How did he go from zero to 2.2 million TikTok followers and counting during the pandemic?
You can listen to my podcast with Lukas Arnold here:
I waited a while before jumping on the TikTok train, only watching videos via links until I finally downloaded the app and created my own account this year (don’t worry, or please worry, as I have yet to upload any videos of my own just yet).
Not sure whether I found Lukas Arnold via a viral link on Twitter to one of his impersonations of John Mulaney or Ben Shapiro, of if I simply found him organically from him landing on my main ForYou feed. Either way, the algorithm hooked me the minute I watched some of his bathroom musings, all of which ended with him sliding out of frame with a “Goodbyeeeeeee.”
So before the interview, let’s see a couple of his videos. If you dare!
Here is an edited and slightly condensed transcript of my conversation with Lukas Arnold!
Sean L. McCarthy: Last things first, thank you for joining me. I don’t know what the schedule of a TikTok star is like, but I can imagine you could be doing many TikToks while you’re talking to me. But… none of this was in your plan, right? When you went to Northwestern you were and presumably still are a serious theater actor.
Lukas Arnold: Oh, yeah, definitely still going for acting stuff. Definitely, comedy has taken, like the forefront what I think about and go for most, but um, but yeah, TikTok was not in the plan. At all. It was only something I started in the pandemic. And that was after I started doing stand-up in the summer of 2019. But before then and still now I would say, theater acting in general was the main focus for me.
I was looking at your earliest TikToks. And you did have stand-up clips on there, which show that you were performing in front of live people before the dynamic. But then looking at your resume, I noticed it says you mean make a mean chocolate lava cake. But it didn’t have any of the the normal prerequisites for comedians who were going through Chicago of Second City or improvOlympic. Yeah, or any of that stuff.
I didn’t do any of that stuff when I was at Northwestern. I was really just involved in just like student theater, and like the occasional short film or other film projects, but I really wasn’t in comedy, as it were, until I was 24, and I was here back home in New York.
What shifted for you?
What shifted for me? Well, I was always interested in doing stand-up. I did briefly join a group at college called The Comedy Forum, and they put up like stand-up shows around campus. But I went to a few meetings — and in their weekly meetings, you would all sit in a circle and you would just workshop material, just sitting down in a circle in chairs. And it was so anxiety-inducing that I was almost vibrating with terror of the idea of sharing my material, and I just — I was nowhere near ready for it. And, so I didn’t really invest too much time with that. And I just spent more time in theater and doing stuff like that. But it was when I was 24 that I started seeing a therapist and I started working through anxiety and just feeling more comfortable in my body and feeling confident and I thought, in just the first three months of therapy, I felt so much better, felt so much more in tune and I thought OK, what do I want to do with this? And I thought I really wanted to try stand-up, and I wasn’t ready to try open mics that was still a little too scary for me. But I took a class and that was the perfect stepping stone into stand-up for me.
Of course that’s how you end up in stand-up comedy and not doing improv or sketch. I’m saying all this stuff to my therapist. Oh, my therapist is laughing. Maybe other people will do this for money.
I will admit one thing, which is that I had a recent change of therapist, so my old therapist who I’ve been seeing since the beginning, for like two years. So a few months ago, she was moving practice and so I had to have a new one. But on our last session, she was like, by the way, considering I’m no longer a therapist, I do follow you on TikTok. And I think you’re really funny. I was like ewwwwww, ugggghhhh.
Did you give her the classic GOODBYE!?
No, I was just like, huh, it was more guttural I didn’t I couldn’t think of much to do.
So where did you take your one class that you said you took?
That was at Carolines Comedy School with Linda Smith.
So those first clips that you put on YouTube: Was that from your graduation?
No. But definitely some of those bits I’ve used later on, so that graduation show I have not — I did put it online at one point, but then I took it off because it wasn’t quite as good. I’m very proud of it. But it wasn’t like a good representation of what I feel like I could do now.
That’s good for you to recognize that even at 26. That’s good for you to recognize. Because as someone who covers comedy, so often, I have young comics who email me, and they want to show me their YouTube of their very first set and comment on it. And I want to say No! I do not want to comment on your very first thing. Because I can already tell you, it’s bad. And even if you think it’s good, in two years, you will think it’s bad.
Yeah. It’s interesting. Like I’ve seen it recently. And I think I can see like, it’s within spitting distance of like, the kind of rhythm and material and general sort of quality I think that I have now. But I definitely was not there yet. I was like a ball of nerves. I mean, I’m still a ball of nerves. But yeah, it was definitely right, that it’s not out in the public.
So let me just pause for one more second on this topic. Because I’m curious to know as a theater guy, what appealed to you more about stand-up than pursuing improv or sketch?
It was just something that I’ve been obsessed with ever since I was 13. Because when I was 13 — I wasn’t raised religiously, but my dad was Jewish, and I was very envious of my friends having bar mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs. And I thought I was basically just the giant party. That was all I wanted. But I was learning. I was like, studying for it, you know, reading the Torah and stuff. And I was losing interest very fast. But I was I was trying to like muscle my way through it. I’m also a bad reader, very bad reading level. But I was reading it. And then my dad was passing by me one day, and he just said, ‘Have you ever seen George Carlin?’ And I said, No. And he was like, ‘Oh, you got to go on YouTube.’ And then I just looked up George Carlin and then I never touched that book again. And I immediately bent into like, any idea of like, being close to religion at all. I was just, none of that. And then George Carlin I got obsessed with all of his stand-up specials. And then that was like, my gateway into a obsession with stand-up.
Your dad had to know what he was doing, right?
I guess. If I put myself in his shoes, I don’t think he was like Machiavellian or scheming or anything. I think it literally just occurred to him. And he was like, oh, let me just check if Lukas had ever has ever heard of this guy. I do think that was his mindset.
But you’re obviously not gonna keep studying the Torah after you. plunge into George Carlin.
Your words, not mine.
You’ve joked in your stand-up comedy about how your mom is from Sudan and how that’s impacted your own upbringing. Where is your dad from? Is he also from Sudan?
No, my dad is from New Jersey.
Classic Meet Cute.
Exactly. My dad’s side of the family like, I know a little but I don’t know that well. Like my mom’s side of the family. That’s what I think of my family. That’s who I think of because they’re the people who I saw like every year generally like growing up twice a year, I would go over to see them for like summers and Christmases. So like, I’m much closer with them. And I saw my dad’s side of the family growing up like a little bit here and there, but it was only for, like, very special occasions.
So you’re more in touch with with Africa than with New Jersey?
I would say more in touch with the UK because that’s where like my mom’s family is. My mom is from the Sudan. She lived there until she was eight years old. And then she and my uncles and my grandparents, then they moved to the UK, and that’s where they grew up for like the remainder of their childhood. My grandfather married again. He had more kids. Like everyone, they’re all in the UK.
Have you been to the Sudan?
I have not been to the Sudan. I desperately want to visit. And I have lots of cousins that have also never been to the Sudan. And they also really want to visit. And we started, like, just like the inklings of like trying to plan a visit, but then the pandemic hit and like all those plans sort of washed away.
OK. So speaking of plans washing away, or having to adapt. So you had just really started getting heavily involved in stand-up in 2019. You’re still relatively very young in the game at 24. And then the pandemic hits. Did you have an immediate sense of what to do?
No, I mean, like, I was just starting to get recommended for shows and I thought, all right, I’m moving my way up. This is going well, and then everything got canceled lockdown. And the reason why I got on TikTok was because I was at an open mic, and this dude just recommended getting on TikTok. This is like, in early February (2020), I think. He’s like, Yeah, just make videos, doesn’t even have to be that good. Just put out numbers. It’s a great way to direct people over to your Instagram, grow your following. It’s a good thing to do. And I was like, all right. And I just sort of had it in the back of my mind. I think I downloaded TikTok. And I started like watching videos a little bit, but I didn’t start posting until a few days into lockdown.
I don’t know if this is your actual first clip or if you’ve deleted other clips that were older than this. But on your profile, your first TikTok is from March 18, 2020 And that’s you as Gollum reading Virginia Woolf.
Yeah, I just thought it was funny. The idea of Gollum reading feminist literature.I just had those two elements in mind. I just thought it was a funny juxtaposition.
What kind of social media or online footprint did you have before that?
An Instagram. And that was pretty much it. I was not active on Twitter at all. I like maybe made an account but then I didn’t touch it for years. But yeah, only Instagram. I maybe had like 500 followers or so, it was around there. Something like that. Yeah.
What about YouTube?
I did have a YouTube channel where I, I didn’t like use it as a YouTube channel. I mainly use that as a place to like store like, the occasional acting clip or voiceover reel or things like that. Just as a place to like house those things. So I could feature them on my website or send to someone or something like that.
And were you getting voiceover work at the time before the pandemic?
Oh, yeah! I was a full time voice actor at the time, full time.
So what was that like? Before the pandemic?
What before the pandemic, I felt like I had a really good balance of it when I started doing stand-up because like, I had very regular clients, and so I would do everything at home. And then in the afternoon and evening, I would go out to open mics and see shows and stuff. And that was for me, it was like a very healthy balance of like having time for myself. And then being very social and being with people and a lot of activity. I was very happy. I was really happy with that balance. And then when the pandemic hit, and I was just at home all the time, I also live alone. So it was very isolating and it was a dark period. Definitely a dark period.
Were you getting enough voiceover work pre pandemic to pay bills?
Yeah! Yeah. Full time. Yeah.
Oh, wow. So even at even at 24, you didn’t have to worry about the typical day job situation that most actors or comedians face.
Not really. I was very, I count my blessings every day for like the things that I’ve not had to worry about where a lot of people my age typically have to worry about. I also didn’t have any student loans coming out of college. And that was huge. That was huge for me. I did briefly have a day job when I was 23. And I got fired a month and a half in. It wasn’t my fault. It was right when I decided that I wanted to get — because I was after college I just did voiceover — I decided I wanted to go into voiceover full time. I thought that’s what it’s going to be for me. That’s how I’m going to be satisfied creatively. This is my calling. This is it. And after doing it for a year, and really like grinding away, I realized I wasn’t happy with doing it alone. And I realized that I missed acting. I had a lot of issues with anxiety and I needed to get a therapist and I did like a trifecta of changes. I decided I want to get back into acting, auditioning for on-camera stage stuff, and that I needed to get a therapist, and that I needed to get a job. Because I thought, alright, if I’m going for acting, I’m going to be doing a lot of stuff that is not going to pay me. So I need to do something that only pays me. And so those are the changes I made. And then I, on top of that, I signed up for the stand-up class in that sort of same period of time.
In your early stand-up, you have this opener about how you realize that your voice doesn’t match your looks. Was that something that in real life took you a while to come to grips with?
No. No, I was I was very aware of that very early on.
But to realize that that was a strength, that that was something you could take advantage of. Like, say with voiceover work.
It’s something that I liked surprising people with sometimes. I liked seeing people’s faces when they go, like just. I enjoyed that. I don’t know why, but I did enjoy it. And it was something that like, I thought I need to address this, especially as I was starting out I thought, because you’re also just thinking, alright, what can I do material about? It was just something that immediately came to mind that like that I had to and could address, it was something that I could get material out of,
But also get gigs out of, because you realize, oh, there’s a career path for having a distinctive voice.
Well, also, what was interesting is that it was a way for me to make friends with other comedians, because a lot of comedians were kind of interested in doing a little bit of voiceover work on the side. So I would mention that. And I would also mention the fact that I did voiceover work. And that was a reason why a couple people approached me and started becoming friends with me because they were interested in that. And then I got to learn from them more about stand-up. So it was honestly a little bit strategic for me to talk about voice stuff. As a way of enticing people to like, ask about it, which wasn’t like often, but it happened a few times. And that was, if anything, it gave me the confidence to then approach other people, other comedians, just to say I like your stuff, I want to like get to know you and things like, yeah.
And were you were you already featuring impersonations in like your earliest reels or theater classes in terms of saying this is something I can flex?
No, not once. Never. And I don’t do it in my stand-up. It’s I don’t want to say that I’ll never do impressions on my stand-up but I haven’t found a reason to use an impression. And I don’t want to force it. It doesn’t feel right. Because a lot of my stuff is very personal. It’s storytelling based. I’m trying to like trust my gut and realize oh, you know, wedging an impression here just doesn’t feel right. But yeah, previously, like I’d done impressions for friends and stuff, but I never used it for acting. I did occasionally for voiceover, there’d occasionally be a job where I would do an odd sound effect or voice match of someone else. But besides that, hardly ever used impressions professionally.
There might be an ad where they’re like, we can’t afford Nick Offerman but we want something Nick Offerman-esque. Can you give us that? Lukas? Can you give us a take like that on the mic?
Yeah. Sometimes people ask for that. They’re like, hey, can you give us so we know that you can do this? Can you give it a little bit more in this person’s style and then if you can, it’s good. So definitely for voiceover work. It’s a boon. It’s a good skill to have.
So then when you join TikTok in March of 2020, at the start of lockdowns, it was really a departure for you not just by being on TikTok, but by exposing this other side of yourself.
I guess? I didn’t really think too much of it as like a shift or pivot in like, my comedy like, I just thought this is a thing I can do on TikTok that people might like. That’s the only thought I had. I thought I can do this, people might like it. But after I built a pretty good following, mainly just on the back of impressions — like some people like my stand-up clips, but really like what really took off in 2020 were my impressions videos, I realized that, well, I had some people reaching out to me for opportunities and treating me purely as an impressionist, and not as a comedian. And that bothered me. I understood why they were doing that. But I didn’t like being treated that way. I didn’t like being referred to as an impressionist, and so in, in the new year in 2021, I chose to make a pretty hard pivot to only doing stuff that I’ve written. Either jokes or stand-up clips or sketches, whatever it is, that had to be stuff that I’ve written, where that was the focus. Occasionally, maybe doing an odd impression here and there, but not relying on that, and accepting that I was going to take a dip in views. But to just trust that I would rather have that for doing what I wanted to get laughs on than to have success for the thing that I didn’t want to get laughs on anymore.
But when I first saw you, I can’t remember what the first thing was. But I think most likely might have been just like a random turn up on my ForYou page, where it was just one of your now classic things where you slide in front of the bathroom mirror. Like your little Deep Thought. And then say goodbye. And it was the goodbye that really got me I was like, oh, this kid with his goodbyes. There’s something about the way he just kind of nonchalantly comes in and out.
But to be honest, I still don’t know why people like that. It was totally by accident. I didn’t have this like strategic thing in mind. I just did it one day with like, the joke I said was hey, what would you call it? If instead of Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg was played by Tyler Perry? Social Madea. And then I just say, and it was just like I was trying to do with almost like, a Norm Macdonald. Sort of like trying to hide your own laughter. And for some reason, people clung on to that. And so I did more with that format. And people really liked it. I was like, alright, if you guys like it, we’ll do it. Totally accidental, though.
What about what about the way you said goodbye, because I know it’s changed a little bit in more recent videos, but there was a period where you had more of a distinctive flair.
Oh, yeah, there was a very specific way that I would say this. Yeah, it was something that I remember what I hear pretty well. And so I clung on to the rhythm and the tonality of what I just happened to do very early on. And then I just started like, keying into that just by rote. But then I started breaking away and getting a little bit angrier and yeah, so like, a range of emotions through the night.
But, you know, a year earlier, though, like you were saying, you became known as an impression guy, because that’s what hit. Like your first really big TikTok was the Tiger King auditions by various actors. So I mean, you had to have like, intuitively known that, OK, the voices are something that people typically like, they might respond to it. So when they did, and when you have that first splash of virality, or whatever you want to call it. How did how did you react to that? Was there a sense of, oh, I need to take I need to capitalize on this.
First it felt good. Just like a lot of people saying Oh, my God, this hilarious, this is great. That just feels amazing. But then the stress sets in of following up with like something just as good, and then if it doesn’t hit the same high numbers and give you that same sort of burst of good feelings that feels worse. And it was after that video not that much really hit for three months. And I still had like a steady climb of followers. Videos still kept doing fairly well, but not as well as that one. Until I started doing like the “I love it when you call me Senorita” series, which I hit upon in June. And so really was three months of like, not hitting that same sort of virality.
Was that by, not the secrets of TikTok. But the strategy of it. Was that by looking at what the hashtag trends were? Or by looking at what what music notes were being used? Because that’s what I hear other TikTok users talk about is, you have to kind of play the game of what gets circulated or how people are looking for TikToks that aren’t just showing up on the page or even how you get on the page.
There was definitely a lot of strategy right in the beginning. There was strategy and what I something that I did, before I even started posting is I just watched videos just to understand the sort of tempo of TikTok. Understand, like what people were already doing, seeing like, what sort of jump cuts what like text is onscreen, just seeing what was done, and what was successful, and sort of learning. OK, these are the things that people do that are successful, and then trying to figure out where I fit in. And so the first video, even if it wasn’t like the most viral but the first video I noticed it a little bit better, was when I did it was Obi Wan Kenobi, Ben Kenobi, waiting for something to happen to Luke Skywalker. Because I thought about it because like, I’m a massive Star Wars fan, I thought there was like 17 years where nothing happened to Luke, he just had a pretty normal childhood. Growing up with his aunt and uncle, hanging out on Tatooine. This dude is just waiting. In the cartoon series, you learned that he had like, other stuff going on. But a lot of it was just waiting around, I realized, and so at the time, there was this big trend of the dude going, ‘OK, I’m bored in the house, and I’m in the house bored.’ And so I did an impression of Ben Kenobi doing that song. And that hit! Just a little bit. And then I had a lot of Star Wars fans starting to follow me from that. And so I capitalized that with doing more impressions in a sort of Star Wars-y setting. And that grew even more. And then when I did that Tiger King video, I did a couple I did Obi Wan Kenobi right at the beginning. And that was strategic, because I wanted to hook my Star Wars fans in to stay through the end of the video, and then bump up the numbers, so that the video then got thrown to more people. So to like hook people in as quickly as possible, and then follow it up with more impressions so that the audience grows. And so it was very strategic for me in the beginning, noticing what worked, and what audience I had, I wanted to serve right at the beginning of the video, and then follow it up with more more things that I can do.
And then over the course of the last year and a half. Have you felt, is there an urgency in terms of producing the next video? Or do you feel like you can wait a week between?
I try to post every day. Right when I was starting out it was just once a day because like that’s all like I could do, because it’s a very steep learning curve. To learn just how to make videos on TikTok, it’s a weird app to learn. But then I started trying to post more. And it takes a lot out of you to like, post lots of videos every day and have an original idea and like edit. It’s a lot to do. Now I’m back to just doing just one video a day just about. Sometimes a second one, but more often than not just one. But I can take a break if I need to. You know, there are reasons that come up. But in general, it’s now my full time thing. I pretty much just do content creation full time. And I still have like voiceover work that I do occasionally. But now like this is what I do mostly. And so I do try to do it every day. And then like share the same things on various other social media like YouTube, Instagram and so on.
How is that translated into, for lack of a better term, what we call the influencer economy? Like brands approaching you, or the secret sauce of how you turn 2.2 million Tik Tok followers into money.
Yeah, it’s, um, I was definitely hesitant for a while because I didn’t know how much I should be negotiating for. Um, but recently, since May, I’ve had a manager who’s been helping me enormously to do sponsored things. And I’ve done a few sponsored videos, and they’ve been a lot of fun to do. Because they pay very nicely. I don’t have much to offer in terms of rate negotiation for people who might get the odd offer. But there was, I won’t say what the brand was. But there was a brand that said they would only pay me like $150 if I made 10 videos for them. And I just thought, that’s way, that’s much too low. So I would tell people that if they’re getting reached out to, please trust your gut if something feels really low for the amount of work they’re asking you to put in. Don’t jump at every opportunity.
So $150 for 10 videos is the lowest of lowball offers you’ve received. What’s the highest offer you’ve received? Whether you took it or not.
Well, they wouldn’t say what they were gonna pay me right off the bat. It was only after like speaking for a while that they would actually say what, but it’s not the case that you would just get an offer for X amount of money for doing this kind of video. It was like, hey, we want to work with you. We want to do this kind of a video. And then over time, a rate would emerge. That’s kind of what it was. Yeah, but the highest I’ve been paid? $8k.
For one? Nice. Was that before after TikTok expanded the length of time from one minute to three minutes?
It was short. It was nowhere near three minutes. But I think it was probably after that came to be.
And as you were telling me earlier, your stand-up persona is nothing like your TikTok persona.
I try to not create a persona. Definitely, I have like little affectations, like the ‘hey…goodbye’ is very stylized. It’s very specific. But I’ve also tried to, like, break away from that and kind of just be myself with these videos. And I try to be myself with stand-up as well.
I guess the question remains, once clubs started reopening in 2021, and you now had a little bit more cachet in terms of being able to book gigs in front of live audiences — Was there any sort of tension within yourself in terms of like, well, how do I approach this newfound fame in front of people, when they might be expecting something else?
At the end of the day, all I can do is just do my stand-up. So there’s definitely a part of my brain that would like get stressed about it. But there’s only so much I can do. All I can do is do the stand-up that I want to do and I feel like is good. And so if they have like a weird reaction. Honestly, like audiences, I’ve never had a problem with and I’ve had people sometimes come to me, they’re like, Oh, we’re a fan of your social media. And I go, Oh, my God, thank you so much for coming out. They go, we love the show. And I’m like, great, so glad you enjoyed it. If anything, I would say it’s bookers that are surprised I don’t do what I do on social media. It’s actually bookers that are a little bit more surprised by the sort of standardness of my stand-up.
But that hasn’t resulted in any sort of pressure for you to change your stage act.
No, I don’t think so. I do have friends sometimes going, oh, man, you do so many impressions. You got to do them on stage and like, I don’t want to. I haven’t felt the need to and I don’t really. Definitely not from the audience. Not at all.
So what if anything has changed over the course of the pandemic, in terms of what your goals or ambitions are as a performer, as an actor, as a comedian?
I don’t think my goals have changed. I’ve definitely, things are more possible than they were before. Because like I have a following. And that like helps in terms of like bookability and people sometimes wanting to work with me, and that’s really great. But I don’t think I’ve changed that much in terms of what I want to do. It’s just more things are possible.
So if I check back in with you in 10 years, at 36, what do you what do you hope to be talking to me about?
I would hope to be talking to you about touring as a comedian. Working consistently. Having a successful podcast. Doing occasional movies and TV shows and other projects when I really enjoy them, and they feel meaningful, and just having like, just a good balance of life where I get to pursue comedy full-time and good acting projects, really good ones where I’m really excited about them.
Well, Lukas Arnold, I look forward to talking to you about all those things in 10 years, then.
See you in 10 years.
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