YouTube star Charlotte Dobre opened up about the future of her content, how she balances acting and being an influencer, and what it was like bringing her relationship into the public eye in an exclusive interview with Dexerto at VidCon 2024.
If you’re a fan of the AITA (Am I the A**hole) subreddit, you’ve likely come across Charlotte Dobre in your YouTube recommendations at some point. Charlotte is a content creator, actress, and former event photographer who has skyrocketed to online fame thanks to her humorous reactions to posts on Reddit, as well as other dramatic sagas on social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and more.
Although she’s best known for her YouTube channel, Charlotte started out as an actress and attended improv school (something she credits for her reactions in her videos).
Acting is where her heart is, and it’s something she got the chance to do in her very own scripted comedy series, The Swipe Life, which she has finished filming and is currently pitching to networks.
It’s no easy feat balancing daily uploads while simultaneously producing, writing, and acting in your own show — something she opened up to us about during an interview at VidCon 2024.
“That was a time when I was posting every single day,” Charlotte recalled of her time filming the series. “I was not only acting, I was also the writer and the executive producer. I was very busy with The Swipe Life, but I also had to post every morning. I was tired, very tired, but it’s one of those things that just comes with the territory.”Charlotte credits her team of editors for helping her schedule videos in advance during this time so she could focus on the show, admitting that she “wasn’t as active on the channel because I was needed on set.”
Since then, Charlotte has reduced her output to three videos a week — a development her fans were very understanding of when she announced it in a community post on YouTube back in December.
For the most part, Charlotte’s fanbase is extremely positive. She gushed about her meet and greet with viewers at VidCon, saying the experience was both invigorating and “humbling.”
“I was just so blown away that people even showed up to the meet and greet,” she admitted. “People were crying. I’m like, ‘My goodness, you guys are so sweet!’ I was just grateful that they were there. It’s been really, really a very humbling experience.”
However, her fans are also not shy about sharing their opinions on her content… especially when they don’t agree with her views on an AITA post. Charlotte spoke with us about these moments, saying she thinks it’s “fair” for everyone to share their opinions and that the discourse is what makes her community, and her content, so special.
“I think that everybody’s entitled to their opinion, and so am I,” she said. “At the end of the day, I’m never going to say something that is hurtful. In my eyes, I’m saying what seems fair to me, and my opinion is based on things that I’ve gone through and whether or not I can empathize with the [person].
“Maybe I’m projecting, I don’t know,” she laughed. “But then, so is everybody else, right? At the end of the day, it’s just entertainment. I don’t want to say I’m playing a character. I’m very much being myself, but I’ve got to keep people watching. If I’m boring and I don’t have an opinion, what is the point of watching? It’s for entertainment. It’s for fun. I love that it creates engagement, and by all means, share whatever you feel is right. You’re totally entitled to do that. Your experience is different from mine and you are allowed to have that experience.”
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Her fans were also very accepting of her relationship with fellow creator Mike Ricci when she brought him into her world — although there was also a sizable portion of her audience who, in her own words, were quite protective of her in the beginning.
“There were a lot of people who were a little bit like, ‘You better not hurt her’ — you know, that kind of stuff,” she laughed. “But Mike is really super involved in everything I’m doing. He’s an incredible videographer and filmmaker. We film our brand deals when we do them together, and I’ve started integrating him into some of the videos.
“There were 9,000 comments of people being like, ‘Okay, he can stay.’ He got their approval. He’s super funny. And I knew that I knew that they would [like him], I just needed to kind of introduce him in a way that wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we’re doing something totally different.’ People loved him, and I love him, so that makes me really happy. I’m glad that they approve.”
More recently, Charlotte has been creating different kinds of content outside of her general reaction videos, including conversations with special guests and collaborations with other YouTubers in the AITA space. This is something she wants to continue doing in the future, and she’s more than open for collabs with fellow creators and comedians.
“Julie Nolke and I have definitely wanted to get something in the books,” she told us. “It’s hard, because she does sketches and I do reaction content. But we’re both writers, we’re both comedians, and I would love to work with her.
“I’ve collaborated with Stephen He in the past and he’s a friend of mine. He’s a great guy, so much fun. HopeScope is also a really good friend of mine. Genuinely, anybody who’s involved in the comedy space would be super, super fun to work with.”
Charlotte told us that she never saw herself becoming an influencer when she first started her career as an actress — but now that she’s a major influencer, she doesn’t have any plans to leave YouTube, even if (or rather, when) she makes it big in Hollywood.
“I got into YouTube because I wanted to have the creative freedom and a schedule where I could go to auditions and I could act,” she explained. “I feel like having this kind of audience has really helped me in that way. And now that I come with an audience, I almost feel like it’s going to be easier for me to get cast. I have an agent now, I’ve got a manager in the States, and the goal is to use the platform that I’ve built and still maintain it. I don’t plan to leave YouTube.
“I wanna do both. I definitely want to act. It’s been something that I’ve dreamed about since I was a little kid, and that’s never changed about me. I love playing pretend. I love the art of it. I’m so passionate about it. It’s what sets my soul on fire. I love YouTube and I love performing and I love entertaining, and that’s satiated me for the time being. But there’s nothing better than when you work so hard and you get that email and you book the job and then you show up on set. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s what I live for. So I have to chase that.”
Charlotte believes that the future of entertainment is undeniably entwined with online content — something Smosh stars Shayne Topp and Courtney Miller also told us in our interview with them at VidCon.
With names like Markiplier creating his own film and Kai Cenat appearing onstage at a Nicki Minaj concert, more and more influencers are making their way into the mainstream, and Charlotte is already well on her way to that spotlight.