Boman Martinez-Reid on TV Show, Bodashians & Influencers in Hollywood
Boman Martinez-Reid first went viral over a cough. Or, actually, a friend’s cough. OK, technically — a friend’s fake cough.
The video — which he posted to his @bomanizer TikTok at the very beginning of the pandemic and referred to in the caption as the “cough heard round the world” — featured the 26-year-old Canadian creator in a parody of reality TV about a get-together disrupted by potential illness, complete with a dramatic talking head interview and shaky cam footage of the coughpocalypse.
“That video changed my life,” he says now. On TikTok, Martinez-Reid has more than 2 million followers. Many of those know him for “The Bodashians,” a Kardashian-inspired series of mini episodes born out of the cough’s success. Each entry sees Boman Bodashian and his friends mimicking the slow vocal fry of Kim et al. The videos have more than 150 million views.
Born with a flair for the dramatic and an eye for the comedic, Martinez-Reid is now also the creator of a new show, Made for TV, which features himself trying out six different genres of reality TV: reality dating, cooking competition, news media, sports, competitive drag and slice of life. The show was acquired by The Roku Channel on Dec. 1.
So many projects under his belt means it’s difficult to nail down exactly what to call the rising star — TikToker? Influencer? Creator? Host? Actor? Writer? “Pop star,” he quips. Then he laughs and says the labels don’t feel that important. “I want to tell stories,” he says. It would appear his audience is listening.
Below, Martinez-Reid chats with The Hollywood Reporter about his “The Bodashians” internet series, defending reality TV with his new show, Made for TV, the future of influencers in Hollywood and more.
Let’s talk the handle. Where did @bomanizer come from?
I’m a Britney Spears stan. Ever since that lady stepped onstage at the 2007 VMAs, 9-year-old me was like, “That’s my girl.” Then the following year she came out with her album Circus, and one of the songs was “Womanizer.” I was walking around recess singing it, and people thought that I was singing “Bomanizer.” So then it just kind of stuck. Britney Spears is always going to be a part of me.
Beautiful. Does your love of reality TV go back just as far?
I can’t remember the first reality TV show I watched, but I think that’s because it was always such a part of [my childhood]. I remember watching Pimp My Ride and Tila Tequila when I definitely [was not old enough]. And then my dad would watch Spike TV and my brother would be watching those shows where they would fix up cars. Antique Road Show! All those shows were just always on.
In high school, my boyfriend at the time was like, “Oh, my God, you should watch this show called The Real Housewives. I fell in love with the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I just developed a genuine appreciation for the art that goes into crafting these shows.
What do you say to people who don’t see the value of reality TV?
It’s so easy to say that these shows are fake, or boring, or mindless, but it is far more intelligent to take a more informed stance on it. A woman was recently telling me that she hates reality TV and that nobody on those shows is talented, and I very kindly said to her, “Do you realize that there is a large amount of very talented people whose job it is to make you feel like the people on those shows are not talented?”
When was your first inkling that you wanted to be part of those talented people?
Growing up, my mom and our family would put on the Anna Martinez Family Christmas Show after Christmas dinner. It was like SNL, and it started off as an in-person performance, then someone bought us a camcorder, and then we were editing videos. And that’s where I learned how to edit. … Then I was in 12th grade, and we were talking about, What do you want to be when you grow up? And I said my dream was to have my own TV show. My brother was just like, “Why don’t you just make your own TV show?” I was like, Oh my God — I know how to edit, I was in school for theater — this is genius.
“The Bodashians” made you famous. How did that start?
It was so uncool to be on TikTok in 2019. I was dating somebody who was on TikTok — it was so cringe, it was so embarrassing. My friends were like, “You have to dump him, that’s so gross.” I was like, “My God, he’s cute.” Then he went viral, and I was like, Oh my God, he’s not even funny. So if he can do it, I can do it. And so I decided to make TikTok in February of 2020. … I realized I had a talent for parodying reality TV. I was like, what if I take these mundane problems and condense them into a minute of reality TV epic drama?
Boman Martinez-Reid
Simon Pella
As an expert, how would you say the genre has changed since you first started watching?
I think reality TV has become very self-aware, and it’s very hard to create a show now that is what it says it is. It’s hard to create a dating show that is people looking for love, and not people looking for a platform. These people are well aware now of what these shows will bring. Back in the MTV days, that was not the case. … That is something we were trying to comment on with Made for TV. What does a reality star look like, in the era of being fully aware that they were creating a reality show and there are cameras following them?
You seem to be at the crux of that question, as an influencer who knowingly makes a living by putting himself on camera and now has a TV show. What do you make of all these job titles?
The line is so blurred. You can be a creator and have very little influence, or you can be an influencer and do very little creating. If you think about the word “creator” — if you think about TikTok, a TikTok creator is everyone from Charli D’Amelio to the people that make slime videos. That is such a broad spectrum. I view myself as a creator because that’s what I want to do. I want to create. I want to tell stories. I want to act.
And they don’t seem mutually exclusive.
I am an influencer and I’m a TikToker, but when one day I have a TV show and I’m acting alongside other actors, and it was somebody in an office’s idea to say, “Let’s give him a show!” I think it’s going to be a weird conversation. It’s like, “Oh, now he’s an actor.” Realistically, I’ve been doing this for years already.
I think we love — especially in the entertainment industry — somebody has to have the worst job. We can’t all be proud of everybody in entertainment. It’s interesting how actors and people who work so tirelessly on TV shows — there’s a very different discourse when we talk about them than when we talk about influencers, who are showing up every day and being themselves and putting their whole lives out there for people to entertain others. And to help others, and be a voice for people who didn’t have that representation growing up.
And Made for TV is about all that, isn’t it?
It was fun to play with that aspect of it, because my content and my presence online isn’t the most personal. People don’t really know me, and in making this show we kind of had fun with that idea, because I could appear as whatever character I wanted. We kind of landed on this heightened version of me that makes the audience question, “Is this actually him? Is he actually like this?” … It’s fun to look the viewer right in the eyes and be like, I know you’re there. It also makes it feel even more real, or at least makes the audience question, Is this real? Was this real? What is?
But what are the pragmatics for translating that discussion into a television show?
While we were making the show, I was talking about how all of these shows are made to seem easy. You watch Drag Race, and you as the viewer are like, “Oh my God, this couture garment that this queen made is so insanely ugly, and I could do better. The dish that they made on this cooking show looks so bad, I could do better.”
Eventually my showrunner, Natalie Metcalfe, was like, “You know that it’s hard to be on these shows, right?” We kind of went from there. It’s really a show for like, the backseat driver mentality [of reality TV].
And you get to offer commentary on a different genre with each episode.
It’s a love letter, at the end of the day. I don’t want to be making fun of reality TV. I love reality TV, I believe in reality TV, I want to be in reality TV, I want reality TV to remain great. I’m not trying to tear it apart.
So you’ve tried all the genres. Why do you think all these people keep signing up?
That is such an interesting question. It’s hard to answer, because the reason I was doing it, the reason the Boman character was doing these shows, was so different than the reason why other people would do these shows.
I think escapism is at the forefront of that conversation, and the ultimate form of escapism is doing it, is being in the show. Shoot your shot and go for it. I think it challenges delusion in a way. It’s like, you have to be so delusional to believe that you are as good as anybody else, but then at the same time that delusion completely goes away and it just becomes a fact that you are as good as somebody else to be on a show like this. I think people want to be seen. I think people want to be to feel supported by their community.
Reality TV definitely feels like a great partner to niche communities.
Drag Race, for example, is so wonderful in its way of making stars in a way that, so many shows have not been able to in the past. It’s weird how there’s a commentary about people who go on these shows to find fame and create a career. But it’s like, people also are supportive of the fact that people are now going on these shows and getting their bag.
One last question: You’ve got your foot in both worlds, so what’s the future of the internet and its relationship to TV?
I think we are going to see influencers and creators appear in much more in traditional media. I think it’s inevitable — not even just TV and film, but billboards and ads and commercials. I can tell you so much more about the influencers that I follow, the people whose podcasts I listen to, than I could tell you about what’s airing on daytime TV. But at the same time, I recently just saw a creator was on daytime TV, and I only know that because of the internet.
I’m also so fortunate to be a part of that wave of new creators and new talent in Hollywood that are changing things, and challenging not only what it’s like to go from TikTok and create television, but also challenging what it looks like to have a career in entertainment and stay in people’s faces for five years straight. You’ve already seen it with the election, seeing Kamala Harris go on Call Her Daddy, and the other guy do all of the other podcasts that I didn’t watch. But it’s so interesting how now things are being taken far more seriously and I think it’s only going to intensify.
