Joe Sugg talks about YouTube and his acting career: "It just snowballed!"

Virgin Radio

27 Mar 2021, 13:24

Chances are you recognise Joe Sugg from either Strictly Come Dancing or YouTube. Soon though, he'll be a familiar face thanks to his acting skills.

He joined the Graham Norton Radio Show with Waitrose this morning to tell Graham all about his new role in The Syndicate, a drama about how winning the lottery goes awry.

Joe previously started out acting in the West End in Waitress. "Going back to 2019 I had a role in the theatre,  which was the first time I did any sort of acting in general. Being on stage singing for the first time, it was all quite daunting but then it led to me really enjoying it. I was thinking - 'actually i could do more of this!' so I did a self-tape. They called me to Leeds to do a follow-up audition. Next thing you know I've got the job and I'm in the show!" he exclaims. 

Graham asked Joe how it was being on set and whether he had any nerves. "Like with everything I always worry, because obviously I come with this sort of YouTuber tag on me, so that's the first thing they hear: it's Joe Sugg the YouTuber."

" I went into it thinking it felt like the first day of secondary school - but I had quite a rough first day of secondary school as I got on the wrong bus and went to the wrong school so I was quite traumatised from that - but no they were all lovely," he laughs. 

"They all really took me under their wing, they taught me so much as well. Just being around them was really inspiring,  it was amazing to see the work that they do."

Speaking of YouTube, Graham marvelled at a recent video of Joe's of him setting up a trampoline that had almost 7 million views. He asked Joe if it ever feels strange that so many people watch.

"I guess to start with, I didn't really get it either!" admits Joe. "To be honest, I couldn't get my head around the fact that people want to watch me put content out there.  But then those people come from me being consistent back in the day of regularly uploading. The audience sort of gets to know you,because of what you put out there, and they sort of feel like they've grown up with you in a way."

"It's an unusual scenario that I can't quite get my head around now, to be honest!" he says.

Joe's sister Zoe Sugg a.k.a Zoella is also a famous YouTuber, and Joe explained how it all started.

"It's going back 10 years now almost, but I used to be an apprentice roof thatcher, that was my trade that I was learning. My sister got me into YouTube, she started making YouTube videos and putting them up, and she had a blog."

"We'd been filming ourselves with our parents camcorder, doing plays in the garden and using our imagination to make videos since we were kids. So she was like, 'you should give it a go, because you sort of do that stuff anyway, and put them up on the internet and see how you get on.' I thought that sounds great, so I gave it a go one weekend and it just sort of took off. It just snowballed."

He explains: "It got to a point where I was still working five days a week on the roof, and in my spare time in the weekend, I would make these videos, and it got to a point where I think I had like 1.2 million people following my channel."

Joe explains his caution: "YouTube was such a new thing back then, we didn't know how long it was going to last, but it did luckily, and I've not had to get back on a roof since."

You can see Joe in Series 4 of The Syndicate, this Tuesday on BBC One.