TikTok star Boman Martinez-Reid teams up with Francesca Farago, Ashley Darby to find TV fame
"This is going to be my career and I'm going to shoot for it," Martinez-Reid said about his new show "Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid" on Crave
Canadian TikTok sensation Boman Martinez-Reid, also know as "Bomanizer," is taking the leap from social media fame to TV stardom in Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid (now on Crave). With the help of celebrity advisors, including reality TV sensation Francesca Farago, chef Lynn Crawford, Canada's Drag Race star Priyanka and Real Housewives of Potomac icon Ashley Darby, TV fame seems to be right around the corner for the Toronto-based talent.
While Martinez-Reid has amassed 2.1 million TikTok followers, attracting fans with his Kardashian parody "Bodashians" series, his goal was always to create a TV show. In fact, he described his TikTok as a "resume" to prove his potential.
"Yes I want to have fun, and make TikToks and be young, but also, this is going to be my career and I'm going to shoot for it," Martinez-Reid told Yahoo Canada.
"I think it was a whole year of trying to understand more about what this [show] was going to look like, because how do you take someone from social media and give them a platform on TV, and make it make sense? And really what it came down to was finding the right people to make that happen."
The right people included award-winning comedian Natalie Metcalfe, who called her collaboration with Martinez-Reid a "massive love affair."
"I think we actually do come from a similar comedy background," Metcalfe said. "We love a banter and I think that's where we hit it off really well, ... we can go back and forth, and ... that's the tone of every single episode."
Boman Martinez-Reid was 'terrified' for Francesca Farago episode
In the first episode of Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid, the show's star tries out the reality TV dating genre with the help of Farago. Just seeing the Canadian Too Hot To Handle star at Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park community centre pool, to replicate the beautiful islands and resorts used in many reality dating shows, is enough to get you laughing, and keep watching.
"That episode was the one I was most terrified for," Martinez-Reid admitted. "I'm in a relationship, how do I do a dating show?"
"Natalie, she just really listens and she understands, 'OK this has nothing to do with you actually finding love Boman. This has everything to do with you making a fool of yourself on national TV.'"
In an interesting approach to the show, while Martinez-Reid was heavily involved in the writers room and in the development of the series, there are certain elements of each episode that the show's star is kept in the dark about.
"I didn't know who I was going to be dating. I didn't know really what we were going to do," Martinez-Reid said. "I think that really was necessary because when you watch the episode you get my genuine reactions to these characters that I'm dating."
Watch Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid on Crave with plans starting at $9.99/month
For Metcalfe, who has extensive Second City improv experience, she highlighted that Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid is a show where those skills are really used.
"Every single episode is improvised," Metcalfe stressed. "Yes, we had a writing room. Yes, we wrote down beats of every single episode. Did we end up following all those beats? Absolutely not. Because it just depends on how Boman does, ... it depends on what the celebrity guest says. It's all real."
"There's no other show that is a comedic improvised show on television right now and I think that is truly special, and his audience is going to be able to see a Bodashian-style Boman, but on a huge platform."
Metcalfe added that every celebrity on the show was "so game" to participate.
"I was so nervous to ask these celebs to come and do the show, ... the fear of rejection, even as a showrunner, is terrifying, and I learned that everyone just wants to be asked," she said. "Everyone said yes, which was so nice and so kind."
"Then [we just] tried to place the right people. ... We want the softness of a Francesca in the beginning to kind of ease him in and then we get a little bit bigger, like big personalities coming in to hit him hard later. ... All I did was say, your job is to show Boman exactly how to do this and if he is not doing it, tell him he's not doing it, because that's your job. And they all did it flawlessly. I couldn't have been more happy."
Real-life 'messy' Ashley Darby event that inspired episode
For the last episode of the season, Martinez-Reid teams up with Darby to tap into the life of a Real Housewife, but the episode is actually based on a real-life experience with the Real Housewives of Potomac star.
As Martinez-Reid explained, he met Darby when he attended an event a few years ago, and they ended up forming a friendship, spending two full days together. What Martinez-Reid quickly learned is that Darby is "exactly as she is on TV," including being "so messy."
"I told Natalie that when Ashley visited me in Toronto, I told [Ashley] that I had drama with a drag queen in Toronto. Ashley took it upon herself to approach that person in the bathroom and say, 'So I heard you have a problem with my friend Boman.' No cameras rolling. Just Ashley Darby being Ashley Darby," Martinez-Reid revealed. "And then I was confronted with this person, we had a whole drama in front of Ashley Darby, fighting in the middle of a party. I could not believe it. Invite a Housewife to your event and that's what's going to happen."
"We used that as inspiration. ... She showed up to be my like messy coach, and coach me through how to be messy in my real world, with my real friends and family, on camera, which is truly harder than it looks."
'The smaller the screen the less respect people have for you'
Whether you're a fan of Martinez-Reid's TikToks, or you just discover him through Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid, his fiercely infectious comedy skills are impressive.
But while Martinez-Reid has seen success so far, he does still feel the stigma of being a social media star branching out into different spaces.
"The smaller the screen the less respect people have for you," Martinez-Reid said. "It doesn't matter what you're doing on social media, the fact that you come from social media, so many people will not respect that as its own job. They won't respect what I do as art because they see it as being silly and having fun."
"There are so many people who use social media for that, but then the problem is that kind of discredits, for lack of a better term, what I'm trying to do. And then trying to have a TV show, I think there's a lot of people that will look at it and go, 'I'm not watching a TikToker's TV show,' and I think what we tried to do was just face that head on."
Watch Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid on Crave with plans starting at $9.99/month
One way of facing that criticism is by crafting Made For TV With Boman Martinez-Reid in a way that it can really stand on its own as a comedy series. He added that getting support from Metcalfe really made him feel "validated" in his skills and his craft, even if some may be quick to discredit him, based on his social media background.
"I do feel there is a weird stigma about people on the internet, especially when those people become successful," Martinez-Reid shared. "You'll see influencers at the People's Choice Awards and the whole discourse about it online is 'I can't believe they invited TikTokers to the People's Choice Awards.' To which I would say, if you got invited to the People's Choice Awards, you'd say no?"
"We live in this DIY culture. Since I was a kid I wanted a TV show and the only way that I was going to make that happen was to do it myself. That's not just me, so many other people are using social media as a tool to conquer their dreams, and I think that should be respected."
