YouTube Taps Lilly Singh, Philip DeFranco, Others For Coronavirus Interview Series With Dr. Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy And Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 — and who has also become a key source of information for the American public throughout the early onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic — has taken to the YouTube-sphere to chat with four creators about the plight at hand, and to instruct viewers on how they can do their part to flatten the curve.

YouTube selected four creators to conduct the interviews with Dr. Fauci — YouTube news host Phil DeFranco (6.4 million subscribers), talk-show hosts Lilly Singh (14.9 million) and Trevor Noah (6.9 million), and medical expert Doctor Mike (5.4 million) — with the videos slated to roll out in coming days. Collectively, these creators reach an audience of more than 33.5 million subscribers. You can check out Noah’s interview below, while DeFranco’s video is slated to drop later today, and Doctor Mike says his chat with Dr. Fauci will arrive on Sunday.

“We reached out to Dr. Fauci’s team and he was keen to connect with this group of creators known for their engaged YouTube audiences as an effort to share factual, authoritative information with a younger audience,” Malik Ducard

, YouTube’s VP of learning and impact, tells Tubefilter of the initiative.

The interviews were conducted via video chat with Dr. Fauci, whose offices are in Maryland. Ducard adds that no question was off the table, and each creator pursued a series of questions that was pertinent to their specific audience. “For example, Lilly Singh focused on mythbusting and answering the internet’s burning questions about COVID-19,” Ducard said, “while Doctor Mike asked questions that will be highly pertinent to frontline health workers.”

Despite the rare circumstance of our current pandemic, this isn’t the first time that YouTube has tapped an array of creators to interview a prominent political figure. It has done so several times, for instance, with former President Barack Obama. And the Dr. Fauci interview series is part of YouTube’s larger response to the coronvarius pandemic, which includes the launch of educational hub Learn@Home, and a platform-wide #WithMe campaign that encourages viewers to do things alone, together. YouTube has also launched breaking news shelves in 16 countries dedicated to COVID-19 content, Ducard says.