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Lifestyles of the ‘More Famous Than Rich’

This entrepreneur is taking on power and money in Hollywood with a new business model for celebrities — including the ones who’ve been forgotten or canceled.

(SINGING) When you walk in the room, do you have sway? [MUSIC PLAYING]

kara swisher

Did you know you can order up a celebrity like you order a taco from Uber Eats? Well, you can — in our on-demand world through a company called Cameo. It’s a website where you can hire mostly B to Z-list celebrities to tape a personalized message.

archived recording (stormy daniels)

Stormy Daniels here. And I’m just passing on a happy birthday message.

archived recording (flavor flav)

Hey, yo, Mark. Flavor Flav in the building, Mark.

archived recording (lindsay lohan)

Hey, boys. It’s me, Lindsay Lohan. George, I’ve heard you’re a massive fan of me and Davina McCall.

kara swisher

When I first heard about it, it felt kind of cringy. The idea that someone on the downslope of fame could be charged to my Visa and then downloaded to my phone. For $99, former Trump administration toady Seb Gorka can give you wedding well wishes. No thank you, Seth. For $499, David Hasselhoff can sing you happy birthday. Yes, please, Baywatch Mitch. Or for $1,000, Snoop Dogg can give you a corporate pep talk minus the weed. Cameo is yet another Silicon Valley back play to get rid of gatekeepers by collapsing the distance between you and exactly what you want. Gone are the Hollywood agents, the managers, and the pushy PR people. This kind of thing has been tried before and has largely flopped. But Cameo and a spate of other companies, like OnlyFans and Patreon, are still trying to disrupt the balance of power and money in media. I’m not so sure it’ll work because Hollywood’s old guard have shown an amazing ability to hold on to power, even as the world spins inexorably forward. But Cameo CEO Steven Galanis is betting on it. And apparently, it begins with making Kenny G immortal. God help us.

steven galanis

My mom is an absolute massive fan of Kenny G. That’s her favorite artist. And for her birthday, two weeks ago, I got Kenny G to wish her happy birthday and sing her a song. And my mom’s a fan of Kenny G. But after that video, she became a bigger fan.

archived recording (kenny g)

I just wanted to send you some love and say thank you very much for all your years of support.

steven galanis

If you were to go meet somebody famous in New York City, you run into them at a restaurant, and you go up to them, and they take a picture with you, and you’re going to tell everybody for the next 20 years like, wow, I met XYZ. They were a great person. Likewise, if you go up to somebody famous, and they blow you off, you’re going to tell everyone that they’re terrible or whatever. So this is, because it’s a safer interaction, if Kenny G makes you a great video, you share it on Facebook. You share it on Instagram. Not only do you like Kenny G more, but all your friends like him more too because he did something nice for you.

kara swisher

All right, so how do you decide who is worthy of that?

steven galanis

To be talent, you have to have at least 25,000 followers on Instagram or be notable in some other way. So for example, you might have been a, uh, NFL legend in the preInstagram age that doesn’t have an account. Like if you’re a notable person, we’ll add you on the platform. We have a talent acquisition team who are literally searching. And it’s a sales team that’s actually going and trying to get people to sign up for Cameo. We know who to go for by our search data. So people are coming to the platform, and they’re searching for names. And when we see people that are not obvious that are interesting, so for example, during the early days of COVID when Tiger King came out, within the first day of that show coming on Netflix, a lot of people were searching for Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic and people like that. So they got on our hit list the second that they started seeing any type of uptick in virality. So in that case, we’d actually go after people. Secondly, we have a talent—

kara swisher

So you went after Carole Baskin in that case.

steven galanis

Exactly.

kara swisher

What was the approach?

steven galanis

Well, a lot of times, it’s like DMing them on Instagram or Twitter.

kara swisher

Really?

steven galanis

Instagram DM is an unbelievable channel. So a lot of our business was built on that. Secondly, talent-to-talent referrals are a really big part of our business. So for example, when we got Snoop Dogg, it was actually Ice-T who had been in New York with him. They were in the studio together. He was doing cameos. And Snoop Dogg kept popping in these cameos.

archived recording (ice-t)

All the guests that come to this party do not play around. All right? Do not. Look who I’m sitting next to.

archived recording (snoop dogg)

Man, you better bring your ass to the dance floor and shake your big asses.

archived recording (ice-t)

Oh, see. See. That’s what it is.

steven galanis

In that case, we give the talent a 5% referral fee. So Ice-T was able to make 5% off all Snoop’s bookings for one year out of our cut. And that’s in thanks for the referral.

kara swisher

Who did you just get that you wanted to get?

steven galanis

Michael Bolton was a really big one, especially ahead of the holidays. So the second Kenny G came on, him and I had dinner in Los Angeles. And he was like, Michael will kill it.

kara swisher

You and Kenny G?

steven galanis

Yeah. Me and Kenny G had dinner in Los Angeles. And he’s like, Michael Bolton will kill it, especially ahead of Christmas. You know, he’s got so many famous — his Christmas album and things like that.

kara swisher

One of the things also is it’s not just fandom. Maybe someone wants to make a gag gift. I mean, Joe Exotic would be sort of a gag like a wow gift or Anthony Scaramucci or someone like that. Do you feel like it has a faint bit of making fun of them? Do you worry about that?

steven galanis

Number one, we’re just really excited that you know, we’re able to provide monetization opportunities for people like this, especially at a time where like, outside of Cameo, they might make money by going to fan conventions, for example, signing autographs, doing public appearances. Especially during COVID, all that stopped. And suddenly, everybody in the entertainment world when unemployed all at once.

kara swisher

So who’s the most booked person on the platform right now?

steven galanis

The person that did the most in revenue this year is Brian Baumgartner who is Kevin from “The Office“.

archived recording (brian baumgartner)

Hello, Aiden. Aiden Mockenhop. Surprise, my friend. Listen.

steven galanis

He’ll do over $1 million this year in bookings.

kara swisher

Why? What does he actually do that would create that, from your perspective?

steven galanis

It’s his persona. He really takes a lot of pride in his craftsmanship of the videos. And I do think the quality of the cameo is something that is really important to people. And he just is somebody that really takes it seriously and does a great job. He’s reliable. He turns them around quickly. And the content is really funny. And in general, comedians tend to do best. So to your point about like joking or roasting, that’s a really big use case. So it’s not a surprise that the comedians do better than anybody else.

kara swisher

OK, so who’s the most requested celebrity not on Cameo? Who is your like white whale, so to speak?

steven galanis

His name is actually David Dobrik. David Dobrik is one of the top vloggers in the world. So he’s number one, which would surprise a lot of people. A lot of people would think it’d be The Rock.

kara swisher

He’s someone that’s on the platform?

steven galanis

No, he’s not. He’s not on the platform.

kara swisher

He’s not?

steven galanis

And he gets requested like way more than a Beyonce or a J. Lo.

kara swisher

What does he do that is so requested?

steven galanis

He’s basically the Jimmy Fallon of Gen Z. So he’s the one to watch. And if you go take a look after this interview, if you go look at his Instagram account, David Dobrik, it’ll blow you away, his engagement compared to other people that you think are more traditionally famous. So he’s just massive.

kara swisher

So why is Dave not on your platform?

steven galanis

Why is David not on the platform?

kara swisher

Yeah. Why?

steven galanis

Yeah. We’ve been working at him. But frankly, he makes so much money doing other stuff that it’s not there. And as I mentioned earlier, we’ve really found product market fit so far with people who are more famous than rich.

kara swisher

Let’s talk about the business plan. So on Cameo, you can book David Hasselhoff for $499 to give a pep talk or whatever, or I can get a cameo from Ken Bone — I do not want one — the red sweater guy from the 2016 debate for $25. The priciest cameo personality is Caitlyn Jenner, who charges $2,500 for a birthday greeting that might last, say, 30 seconds. You all get 25% of whatever these people make, whether it’s Ken Bone or Caitlyn Jenner. How are prices determined?

steven galanis

The talent has always been able to set their own price. That was like a fundamental belief I had from the beginning of the platform. I never wanted anybody to say that Cameo wasn’t worth their time. So if they picked their own price, by definition, each video is worth it for them. And I remember when Andre Drummond, who was a max salary player for the Detroit Pistons in the NBA, he was making $25 million a year, came to me and he’s like, Steven, this is great. I want to join Cameo, but I think I need to be $10,000. Because a couple of years ago, I got paid $40,000 to show up at some kid’s bar mitzvah. And I started talking to him about the math behind that and why he didn’t need to make that. I told him to think about his earnings per minute. So Andre Drummond makes $25 million a year. I told him to take $25 million divide by 2,000 hours in a work week, which is 50 40-hour weeks, divide that by 60, and he actually makes $208 per minute on a max salary in the NBA. So if he was to do two videos per minute on Cameo for 100 bucks or $150, he could make the same effective rate per minute on our platform as he does playing in the NBA. And while we started with that earnings per minute, today, it’s priced almost more like Zillow. So I think people are coming on, and they’re looking at comps. And we have great backend data. And we can show people like, hey, here’s, if you’re the quarterback of the New York Giants, here’s what the quarterback of the Chicago Bears is doing. Here’s a really good come for you. Here’s some quarterbacks.

kara swisher

So when you think about a lot of them are also people that were not famous, that had a short shelf life in a show that was maybe a show I remember like a “Gilligan’s Island” for me or “Saved By the Bell” or whatever. So this idea, it creates a second wind for them. Do you think that’s more important, this sort of nostalgic thing?

steven galanis

So we categorize talent in three ways. We think of talent as nostalgic, now, and next. And people are constantly moving through those different things. So we’re really good at getting people on the next chart, right? So people, when they’re about to start their Netflix show or they’re about to be on “The Bachelor“, they’ll join Cameo right away. And some of those people that are the next talent, they blow up. Their Netflix show goes crazy, or they have a viral YouTube video. All of a sudden, they’re now. And then some people that are now, one day, are going to slip from the public consciousness. And they’re going to end up as nostalgic talent. And that’s why like, for a good example, the soup Nazi from “Seinfeld” is like one of the top talent on Cameo.

archived recording (larry thomas)

Hey, Chris, congratulations to you and Heather on your engagement. After you get married, no soup for you.

steven galanis

He wasn’t a huge deal himself. But because he was an iconic bit player of a really famous show. Or another guy that does really well is the actor that played Russ Hanneman from “Silicon Valley“, right?

kara swisher

Yeah. He’s great.

steven galanis

He’s not the star but it’s such an iconic character. And again, these are people who are more famous than they are rich.

kara swisher

So what does soup Nazi make?

steven galanis

He makes over six figures a year with us.

kara swisher

The soup Nazi guy?

steven galanis

Yep.

kara swisher

So you look for those iconic figures in old shows and things like that?

steven galanis

Yeah. Those are Cameo gold.

kara swisher

So when you’re paying these nonstar celebrities that they’re doing these 30-second videos for money, it gives this idea that everybody is for sale and that people have a price. Do you find that troubling at all?

steven galanis

That’s always, that’s literally that’s always been true. If you look at recording labels, there’s been the debates this year that you’ve seen with Taylor Swift and with Kanye West about people wanting their masters back, right? These talent are, a lot of times, signing their earning potential away before they’ve made it. And there’s a lot of predatory practices that are legacy in Hollywood, legacy in the music industry. And technology has been the great equalizer in allowing people like Cody Ko, this YouTuber I was talking about earlier, right? He got a camera. He started making YouTube videos. And now he’s one of the biggest YouTubers on Earth. So I think that’s a really exciting part of the future of Hollywood. And those business models weren’t working. And that’s why — they weren’t working for all but maybe the very, very top of the heap. And in a world where there is an exponential amount of famous people being produced, but the legacy business model which supports it is growing exponentially, that gap between fame and monetization continues to widen.

kara swisher

Mm-hmm. And so what does that mean about power in Hollywood? Where do you think it is? Is it dispersed? Or is there no center of power anymore?

steven galanis

It’s definitely getting more dispersed. I mean, I think there’s certainly legacy power centers. And people like Jeremy Zimmer and Ari Emanuel are extremely powerful and will continue to be no matter what happens, how long COVID —

kara swisher

This is the head of UTA and the head of WME. Go ahead.

steven galanis

Yeah. I mean, they’re unbelievable. I love both of them. And I think that they’re brilliant businessmen and have built monolithic empires. But at the same time, this rise of the rest — like, social media has been the great equalizer. And one other thing that I think is an important concept, we were talking earlier about these celebrities that have a fleeting moment, their 15 minutes of fame. In the postsocial age, the 15 minutes of fame lasts forever. A good example, last year, Lil Nas X had a song called “Old Town Road” that became the most—

kara swisher

Yeah. I heard it.

steven galanis

And it was number one on the Billboard charts for a record amount of time. He now has millions of followers. And even if he never has another song that hits, he has a platform for the rest of his life.

kara swisher

We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, hit Subscribe. You’ll be able to catch up on “Sway” episodes you may have missed like my conversation with Sarah Cooper. And you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Steven Galanis after the break. [MUSIC PLAYING]

In late October, Galanis’s company got a press spike when a cameo of Chris Christie made the rounds. In the video, the former New Jersey governor tells a guy named Greg to come back to the Garden State.

archived recording (chris christie)

We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can come back voluntarily. Or maybe, they’ll send me out to get you. I don’t think that’s what you want, Greg. So get yourself back to Jersey quick. And let’s have some Jersey fun and be Jersey strong.

kara swisher

Well done, Chris. But what Christie didn’t know was that this guy Greg was actually Greg Gianforte, then the Republican nominee for Montana governor. He also didn’t know that the cameo was bought by the campaign of Gianforte’s Democratic opponent as a prank to keep him out of Montana. Christie got pissed. Cameo made headlines. Did you have to field angry calls from Chris Christie?

steven galanis

Chris Christie or any talent is able to read every request. They can accept it or decline it. In this case, sometimes people will try to roast people. Those will get declined if they’re obvious. If it’s not obvious like in this case, hey, tell Steve to do a great job tonight, right? That request was generic. Chris Christie did the video. And then it wasn’t the video or anything that was wrong with the video. So there’s nothing like on a content moderation side that we would have been able to do. But the internet has nefarious actors, and sometimes people are out to roast somebody. Or sometimes people are out to trick people. And the bigger that we get, there will just be more and more incidents of that.

kara swisher

But he could have caught it himself. You’re relying on Chris Christie to catch it himself?

steven galanis

Well, I would argue that he wouldn’t have been able to catch it himself because it was a very generic request, right? So it wasn’t the video that was wrong. It was really the context in which somebody shared the video.

kara swisher

And did you get a call from him? Was he angry? Has he made videos since?

steven galanis

I know Chris ended up like — there was a lot of press that came around about that. And Chris went temporarily unavailable. He may be back. He may not. I’m not sure. On any given day, people can turn themselves on or off just like an Uber driver.

kara swisher

Right.

steven galanis

But as a good example, we’ve had other incidences with people like Flavor Flav or Brett Favre or Soulja Boy who have been subject, or David Hasselhoff or Chuck Norris who been subject to pranks like that. And I’d say in talking to the talent, most of them understand that by breaking down that barrier and by opening the red velvet rope, occasionally, there’s going to be bad people to come in. But overwhelmingly, they’re willing to take that the risk that, every once in a while, something that isn’t exactly what they want could pop through. I think the paywall really filters out a lot of the negativity. You got to remember that these same people could get trolled on Twitter or Instagram for free. Or if you open their DMs, there’s so many haters in there. We’ve just found the paywall to be a great moderator.

kara swisher

It’s interesting. It’s also sort of part of me really wants to prank Seb Gorka, for example, and then not. And then, why would I bother kind of thing. He’s quite active on you. You have a lot of conservatives or right wing people on there. Why is that? It’s interesting.

steven galanis

I mean, you have a president who’s a reality show star. And the people that were in his cabinet became famous in a different era than even people in the Obama administration. So I think it really just had more to do with what party was in power as Cameo was rising. And now that you have a new president coming up and new people that will be ex-cabinet members, this will probably become a more natural platform for people on both sides of the aisle.

kara swisher

Yeah. I don’t see James Baker on this somehow. You had a PR crisis also on a more serious topic, which is, again, with content moderation. A group of white supremacists had Brett Favre use coded language as anti-Semitic. How do you police those? I think you have something called a Nazi bot.

steven galanis

So Nazi bot is an internal tool we made in response to the Brett Favre incident, which happened just over two years ago now. And basically what we did, we went to the Southern Poverty Law Center and got a lot of hate terms. We added them to a database. So any time something like that pops up in a request on Slack, our safety team will get notified. They’ll take a look. And if it looks suspicious, we might tell the talent, hey, you should investigate this one more. But a lot of times too, when talent sees requests that just seem fishy, they just decline them.

kara swisher

They just decline them. But do you feel more pressure given so much pressure for content moderation among the larger services?

steven galanis

No. I don’t because I think we have so much. Again, our incident rate of this is so low. I mean, I can’t imagine what that number would have been for the first million Twitter posts or the first million Reddit posts or things like that.

kara swisher

Are there standards of who’s allowed to be on there? You have Joe Arpaio who’s controversial, the Bagel Boss guy who went viral for misogynistic comments. How do you decide the standards of the talent itself?

steven galanis

We’re a marketplace. We believe that people can vote with their pocketbooks. We have three rules as far as community standards on the platform, no nudity on the platform, no inciting violence, no hate speech on all three of those things on the platform. So we’ll let anybody on. But if they violate our terms, we kick them off. And we’ve just felt that’s the best way to handle it. There really is no right answer on this. You could spend the rest of this time debating me on if that’s the best way to do it. So if there’s somebody that you don’t want to book, don’t book them. There’s plenty of other people for you. And that’s the way that we’ve approached it.

kara swisher

Do you have any no people, 100% no? OJ Simpson, for example. I mean, you could think of —

steven galanis

We’d absolutely let any of those people on, right? This is a free country. One that we got a lot of press about this year was when the former governor of my home state Rod Blagojevich came on the platform. Like should we allow to do that? This is the United States of America. People deserve second chances, especially in a world of cancel culture. If people don’t want to support them, they can book other people. But if you play by our rules on the platform, there’s a home for you on Cameo.

kara swisher

But so there’s not anybody you wouldn’t have on it? I just want to make it clear.

steven galanis

There are like literally some people that you can’t, right? It might be like a convicted pedophile, for example. There’s probably some things or somebody that’s using the proceeds to fund illicit operations. So like El Chapo probably couldn’t have been on Cameo. But in general, I believe that we need to let the talent almost regulate themselves by their behavior. So if they violate our rules, we kick them off. Otherwise, what happens is if we’re the gatekeeper of who could really come on, basically, like we would be implicitly endorsing every single person on the platform. And frankly, I don’t feel comfortable doing that. If the #MeToo incident has shown anything, there’s a lot of people in Hollywood that maybe have done bad things in their life. And I can’t sit up here and say every person on Cameo is a choirboy. I’m never going to make that claim. But I can say that the people on Cameo are going to play by the rules. And if they don’t, we’ll kick them off.

kara swisher

All right, I’m asking because the other platforms have had to deal with this very clearly. Whether it’s Alex Jones or Steve Bannon, some of them have kicked him off. They face this every single day as they get bigger. And as you get bigger, you’re going to face this every single day.

steven galanis

Yeah. Certainly, I do think that’ll happen. But even with those platforms, right, it took a decade for them to start having policies —

kara swisher

Well, there is such a thing as anticipating problems, you know, anticipating. Like if you had a pedophile on there, for example, who talked about flower arranging or something else, they wouldn’t be breaking the thing. But there, you would have the problem of it and really the stink of it.

steven galanis

Well, it’s also tough, too, because this year, the first half of the year, the top talent was actually Jerry Harris from the Netflix show Cheer, right? This was an inspirational person, became an A-plus- list star. And then now he’s in jail or awaiting trial on pedophilia charges, right? So again, that’s a perfect example. This was like Mister Good Morning America six months ago. But we don’t know what’s going on in everybody’s private life. But I do think that the risk is pretty minimal when you could think of the reward.

kara swisher

You will deal with it when it comes up —

steven galanis

For sure.

kara swisher

— is your point.

steven galanis

Yeah.

kara swisher

So there is a soon-to-be reality show star that has a lot of time on his hands coming up, Donald Trump. Would you want him on your service? Have you contacted him?

steven galanis

I think Trump would be probably the highest- booked person on Cameo, by far. As a proxy this year, we have 15 Donald Trump impersonators. They’ve collectively done $3.2 million in GMV.

kara swisher

You had that number right at your fingertips, didn’t you.

steven galanis

Well, we showed it during an all-hands last week. So it’s probably even higher now. Those pre-Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I think Trump would be fantastic on Cameo. I also know that there’s probably a lot of people that would be infuriated if he came on the platform. And they might come to us and say, how could you allow Donald Trump to be on the same platform as us? But like he’s on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, not TikTok, but on all these other platforms with them. So it’s like you just have to have a ubiquitous platform.

kara swisher

Have you reached out to him?

steven galanis

We did reach out to his campaign. So just like we did fundraising for the Biden campaign, we spent a lot of the last two years develop the infrastructure to allow Cameo to be a means for political fundraising on both sides of the aisle. The Biden campaign said yes. The Trump campaign said no. We offered the opportunity to both sides. But they just decided not to engage.

kara swisher

So make the case for me going on Cameo. Make the case, Steven. Although, I probably would sell for $1.

steven galanis

Well, number one, journalists, broadcasters, podcast hosts are people that are really important. Like, you have your listeners that live and die with your show. And I’m sure you’ve been DMed by your super fans asking for shout outs, asking for product endorsements, asking for advice. It’s just a great way to connect.

kara swisher

So what should I — what, what, how would I decide what to charge?

steven galanis

I think my team would take a look at other podcast hosts, other reporters.

kara swisher

I would pay other people. That’s what it would be. That’s what, you would come to me and you’d say, Kara, you have to pay people $20 to take your —

steven galanis

Look. My mom’s 10 bucks.

kara swisher

What does your mom sell? What is your mom?

steven galanis

People just want like generic mom advice. Another fun one was my college hockey coach, who’s not famous, came on in the early days. And he was just like a hockey coach giving advice to hockey players, right? So I’m sure there’s a lot of like aspiring journalists or podcast hosts that would love to hear from you because you’ve had an incredible career.

kara swisher

Ah, we’ll see, Steve. Thank you, Steven. This has been fascinating. I really appreciate it. And I will consider going on your service.

steven galanis

Yeah. Get on. The holidays are coming up. It’ll be an awesome gift for somebody for Hanukkah or Christmas.

kara swisher

I’m sure they’re just dying to have me yell at them. I make so much content already for free.

steven galanis

We’d love to have you. And you can be $0 too if you want. You don’t have to charge money. You just can’t be $1 because we lose money with the Stripe fees. You can’t be $1.

kara swisher

Fair point. OK, all right, thank you, Steven. I appreciate.

steven galanis

. Awesome great to meet you.

kara swisher

All right, bye.

“Sway” is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Paula Szuchman, with music and sound design by Isaac Jones, fact checking by Michelle Harris. Special thanks to Renan Borrelli, Liriel Higa, and Kathy Tu. If you’re in a podcast app already, you know how to subscribe to a podcast, so subscribe to this one. If you’re listening on The Times website and want to get each new episode of Sway with a side order of soup Nazi and some crackers, download a podcast app like Stitcher or Google Podcast, then search for “Sway“, and hit Subscribe. You’ll get episodes every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening.

Steven Galanis is helping celebrities get into the gig economy. He launched his company, Cameo, three years ago as a marketplace for the famous (and not-so-famous) to sell personalized shout-outs.

For $500, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may wish you a happy birthday. For $200, Ian Ziering (a.k.a. Steve Sanders from the original “Beverly Hills, 90210”) can send your mom a Happy Mother’s Day greeting. And for $10, the company’s chief executive, Mr. Galanis, will wish your kid’s team good luck on its next hockey game.

[You can listen to this episode of “Sway” on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]

The company is facilitating fan requests, gag gifts and even political pranks. (The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was a recent target.) But the point, says Mr. Galanis, is to bridge the gap for people who are “more famous than rich” — aging athletes, faded pop idols, out-of-work supporting actors and even artists whose inappropriate actions have led them to be “canceled.”

In the process, Mr. Galanis is taking on Hollywood power houses. Cameo is cutting agents, managers and publicists out of the equation, compressing the distance between celebrities and, well, the rest of us.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Image
Credit...Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images

Thoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.

“Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Paula Szuchman; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones. Special thanks to Michelle Harris for fact-checking this episode, as well as Renan Borelli, Liriel Higa and Kathy Tu.

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