13 September 21 - 27, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents An Easy Act To Follow POV: Dallas’ Madison Humphrey goes TikTok- famous. BY JORDAN MADDOX M adison Humphrey is a self- proclaimed people-watcher and always has been. Even as a child, she was scolded for staring at strangers. Was it a bit creepy? Maybe. Did she learn her lesson? Not quite, but it served her well. She credits her TikTok fame, to the tune of 1.3 million followers, in part to her fondness for human interaction. Humphrey’s love of humanity prompted her to create an impressive cast of easily rec- ognizable and relatable characters in her co- medic TikTok skits, all of which she writes and performs in. It started simply as a post- COVID project, and the more engagement she got, the more seriously she took it. Hum- phrey realized that her most popular con- tent gave viewers a look into relatable “point-of-view” (POV) scenarios based on common interactions, so she decided to run with that. “People like seeing themselves in other people,” Humphrey says, explaining how she develops her characters. “It doesn’t make them feel alone. I think that’s the power of comedy, it connects people and brings people together.” She found her niche by breathing life into characters inspired by her own experiences, the experiences of others and stereotypes found in movies and television. Humphrey started small, writing skits such as “POV that one girl in high school” about, well, that one girl in high school who was incredibly popular and dare we say equally annoying. The “POV” recipe worked and gave rise to a cast of popular characters: The Leasing Manager, The Crazy Aunt, FBI Agent Ross, That One Mom and a number of characters inspired by female leads from different movie genres. Now, Humphrey successfully works as a full-time content creator and reg- ularly gets millions of views on her videos. Before she made the risky decision to do content creation full-time, she was a broad- cast journalist. With a journalism degree from the University of North Texas and a position as a sideline reporter, she regarded social media simply as an outlet for what she truly loves: acting. Prior to her time at UNT, Humphrey studied acting at a film school in Virginia, where she learned about human physicality, movement and interaction and how to con- vincingly imitate them. Her people-watch- ing habit, or less creepily, “observational skills,” serves as a tool to understand situa- tional behavior so she can create believable characters. Her content is easy to digest because it’s not too dramatized. One of her most popular characters, a leasing manager, is one that re- ally gave her platform legs. “The leasing manager was almost an ex- periment for me to play around with my physical comedy and my writing,” she says. “You know, all of her facial expressions, movements, her moods — all those little things that you typically see a leasing man- ager do.” Humphrey hit the nail on the head, and anyone who’s had to deal with a leasing manager can see why. For example, one of the leasing manager skits has over 15 million views because it capitalizes on a far-too- common tenant-leasing manager interac- tion: feeling completely helpless when it comes to unfulfilled maintenance requests. Humphrey is incredibly talented at mold- ing her characters with expression, and she does it all with deep intentionality. Though her platform has a comedic focus, her ex- pressive range is wide. It’s easy to tell each of her characters apart at a glance. Even with- out the descriptive text at the top of her vid- eos — nearly always starting with a “POV” — her characters are identifiable by their clothes, posture and facial expressions. Humphrey hopes to pursue acting pro- fessionally, but the social media landscape can be a hindrance while trying to make in- dustry changes. Some view TikTok acting as inadequate for building a professional acting portfolio, but Humphrey has had the oppo- site experience. “I had seen other content creators that do acting talk about how they can’t get roles be- cause they are classified as just a TikTok ac- tor,” she says. “It scared me for a while, but I recently got signed to an acting agency that I had been submitting for since I was like 15 years old.” POV: When you see a North Texas Tik- Tok star on the big screen. Nick Glover Madison Humphrey knows how to get people to tune in with the power of comedy. ▼ Culture
