YouTube / ESPN
ESPN’s Katie Nolan came up with an interesting challenge for her colleagues and we’re all better off for it. For the latest Always Late With Katie Nolan Zoom chat, she challenged a few of her friends at ESPN to see who could get the most famous person possible to dial into their video conference call. I don’t think anyone expected things to escalate so fast.
They were able to get the likes of Stephán Urkél (Jaleel White), Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dwayne Wade, David Chang, American hero Joey Chestnut, co-creator of Parks and Recreation Mike Schur, Travis Kelce, and plenty of others. This is easily the first really good use of Zoom in media and props to Katie for coming up with it.
It’s like it had all the suspense of playing Chat Roulette but without any of the risk of seeing some elderly man’s dingdong. There’s only upside here. Everyone who dialed in was awesome.
and
"Who's the most famous person you could get to join this zoom call?"
The answer(s) are amazing 😂 pic.twitter.com/4PBleGGYDe
— Always Late with Katie Nolan (@AlwaysLateESPN) April 9, 2020
The responses are pretty great on Twitter as well. You can definitely see some haters (Bomani) trying to hide the fact they’re salty because they weren’t invited:
fascinating definition of "famous" we got here.
— bomani (@bomani_jones) April 10, 2020
This has to be one of my favorite segments you guys have done. There is nothing but pure joy in this video. pic.twitter.com/6zW7sSrhxV
— Jon Sabal (@MrBurnNotice) April 9, 2020
omg kersh—-
— Cut4 (@Cut4) April 10, 2020
This felt like the Royal Rumble. Pop after Pop!
— Kevin Thang (@Skip2MyJays) April 10, 2020
https://twitter.com/brett8055/status/1248430085704519681
https://twitter.com/MatthewMcNamara/status/1248419359275413505
i feel like i could be a sleeper talent in this particular game
— Natalie Weiner (@natalieweiner) April 10, 2020
Confused Kershaw and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dog were my favorites…and everything Jeffrey Wright said.
— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) April 10, 2020
So I guess if you were ever sitting around and wondering if famous people just video chat each other all day for shits and giggles you now know the answer. The six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon effect here is pretty spectacular too, to see how quickly everyone’s interconnected by just a handful of people.
I’ll just assume that my invitation was lost because my phone was on Night Mode last night. Katie and I used to share opposite ends of a desk and she surely wouldn’t block my clout out of such an important gathering of world leaders.