubers own cats.
For casting a show, specifically a hosted show, being natural is #1. If I see someone who vlogs like they’re talking to a friend over dinner, that name will go down in that part of my brain that remembers faces and names. And I’ll pull it up months later when the right project comes up. Which just happened for a Disney show. I saw this kid on some shoot last year. I helped out some friends on a low budget project and they were really short staffed. He was new-ish to the influencer world then, at about 100k on YouTube, but he was really charismatic, great on camera, and really cute. He didn’t know who I was, I was just helping for the day. But I said “You. I don’t know what yet, I don’t know when, but you…I’m gonna put you in something.” He’s now hosting a Disney show that launches this month.
But it’s really a case by case basis for everything else. YouTube’s style for the most part doesn’t translate to film. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s fast. There’s a de-training that needs to happen sometimes to go from YouTube to TV/film. But there are definitely many who are good actors already. A lot of the online talent started out as actors and came to YouTube to find a way to reach the masses outside of the Hollywood system.
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