- The Publish Press
- Posts
- Why Rhett and Link Made a TV Show (On Their Terms)
Why Rhett and Link Made a TV Show (On Their Terms)
We talked with the veteran creators at their studio
Good morning. ICYMI, the cover story for our latest print zine was a deep dive exploration of the creator economyâs collision course with Hollywood.
Part of that journey: A conversation with veteran comedy creators Rhett and Link about why theyâve decided to stop pitching films to traditional entertainment studios after a decade-plus of tryingâopting instead to produce a new, TV-style show in-house and distribute it on their YouTube channel.
Read on for more from that trip to Rhett and Linkâs studio in this special edition Sunday send. And when youâre done, the entire cover story is now available to read on our site here.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/7f8960ea-8852-407e-9156-52cb00e06e36/0623_Divider_B.png)
Inside Rhett and Linkâs Journey Through Hollywood
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/b1bbe062-aea0-40ee-8b9e-723ccf2f70bf/Story_Image_RL.png?t=1722765205)
Rhett McLaughlin (left) and Charles âLinkâ Neal (center) walk me (right) through their complicated relationship with Hollywood / Photography by Taiga Fukuyama
Iâve made this stop-and-go trek to Burbank, California, once before.
The cityâlocated 12 miles northwest of downtown Los Angelesâhouses some of the countryâs most iconic movie studios, many of which I passed on a trip in 2022. I remember feeling the gravitas of these streets thenâ, the concrete and steel entrenched firmly into the mythos of Hollywood. While grabbing coffee on Glenoaks Boulevard, I even stumbled upon the headquarters of Cartoon Network.
Just a year later, though, that same building was empty. Massive layoffs and restructures at Warner Bros. Discovery (Cartoon Networkâs parent company) effectively killed the beloved kidsâ channel overnight.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/8ee62366-1b64-452b-9e70-0c4ef4203861/_Title_Burbank_crop.png?t=1722769813)
Illustration by Moy Zhong
The nondescript brick building that I enter in Burbank this time around does not share a centuryâs worth of history like some of its neighboring studios, yet the company operating here is anything but oblivious to the challenging landscape (and perceptions) surrounding them. âWe do not want to be seen as an architect of some downfall of broadcast or television,â Brian Flanagan, the president of Mythical, tells me on an overcast late February day. âWe see ourselves as a bridge.â
There are two reasons why my journey begins here, at Mythical. The first is to get an up-close look at the company started by Rhett McLaughlin and Charles âLinkâ Neal, a towering comedy duo (six-foot-seven and six-foot, respectively) that turned online virality in the early days of YouTube into their uber-successful talk show Good Mythical Morning (GMM).
These days, Mythical has spun off several lucrative shows and products. At the time of my visit, the Mythical Kitchen teamâââled by Chef Josh Schererâââis prepping for their first cookbook launch (the Los Angeles Times would go on to describe the book as âevery bit as colorful, personality-driven and flat-out deranged as its web-TV counterpartâŚ[with] real culinary lessons to be learnedâ).
Rhett and Link, therefore, arenât the only aspect of their company that stands large in stature. Mythical has ballooned to 120 employees. Everyone from editors and videographers to cooks and business strategists populates several sets and two open rooms that could be mistaken for small airplane hangars.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/de7cc172-f758-4fdd-936a-c1d6299c5b95/mythical_office.png?t=1722653545)
Inside Mythicalâs studio in Burbank, CA / Photo by Taiga Fukuyama
This demonstrated investment is purposeful. âWeâre in L.A. spending more money than most creators do,â Brian says. âWe employ a much bigger team than most and have a huge studio space to be, like, in the mix in Burbank hereâââsignaling that weâre ready to help companies that have lost audience.â
One graphic designer, Matthew Dwyer, has been with Mythical for eight years, beginning with a paid internship while in film school. âWhen I started, I was the only person with âdesignâ in my job title,â he tells me. âNow, Iâm the Vice President of Design.â Still, his parents didnât believe he had a real job until they visited and saw the office for themselves.
The second reason why my journey begins here is because of a video Rhett and Link uploaded on February 6, titled âWeâre Done.â After acknowledging the soft clickbait, the creators go on to proclaim that no, theyâre not retiring from YouTube. Instead, theyâre done trying to pitch their creative projects to gatekeepers at traditional studios.
âHow did we seem in that video? Like I seem right now?â Link asks me, uninterested in hiding his frustration when discussing their fraught history with Hollywood.
Here on the GMM set, Rhett and Link walk me through that odyssey for over an hour. We start with their first taste of Los Angeles, when The CW selected them to co-host a reality TV series called Online Nation in 2007.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/02b71e16-7901-441c-87c2-f6bd4c9691c6/_Illo_Myth.png?t=1722765354)
Illustration by Moy Zhong
The show lasted four episodes and has become something of an inside joke among Mythical fans. Nevertheless, flying out to L.A. for extended periods of time did have its perks. Rhett and Link hired a manager and took meetingsâcalled âgeneralsââacross town with the goal of pitching a TV pilot. Yet producers always seemed more interested in getting to know the internet funnymen from North Carolina rather than entertaining their creative ideas.
One time, while waiting in the lobby before a general, Rhett and Link hatched a film concept âabout a group of aliens that falls in love with a human band. 30 years later, the band has to get back together in order to convince the aliens not to take over the world.
âThe pitch left a good impression, I think,â Link says.
âYeah, but we didnât get another meeting after that!â Rhett replies.
They burned a lot of gas driving back and forth over the hills in those days, with not much to show for it. Production companies all seemed to have the same message: Why donât you just go make these projects and upload them online?
There was a big difference between making âone-off internet videosâ and âprofessionalâ movies with bigger budgets, though. At least, thatâs what the pair told themselves. âMaybe thereâs an imaginary wall we put up,â Rhett says. Producers wouldnât greenlight any films without proof-of-concept first, though, so what choice did they have but to focus on their YouTube channel?
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/0e493637-9f55-490f-8167-92a90f724e52/we_re_done_rounded_edges.png?t=1722653332)
On February 6, Rhett and Link explained that after a decade-plus, they were done pitching film and TV projects to traditional Hollywood studios / Rhett & Link
For the next four years, thatâs what they did, returning to North Carolina and honing their comedy sketches. One series, I Love Local Commercials, saw them shoot low-cost ads for small businesses. The commercials began regularly reaching millions of viewers on YouTube; outlets like The New York Times and CNN even featured them. Their popularity led to sponsorships, and then profitability.
âIt was so successful that television production companies started approaching us,â Link recalls. âIronically, when we gave up on [generals]âŚthatâs when our manager started getting those cold calls and emails.â
IFC won a bidding war with MTV for the rights to adapt the web series, and the first season of Commercial Kings premiered in 2011. The show was âthe most viral thing IFC made that year,â (Rhettâs words), and TIME included one of the commercials in its âTop Ten Memes of the Year.â Rhett and Link were convinced IFC would order a second season.
It didnât.
âWhat it amounted to was, âOkay, some people in a small room make this decision about what they want their network to look like, and they really have our fate in their hands,ââ Rhett says. âLooking back, itâs so easy to see how asinine it is. What we didnât realizeâââbecause we hadnât done it yetâââ[was that] you can put your fate in the hands of a much larger group of people.â
Rhett and Linkâââin their early 30s, married, with young childrenâââhad uprooted their lives and moved to Los Angeles for the show. The duo had no choice but to get back to work and figure out the next step themselves. With their backs against the wall and chips on their shoulders, they launched their morning talk show, GMM, out of Rhettâs garage in 2012.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/e7eaaebc-fc11-4ebf-ab93-75d54635624a/Story_Image_Stevie.png?t=1722765049)
Mythicalâs Chief Creative Officer, Stevie Levine, has helped scale the company to over 100 employees and eight figures in revenue / Photo by Taiga Fukuyama
After a year of uploading GMM every weekday, YouTube (the company) funded The Mythical Show, a half-hour, weekly version filmed in front of a live studio audienceâthe platformâs take on SNL. That show only lasted one season, but the budget allowed Rhett and Link to bring on a small team, including Stevie Levine as producer.
Stevie is now the Chief Creative Officer of Mythical. Back then, she was a recent film school grad and L.A. transplant trying to make a name for herself in Hollywood. So, following The Mythical Show, the trio had a heart-to-heart. Creating episodes of GMM had become a âto-do listâ no one really enjoyed, but everyone recognized its potential.
âThe three of us sat down and were like, âWe should elevate the creative and we should elevate the look, and we should build a team that does all those things,ââ Stevie tells me. ââAnd if we do that, weâre all going to be creatively fulfilled by it.ââ
The rest, as they say, is history.
That early buy-in unlocked everything. It was a gradual process, adding parts to the airplane as they were flying it daily. Slowly but surely, everything grew: the headcount, the episodes (over 2,500), and the revenue (over $35 million in 2023, according to Forbes). Celebrities including Post Malone, Amy Schumer, and Kobe Bryant have appeared on GMM; the overall business has diversified through products, podcasts, premium subscriptions, and live tours.
At this stageâââand amid the overall entertainment industryâs strugglesâMythical presents the type of flywheel media executives salivate over. And yetâŚ
âWhenever we had time, it was still always a priority to try to make somethingâa television show, or a movie,â Link tells me. âThat was always our original desire as kids: to be filmmakers.â
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/aea11de8-fdaf-456d-9b63-2c1bc0ea4a08/wonderhole.png?t=1722653147)
âRhett and Linkâs Wonderhole,â a new TV-style show from the comedy duo, premieres on their YouTube channel on August 23 / Rhett & Link
Doors did open as their star power increased online, and they kept having the ârightâ conversations. Adam Sandler, Jack Black, Ben Stillerâââname a comedian, and thereâs a good chance Rhett and Link pitched that comedianâs production company on a project. What disheartened the duo was that the big names never actually sat in on the meetings. âWe even met with Andy Sambergâs company, and he was in the other room,â Link says.
They tried everything: scripted, non-scripted, docu-reality, reality competition. They offered to direct and star; when that didnât work, they agreed to write and bring in younger cast members. They penned a bestselling mystery novel, The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek, in 2019, which they thought would naturally lend itself to a silver-screen adaptation (no dice).
One of the final straws was a full-circle moment, mirroring their first experiences taking generals around town a decade earlier. Rhett and Link brought in a well-connected screenwriter for a last-ditch effort to adapt Bleak Creek, and Peacock, NBCâs then-fledgling streaming service, had shown some interest. Yet Rhett and Link knew things were trending in the wrong direction by the time they arrived at the meeting.
âWeâre sitting in the lobby with our Hollywood writer-collaborator,â Link says. âAnd I remember weâre about to go into the meeting, and I turn to him and say, âWell, this may be the last time we see or talk to you again.ââ
âYou manifested it,â Rhett adds.
Which brings us back to âWeâre Done,â where they announced their next big project: a scripted, TV-esque series made with the resources at Mythicalâs disposal. Theyâre releasing it in August to the over five million people subscribed to their original âRhett and Linkâ YouTube channel.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/d6a430cb-41dc-4f74-b541-e2e53e916aae/Story_Image_RL_Vert.png?t=1722764927)
Rhett and Link pictured on the set of âGood Mythical Morningâ / Photo by Taiga Fukuyama
The duo is mum on plot details for now, but they do mention that theyâre focused on process over profit. As creators, they (and their team) are used to wearing many hats. Everyone involved in the project has contributed to writing, directing, starring, and producing, in one way or another.
âOur entire lives, weâve run up against the rules of the way things are supposed to go,â Rhett says. âIf any sort of traditional outfit showed up and watched the way that we work on set, they would be like, âI donât really know whoâs in charge here.â
â[But what] weâve cultivated works for usâŚit doesnât fit a mold weâve ever seen before, because we just canât fit in now,â he concludes. âWe canât. We just donât fit.â
After years and years of searching for approval from Hollywood bigwigs, Rhett and Link are finally taking the wheel, channeling their creative energies into simply doing the thing themselves. They tell me theyâre feeling invigorated by this revelation, excited for any and all opportunities that will follow.
I think I believe them.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/7f8960ea-8852-407e-9156-52cb00e06e36/0623_Divider_B.png)
To read more from âThe Year Creators Went Hollywood,â including:
A trip to Lilly Singhâs SXSW movie premiere
A conversation with prank creator Steezy Kane
And an on-set look at Wendover Productionsâ new show
Rather read it in print? We still have a limited number of physical zines leftâpick up your copy of The Publish Paper: Volume 2 here.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/bdfd1b3a-ebd4-43b8-b47e-076a58122321/unnamed.png?t=1723243900)