Mike Heslin’s New Comedy Show ‘The Influencers’

Six eclectic, social media stars forced to live under one roof while competing in a series of creative challenges to win an exclusive brand deal. To find out what happens, make sure you tune into Amazon Prime Video’s hottest new series, The Influencers.

Created, written, and directed by Mike Heslin, this show is the latest project from Well-Versed Entertainment, the production company he co-founded with My Gay Roommate and Boy*Friends creator and co-star Noam Ash. Witty, funny, and combining the best of mockumentaries with the latest obsession-worthy reality TV formats, The Influencers provides a satirical, behind-the-scenes look at the lengths people will go to in their quest for social media fame.

Both Heslin and Ash star in the show alongside Luciana Faulhaber, Samantha Gracie, Joey Belfiore, and Heslin’s real-life partner, Nic Wilson, aka DJ Scotty Dynamo.

Heslin took some time to chat more with OFM about the series.Hi, Mike! Thank you for taking some time to chat with me about your new series, The Influencers. Can you tell us more about it?
The Influencers is about six social media influencers who are selected to live in a Big Brother-type house to compete for a dream brand deal. I think we all know at this point what you see online is not necessarily what you get in real life, and that is certainly the case with these six influencers.

Their every move is captured on camera as they participate in these creative challenges to prove themselves, and you kind of see that what they are presenting online is not very accurate. That that facade starts to crack with each episode. It is a comedy, a mockumentary, and it is a lot of fun. It has a bit of heart and certainly a message under it, but it is definitely delivered with a lot of laughs.

What inspired you to create this show?
A couple years ago, I was between acting gigs, and I worked for a social media agency. I still freelance as a creative director and a social media director, so I have worked with a lot of interesting characters.

I feel like I have to preface this right off the bat. Of course, there are many incredibly talented, smart, and business savvy influencers, and I have so many friends who have basically made a business out of their online persona. They are very thrifty and intelligent. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I have worked with a lot of interesting characters and a lot of gorgeous people who are just very lucky to be there, but they don’t have much of a skill set. So, I kind of leaned more into that.

My partner and I were chatting about the idea around two years ago, and it really, really tickled me. I was like, there is definitely something here. I wrote all the episodes within two or three months; we started pitching it, and that was encouraging too. I sort of just wanted to make a show for my friends and I. Being an artist is hard, so it’s like, we’ll make our own work. We started pitching it, and I got a great reception. So many people in L.A. were telling us, you have to do this and do it right. You can definitely sell this. So, we did.

And the show has been received well by audiences?
Yes! Honestly, we were very overwhelmed by the positive support. Not only has the feedback been positive, but people are sharing it and the view count is crazy. It’s like, you open, and then you expect it to slowly start dwindling. It has only been a few weeks, but the views continue to rise. We are looking at international distribution as well, right now. It has been exciting, and it is fun to hear what people’s favorite episodes are and which character they can’t stand or are gravitating towards.

Related Article: ‘Queer Eye’s’ Original Culture Vulture Jai Rodriguez

What do you hope audiences take away from The Influencers?
Even before social media, I think it has been very easy to compare yourself to others. The game of comparison. It is very easy to get wrapped up in what someone else is doing and base your self-worth on that. Being like, I’m not doing enough or he or she looks better than I do; they travel more; they are more ahead in their career. I think with the birth of social media over the past decade, it has really heightened that, especially for our youth.

It can be dangerous. It is very easy to base your self-worth on what you see other people doing, which again is very rarely what their reality is. The Influencers is a simple message. I think it is just a friendly reminder to all of us that what you see is not necessarily what you get. You should not let other people hold too much power over your life. Try not to let it. That is easier said than done, but it is important.

Do you think scripted narratives focusing on social media influencers are becoming more prevalent?
This is why I got excited about the idea. It is slowly starting to, but no. When I first came up with the idea, I started to research it. There have been reality shows like The Circle, Love Is Blind, and shows incorporating social media, but not scripted narratives. Maybe some indie things here and there, but it really has not been done yet, which I thought was interesting.

I am sure we are going to start seeing a lot more of it, but truthfully, I have been surprised to know, at least in the past few years, there has not been that much. It is more in the reality genre, but I am sure it is coming.Not only did you write and produce The Influencers, but you also star in it alongside your partner, Nic Wilson, who is known to millions as Scotty Dynamo. How much fun was it to work on this project together? I heard that you two play the opposite of your actual selves.
Yes. Scotty is my real-life partner, and he played my onscreen partner. We play Tyler and Taylor, and they are a very obnoxious, Insta-couple. It was a lot of fun. We have been together for several years now, and we work very well together.

It’s funny because before him, I said I would never date an actor again, but here we are. It works. We have a great partnership that I am very fortunate for. We don’t really argue in real life. Even if there is a disagreement or something, we have such great healthy communication. So, it was fun because this couple sucks. They fight and bicker every, single day. We were shooting a big fight in one of the episodes, and I literally broke character and started giggling. The whole crew is like, what’s going on? Like, I literally have never heard him yell before. This is so funny and shocking.

Also, a little fun fact, I was supposed to play his character, and he was supposed to be mine. I was going to be Tyler who definitely prioritizes social media, the like, and the Insta fame over a relationship. I think a week out, our friend and my business partner, Noam Ash, who plays Cruise in the show, he persuaded us and gave us a talking-to about why we should switch roles. He gave us a very good pitch, so we agreed. I think it was ultimately the right call.

So, this is not the first project you and Scotty worked on together?
No. We met shooting a pilot called Boy*Friends, which you can actually stream now on YouTube. It is the pilot version of My Gay Roommate. Noam wrote it into a half hour version, I helped produce it; I also play Rupert who is one of the roommates.

We met shooting that a couple years ago. We actually did not have too many scenes together in that, but yes, we have worked together a million times. We have quite a partnership, so I direct all his music videos now and we have done quite a bit together. This was certainly the biggest professional venture we have worked on together at this point.

You and Scotty both have a large following and presence on social media. From your own, personal point of view, what is it truly like to be an influencer?
Oh boy [laughs]. It is funny, and I feel like I am getting this a lot because it’s like, well, you wrote a parody making fun of influencers. I would not identify myself as an influencer, but I guess anyone with a following and anyone with people looking up to them would qualify. I have always said from day one, I do defend social media, but I think it can be incredibly polarizing. That is kind of what my show touches on. We have certainly seen that in 2020 with everything that happened between the pandemic, the election—social media is super polarizing.

However, for all the bad, there is good. It really fosters connection and brings people together in a way we would not be able to without it. There are so many people in my life, friends from where I grew up, people I did a project with or met in passing who I would not maintain a connection with, but because of social media, we are very connected, and it fosters that relationship. I think it can do a lot of good, but it can certainly be problematic. It needs to have some stricter rules, regulations, and filtering, especially with youth. Influencer culture is so weird. I am scrolling and following it, but it is kind of unbelievable how quickly this culture exploded. It became a thing in less than a decade.

Did The Influencers encounter any COVID related challenges?
No, and honestly, that is just by sheer luck. We shot this in October 2019, and we were almost done with postproduction when the pandemic blew up last March. We were very fortunate to be able to finish post-production and go into distribution remotely. So, it did not affect us. If anything, it was a slight blessing. Not that the pandemic is a blessing in any way, shape, or form. Let’s be clear, but it just happened to be okay timing. We were able to complete the project.

I have so many friends who have had projects halted for like a year. The Influencers is a comedy, so I think it came out when people really needed extra laughs every day. So, this was not the worst time for the show to come out. It could definitely bring some smiles to people’s faces. We lucked out.

Related Article: Ian Alexander On ‘Star Trek’ and Trans Representation

As an actor, writer, director, and producer, what makes your work unique and stand out?
Noam and I started our production company, Well-Versed Entertainment, last year, and The Influencers and Boy*Friends was released under that umbrella. We are a young company, but we are thrifty filmmakers. We know how to deliver high quality content not on a Hollywood $5 million budget. I think as filmmakers, that definitely makes us stand out. On top of that, what’s really important to us is, and we talked about it every day, is the normalization of LGBTQ stories.

Obviously, there has been a ton of progress in the past decade or two, but when I was young, there was really nothing. Then we got Jack from Will & Grace, and now there is almost always a token gay character. That’s great. There has been a ton of progress, but Noam and I are always talking about what the next step is, and that is normalization. Now, it is almost difficult as a queer person, and it sometimes bothers me to watch a show and clearly see they checked every box to make the gay character a bit of a cliché.

That is something we consider in all our work. We have a couple features slated for this year, and we are always talking about what normalization looks like so that it is just telling stories of a community that deserves to be represented without checking off boxes, for lack of better words. Proving to the world that you are diverse and supporting these communities.

Besides the couple slated features, what else do you hope Well-Versed Entertainment accomplishes this year?
A lot of that depends on the pandemic. The three features slated; we were commissioned for one. Another one is a stage to screen adaptation, and the other one we have been working on for two years and we just got some exciting names attached to it, as well as some pilots. In a dream world, we are going to shoot at least two of the three features this year, but that obviously depends on the vaccine and the state of the world. Both of those two films are very small, so I am hopeful that we can find a very safe way to do it.

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug?
If people have not seen it, I would really invite people to check out Boy*Friends on YouTube. It was released in October, and within the first opening month, we hit, like, 1.3 million views. There has been a lot of love and support for the project, and it has been overwhelming. So, definitely check that out, but obviously, the priority right now is checking out The Influencers on Amazon Prime Video. Leave a five-star review, and let me know which influencer you like the most, and which one you hate!

To stay up-to-date with Heslin, follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or visit his official website. Visit Well-Versed Entertainment’s website for the latest news and projects, and make sure to check out The Influencers, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.  

Photos Courtesy of Well-Versed Entertainment