Ryan Higa Talks Season 2 Of Internet Icon, Releases Trailer [INTERVIEW]

By 05/17/2013
Ryan Higa Talks Season 2 Of Internet Icon, Releases Trailer [INTERVIEW]

Justin Lin‘s YOMYOMF has been awfully quiet of late, but rumors of the YouTube Original Channel’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Instead, YOMYOMF is getting ready to ramp back up with the return of its flagship program, Internet Icon. After season one of Internet Icon scored millions of views and brought in tens of thousands of subscribers for winners The Brothers Riedell, season two is about to kick off with new contestant channels and a fresh list of YouTuber cameos.

We spoke to the series’ co-creator, Ryan Higa, about what we can expect from the new batch of episodes.

Tubefilter: How does this season of Internet Icon differ from season 1?

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Ryan Higa: The second season of Internet Icon features a great new Judge, Timothy De La Ghetto!  Returning from Season 1 with me judging will be Christine Lakin (Family Guy, Step by Step), Kassem G, and Jenna Marbles. We were also fortunate enough to have widely known guest stars such as SMOSH, The Fine Brothers, iJustine, Phil De Franco, Wong Fu, Shane Dawson, and PewDiePie come by to guest judge for one episode each throughout this second season.

The winners of the competition from season 1, The Brothers Riedell, joined us on season 2 as the host and mentor for this new group of participants. Other differences are the layout of contestants’ workspace, the ability for fans to vote for a fan favorite, and the location of the finale.

TF: How much of Internet Icon’s entertainment value will come from the contestants and how much will come from the judges?

RH: It’s split! The judges bring their own expertise and humor to the table –and the contestants bring their fresh high quality content.

TF: What sort of video-making challenges can we expect? 

RH: The YouTube Trend Challenge was one of the challenges where the producers and judges left the playing field wide open for contestants to create their very own viral video like Gangnam Style or the Harlem Shake. There are many other great challenges that we cannot talk about right now as they are being kept a surprise and will come out later.

TF: YOMYOMF has been fairly quiet of late. Any other upcoming shows on the horizon?

RH: We are kicking off year 2 with the second season of Internet Icon and will stay busy back in the lab developing our new shows. You can definitely plan to expect some more great shows this year! (Editor’s note: The trailer for one of those shows, 88 Jade Way, was released today.)

TF: Finally, you mentioned how tough it was to narrow down to ten nominees. Are there any channels that won’t make it into the show to which you’d like to give honorable mention? 

RH: I am very impressed with the overall quality of the contestants this year and it was really hard to narrow them down to 10. As you will see when the show airs, there will be some great creators that unfortunately didn’t make the top 10.

As noted in the trailer, season two debuts on May 21st. Check back then for the first look at everything Ryan discussed along with our first impressions of the return of one of YouTube’s most popular reality shows.

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