YouTube Creators Interview: Evans, Broski, Khare, Rahma, Shapiro-Barnum & Abram
Having spent several years atop Nielsen’s monthly streaming report The Gauge, routinely captivating more than 12% of all TV usage in the U.S. alone, YouTube is taking over more and more living rooms across the globe. And as the lines between online content and traditional television continue to blur, some of the platform’s biggest creators are not waiting around for the industry to get on board.
“I went to theater school, and the dream was always very much to go towards mainstream entertainment, and studio TV and film,” Julian Shapiro-Barnum said during a panel at Deadline’s Contenders TV: Docs + Unscripted event. “I think I started doing YouTube and online stuff as an entry point to that, and I don’t know, somewhere along the way I feel like YouTube caught up. All of a sudden, I looked at what I was doing, and I went, ‘Oh, the thing that I one day thought this would lead to is what I am doing right now.’ I thought I might as well just follow that and double down, and now I’m making all the things I’ve ever wanted to make, and YouTube has allowed me to do that without needing permission from gatekeepers or a studio.”
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Shapiro-Barnum, who runs the Recess Therapy channel, has collected 1.3 million subscribers with his videos including his popular series Celebrity Substitute, where stars sit down with a group of school kids to, hopefully, teach them a little something about their craft. He’s also launching a live weekly late-night series, called Outside Tonight. It premieres in June. Set in public parks and on street corners, Outside Tonight features interviews, audience-driven games, live music and comedy.
He’s far from alone in skirting the traditional studio system to chase his vision. Shapiro-Barnum was joined for the conversation with Deadline by several other creators who are doing the same: Sean Evans, Brittany Broski, Michelle Khare, Kareem Rahma and Cleo Abram.
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For all the obstacles that come with going it on their own, it’s also brought a creative freedom they agree infuses their work with a level of authenticity that’s harder to achieve when too many people have a say.
“Ever since Day 1, I wanted SubwayTakes to be a talk show for the people,” Rahma, who has interviewed everyone from Woody Harrelson to Zohran Mamdani and has amassed more than a million TikTok followers with his series that memorably grills its interview subjects on their hot takes. “Obviously, that’s changed a little bit, because we have a celebrity on once every 15 to 20 episodes, but the majority of episodes are still everyday New Yorkers and giving a platform to everyone that has a great take or something to say. It would have been really easy to take notes from the network, which is like ‘put more celebrities on. Bigger names, bigger names, bigger names’ … to be able to say no to anyone and yes to anyone, whether that be like a janitor or a guy that’s just riding the subway, or Austin Butler, Ethan Hawke — it’s an amazing feeling to be able to just have the autonomy to continue to maintain the DNA of the show.”
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Adds Abram, who has more than 8 million YouTube subscribers who’ve found her via her tech explainers, “I think one thing that you’ll probably find in common with all of us is we’re making the show that we wanted to watch, and that I think is an incredibly powerful thing for me.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
