YouTube Star Todrick Takes on Disney and ‘Titanic’ in His New MTV Series
![Toderick](https://www.tvinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/DSC_8604-scaled.jpg)
When Todrick Hall was eliminated in the semifinals of American Idol’s ninth season, he thought his career was over. Turns out, the burgeoning song-and-dance man couldn’t have been more wrong. Five years later, the Plainview, Texas, native is a full-on YouTube luminary with his own MTV show, titled (what else?) Todrick.
Hall’s redemption began with a video he created with some pals in which the group sang an order at a McDonald’s drive-through. It quickly went viral, amassing more than 9 million views, and served as Hall’s calling card as a content creator for the retweet generation. “I was hoping that someone would knock on my door and give me some type of dream role,” Hall says. “And when I realized that was fairy-tale thinking, I was like, ‘I have to take matters into my own hands.’”
His compulsively watchable videos—the most notable ones feature pop-culture parodies and Disney classics—have garnered him more than 235 million clicks. Now, MTV is pulling back the curtain to reveal how Hall and his friends create a video, from concept to completion, each week, as in tonight’s hometown-inspired installment. (A teaser will air at the end of each episode; the full version premieres online afterward.) Along the way, they’ll face tight time constraints and even tighter pockets. “They look like they have a huge budget behind them [but they don’t],” says Hall. “It’s usually a bunch of favors, [such as someone] loaning us a nice camera and us promising to give them a shout-out on Instagram.”
Hall and the gang will largely debut original concepts, but fans of his cheeky send-ups will also enjoy an upcoming, highly unconventional take on Titanic, titled Titaniqua. The idea stemmed from watching the Oscar-winning blockbuster with his mom back when he was in fifth grade. “She was like, ‘If there’d been a bunch of black people on that ship, we would have found a way to survive,’” says Hall, laughing. “So if you’ve ever wondered what would have happened if the Titanic sank with a whole bunch of ratchet people on there, then that’s the episode you gotta see.”
Todrick, Mondays, 10/9c, MTV