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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Hollywood has a star problem. The latest generation of leading men and women are all blessed with the sort of beauty, talent and charm that breed public adoration. Yet 20-somethings like Zendaya, Paul Mescal and Sydney Sweeney are struggling to open movies on the strength of their name alone. They are simply not famous enough.
You won’t find stars with cross-generational appeal on YouTube either. Or any other online platform. Could you identify Kai Cenat, the most subscribed-to esports commentator on Twitch? Or Bella Poarch, who has racked up more than three-quarters of a billion views with one TikTok video? Even Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast), who has over 338mn YouTube followers, could probably trip over the average 45-year-old without being recognised.
The inability to identify new pop culture heroes has long been a signifier of middle age. But there is usually a point at which these stars break through to a broader audience. In the past decade, however, this broader audience has become harder to find. As viewers are funnelled towards content they will like, fame has been atomised. It is possible to have a hundred million online fans and still be unrecognisable to people in your home town.
This fracturing of fame is heightened by the fact that even viewers on the same platform won’t necessarily see the same content. Red Notice, a heist thriller starring The Rock, is the most watched movie on Netflix. Yet the film, described by one critic as a vacant bid at franchise creation, has never appeared at the top of my recommended watch list. It’s almost as if the algorithm knew that I’d skip straight past.
One online creator is currently trying to cut across this barrier. In December, Donaldson launched his first game show on Amazon Prime. Beast Games will look familiar to anyone who watches his YouTube channel. The stunts, which have a tinge of Depression-era dance marathons to them, have just moved to a larger stage. An extravagant $5mn cash prize is on offer to those willing to put themselves through unusual torments while Donaldson, dressed in a smart-casual black hoodie, screams encouragement. The vibe is 2010s X Factor meets tech money.
Reviews of the show have been poor (it is “undignified” and “charmless” according to British newspapers). Its partnership with a fintech company has been criticised. And there have been unsettling complaints about the set being an unsafe environment — as some contestants claimed in a lawsuit against Donaldson and the show’s production companies filed this summer. Still, Donaldson says the show is ranked number one in more than 50 countries.
If anyone can change their audience it should be Donaldson. Now in his mid-20s, he has been uploading videos since his early teens and is known for studying formats and tweaking content to maximise viewer numbers.
Even so, Amazon is one streaming site among many. It has over 200mn Prime subscribers (ie less than MrBeast has on his own channels) and the video service’s recommendation feed may prevent Donaldson from being seen by a new audience who do not already know him. The odds of him becoming a globally recognisable superstar are low.
The screenwriter William Goldman once explained how stars were created. It wasn’t enough to be talented or handsome, he wrote, something else was required. In Adventures in the Screen Trade, he describes seeing this transition occur for Robert Redford. When Redford was a theatre actor rooms did not go quiet when he entered. After Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they did. A screen and a mass audience were needed to make the shift happen. (He also suggested that the speed of this change and the fact that it had nothing to do with the actors themselves was what sent so many stars insane with insecurity.)
Screens still exist. But the mass audience has dispersed. The final proof that celebrities are anyone and therefore no one, comes courtesy of celebrity video app Cameo. At the end of 2024, it launched CameoX — a service that allows users to self-enrol and sell tailor-made videos to fans.
In the past, Cameo had to agree someone was famous enough to be on the platform. Admittedly the bar was fairly low. But CameoX drops it to the floor. Chief executive Steven Galanis says the change had to happen because the amount of fame in the world is “exponentially increasing.” That’s true. It is easier than ever to be seen by a large number of people online. But it’s also true that it is more difficult to be seen by a truly global audience. Without that, there is no such thing as fame.
elaine.moore@ft.com
