How Bomanizer’s Kardashian Spoofs Became TikTok Canon

At a Second City comedy show, he began a conversation with a nearby audience member who asked him about his show, “Made for TV.” When Martinez-Reid explained that it explores the medium of reality TV and its different iterations, she shot him a disgusted look.

“She was like, ‘Ew, I hate reality TV,’ and went on to say that people who are on reality TV shows are talentless and it takes nothing to go on those shows,” Martinez-Reid told me. “I said very kindly to her that there are so many talented people working tirelessly to create those shows so you can think it is effortless.”

Reality TV is actually paramount to Martinez-Reid’s rise to internet stardom. You might know him as @Bomanizer, his social media alias that is responsible for 2.1 million followers on TikTok and almost half a million followers on Instagram. The 26-year-old creator started his TikTok account in late 2019, right on the cusp of the app’s cultural explosion, and found his niche in just a few months. The actor-singer-comedian-producer-editor — what can’t he do? — went viral in February 2020 by parodying reality TV and has been on a roll ever since.

“I had this idea where I would take these mundane moments that are minor inconveniences and then spin them into these reality TV epics, which is what I still do now,” he said. “But I had that idea, and it kind of had never been done before, at least on TikTok, and I started going viral and it changed my life.”

At the onset, his parodies were wide-ranging, mimicking breaking newscasts, prime-time “20/20” interviews, competition shows and the general theatrics of reality TV: confrontations, reunions and those dramatic beat drops. He is a talented impersonator, able to accurately capture the essence of any public personality and cultural moment. The parodies are so spot-on and comical that in editing his TikToks, he often keeps in clips showing him bursting into laughter mid-impersonation. In my favorite sketch, he mimics the vibe of get-ready-with-me videos as he fake-preps for Vogue’s Met Gala.

Within six months of starting his TikTok account, he had amassed 1 million followers. In October 2022, Martinez-Reid started “The Bodashians,” a “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” spoof series full of vocal fry, abrupt exits and plenty of utilization of the ambiguous phrase “I have a thing.” Of course, he’d gain notoriety by mimicking the first family of reality TV. In true Kardashian form, he keeps it in the family by mainly featuring himself, stepsister Alyssa Michael, mom Ana Martinez and friend Eden Graham. The series has become so synonymous with his name that even the stars of the new “Doctor Who,” Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson, credited Bomanizer as the source of their obsession with Kardashian impressions on their recent press tour.

On the surface, it could seem like Martinez-Reid is making fun of reality TV, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Like other fans of unscripted TV, he has found ways to relate to over-the-top personalities, their messy dramas and even the punchy one-liners that become part of our lexicon. Reality TV is not just mindless consumption; it can offer so much more, he says. He credits “Dance Moms” and “The Real Housewives” franchises — he’s tuned in year-round — as his introduction to the genre.

“I developed a love for how they string this show together and the world that they create with it,” he said. “We watch the Kardashians or ‘The Real Housewives,’ and we accept what we see as a blatant fact, but in reality you and I are not going to have a conversation and break for 60 seconds to look at each other. I think when I was able to kind of spin the mirror around and show everybody what you’re actually watching, it really resonated with people.”

Martinez-Reid said his sexuality and his half-Jamaican, half-Spanish and Canadian identities have helped him develop his humor and cultural knowledge.

“I think that I often sit around and I’m like, ‘If I was straight, what would I be doing? Would I be funny?’ I feel like gay culture is to irreverently look at life and to look at things in a more exciting and fun way,” he said. “I’m dialed into the culture because I’ve been so gay for so long. I think it’s a very particular experience, and I think that it’s allowed my content to exist within some of these worlds that I participate in but also be its own thing, which is really really fun.”

Though those aspects of his identity are crucial to his personality, he notes that he has never had to make his content about those identity markers in order to be taken seriously: “I think it’s also fun to exist in the culture as somebody who does belong to all of those categories of like queer, half-Spanish, half-Jamaican, Canadian, but also none of those seem to really matter at the end of the day. It’s so nice to be appreciated for just being me. I never had to make a coming-out video. I never had to make my content about the fact that I am queer [in order] to be recognized as a queer trailblazer.”

The Toronto resident can speak on reality TV as a fan, but he also studied the medium in his undergraduate program. His virality coincided with the end of his time as a media production student at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he focused his studies on radio and television (he was one of many 2020 university graduates who finished college right as the pandemic began).

“I went to school literally to create TV,” he said, noting he chose TMU because of its amazing radio and television program. “My favorite class was called Writing for Reality, and I didn’t realize the work that went into the behind-the-scenes. I had no idea, just as a viewer, and so I think when it comes to parodying some of these shows, a lot of my content is a love letter.”

TikTok came at a time when Martinez-Reid was facing an existential crisis all college students encounter at some point or another: What do I want to do for the rest of my life?

“I went into media as if that was going to be my route,” he said. “I just remember feeling like I wasn’t challenged and I hadn’t really found my calling.”

He then had an opportunity to work at Bell Media, the Canadian media conglomerate, as its video intern. “While I was very happy to be there, I remember still feeling, like, ‘OK, if I go into the workforce and I’m just editing videos, I’m not going be happy.’ I have to try getting into performance, getting into acting, and so, conveniently, around that time TikTok was becoming cool.”

To bring things full circle, his former employer Bell Media owns Crave, the network where he recently released his original series, “Made for TV With Boman Martinez-Reid.” The six-episode show follows Boman, an over-the-top version of himself, as he explores which TV format is the best fit for his entertainment career, with help from celebrity advisers such as Francesca Farago (Netflix’s “Too Hot to Handle” and “Perfect Match”) and Ashley Darby (Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Potomac”). While shooting an episode in which he tries out newscasting, Martinez-Reid returned to his university for the first time since being a student; he said it was an emotional moment to visit the site of his not-so-long-ago dreams and aspirations as a now executive producer and star of his own show.

The premise of “Made for TV,” which could be viewed as an expansion of the characters and skits he originated on TikTok, arose from conversations with Martinez-Reid’s showrunner, Natalie Metcalfe.

“It was our task to figure out what a TV show with me looks like, and it always came back to reality TV. She kind of saw in me that if we were talking about ‘Drag Race,’ I would talk about it as if I could do it better; it’s that backseat driver mentality that a lot of us have with reality TV,” he said. “The character is very in line with my TikToks, where it’s me against the world, and I think that a lot of my comedy comes out in the dramatics. I am a very dramatic person.”

Martinez-Reid can’t pinpoint when he knew he was “made for TV,” but performing for others has always come naturally to him.

“Ever since I was little, if I was in front of other people and entertaining them, I was so happy. If it was a family Christmas, I was in the middle of the room dancing, and all of my tías and tíos would sit there watching me dance like an idiot.” Every Christmas, his mother would host a “Saturday Night Live”-style sketch show (called “The Ana Martinez Family Christmas Show”), encouraging him and his cousins to put together skits reflecting on the previous year. He later attended an arts middle school and high school. “I just kept finding myself in these environments where if you were expressing yourself, you were cool. It was the right thing to do to express yourself, to participate in the arts.”

Taking the leap from content creator to producing an original series is not necessarily in the cards for every internet persona; Martinez-Reid finds himself in good company with Issa Rae, Quinta Brunson and Benito Skinner, all comedians whom he cites as inspiration. However, he does think content creation can be an accessible way to showcase talent.

“I am doing all of this work myself. I’m creating ‘The Bodashians’ all by myself. I’m editing all of my videos all by myself,” he said. “I think that a lot of people are on TikTok grinding and using it as a résumé to show people that they want to be taken seriously in this industry.”

With his TikTok, his show and now with a venture into music, Martinez-Reid is focused on world-building. In a very RuPaul-esque manner, he has written and released four singles that tie into his content; the most recent song, “I Have a Thing,” was released in July and was accompanied by a music video in August.

“Listen, I will go to bat for RuPaul’s music because it is so catchy,” he said when I mentioned RuPaul, who has released several albums in conjunction with his hit show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“Watching ‘Drag Race’ literally feels like an ad for RuPaul’s music. You are constantly being fed these hooks that are so catchy, which makes you want to go stream the music. I always looked at that and thought, ‘That is such a smart way to market music to people, rooting it in content,’ which is exactly what I’m doing. I’m taking this song that was in my videos and turning it into its own thing.”

While “Made for TV” is part-scripted, part-improvised, Martinez-Reid hopes to create a scripted series that people see themselves in, just like Brunson did with “Abbott Elementary.” But for now, he is basking in the glow of a jam-packed year of releasing work that he loves.

“I think that I’ve had a really, really great year of reestablishing myself in the industry in so many new ways, especially with ‘Made for TV’ ― being able to follow that path of creating your own TV show and showing people this is what I can do in the industry and this is what I will continue to do. It’s been exciting. It’s been a wild journey, and I’m grateful.”