Wall Street Journal - Celebrity Pandemic Pivots - Part 2
Quarantine Famous: The New Stars of Fall
From Sarah Cooper to Emmanuel Acho, personalities who broke through during the coronavirus pandemic are our newest celebrities. Here’s what they’re doing this fall.
They walked into a crisis as strangers and came out famous.
The last six months have revealed an unusual mix of celebrities in popular culture, people who might never have broken out otherwise, while at the same time bringing established names to the forefront in surprising new ways.
Social media often is a key to pandemic fame. The irony—that the best way for people to get noticed is to hide out at home doing videos—is not lost on this group.
“They’re very good at building and maintaining audiences,” said Kevin Allocca, head of culture and trends at YouTube. “That’s not a skill we would have associated with major celebrities of 20 years ago, but it’s actually a core skill of being successful right now.”
Many of these celebrities develop their audiences by interacting with their viewers and teaming up with other personalities whose fan bases overlap, often while cross-pollinating their videos on multiple platforms. Included in the ranks of the newly famous are tech-savvy 20-somethings, many of whom pick up editing tricks and make their own videos rather than relying on handlers to do it for them. Their currency is authenticity, or something that at least looks like it.
Standouts everywhere from the internet to the anchor desk are extending their reach. Here, a guide to the new talents and rising stars of lockdown.
Selena Gomez
Age: 28 City: Encino, CA
Big Score: She landed her own TV show during the pandemic.
Like other people, Ms. Gomes has been getting into cooking at home during quarantine. Unlike others, she has cameras following her while she’s doing it. “Selena + Chef” made its debut last moth on HBO Max.
The show speaks to the ways TV is pivoting to create new material during the pandemic. The series gives the already-famous Ms. Gomez a stronger foothold in TV, portraying her in a more personal light and adding to her résumé as a producer (she was behind last year’s “Living Undocumented” on Netflix and other projects).
In the new show, she cooks remotely with culinary stars like Ludo Lefebvre and Bravo “Top Chef” veteran Antonia Lofaso. Ms. Gomez aims for laughs. While working on seafood tostadas with Ms. Lofaso, she cuts the head off a dead octopus and dry heaves. Then she almost plunges her hands into boiling water (“Not with your fingers, Selena, with a stick!” her friend shouts).
She is as relatable as a celebrity cook can be while working in one of the three kitchens of her mansion, a $4.9 million home once belonging to Tom Petty that she purchased this spring. And it’s a good deal for HBO Max, which gets access to Ms. Gomez’s social-media fans—a universe of more than 378 million followers across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Sarah Cooper
Age: 42 City: New York
Profession: Comedian with a flair for politics
Big score: Netflix special
Thanks to her viral lip impressions of President Trump on platforms including TikTok and Twitter, she is on her way to Netflix with a comedy special. “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine” premieres this fall with an assortment of interviews and sketches. Producers include Ms. Cooper, Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne, who also will direct.
The comedian, who recently guest hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live, is writing a modern, comedic take on a Dale Carnegie book for Audible Originals. She also is co-writing a coming CBS series based on one of her previously published bestselling books, “How to be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.” Her Trump videos, which propelled her from 52,000 Twitter followers to more than 2 million during the pandemic, have drawn fans including Cher, Chrissy Teigen and Jerry Seinfeld.
In response to a question recently, Mr. Trump said he had not seen Ms. Cooper’s videos and asked whether they were good or bad. A reporter said he might find them entertaining but added that the comedian did not mean them to be positive. The president said, “Well, I’ll have to check it out.”