{"id":467276,"date":"2026-06-08T19:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/467276\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T19:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T19:53:09","slug":"julian-shapiro-barnum-interview-outside-tonight-on-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/467276\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Shapiro-Barnum Interview: Outside Tonight On YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn just over a week, Julian Shapiro-Barnum<\/a> is launching Outside Tonight<\/a>, a late-night show that shares DNA with the likes of The Tonight Show, except it won\u2019t be airing anywhere near broadcast television.<\/p>\n

\n\tShapiro-Barnum\u2019s show premieres on June 17 on YouTube<\/a>. Oh, and his desk is outside.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m launching the internet\u2019s late-night show. It\u2019s no secret that mainstream late-night TV is struggling. It started in the \u201850s as a way to bring the entertainment industry into your living room, but now it\u2019s 2026 and we don\u2019t even have living rooms, we have the internet. It might be easy to say that late-night isn\u2019t relevant, but that clearly isn\u2019t true. It\u2019s endured 70 years and has remained a cultural touchstone. It just needs an update,\u201d he said in one of his early trailers for the project.<\/p>\n

\n\tShapiro-Barnum is best known for creating YouTube series including Celebrity Substitute and Recess Therapy, scoring millions of views on the Google-owned platform, with celebrities helping him interview children.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe actually started preparing Outside Tonight during the pandemic before Recess Therapy with just a desk and a band on the street in New York city. \u201cIt was an early test,\u201d he told Deadline. \u201cI did that in 2020 and then in the winter of 2024, I was like, \u2018This is my dream. I grew up with late-night. I love late-night but I\u2019m not seeing it clicking anymore. I\u2019m seeing the internet rise and I [thought] how has nobody brought true, variety late-night [online]\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s when Shapiro-Barnum started putting together a team that includes showrunner Lauren Mandel, who was a producer on Jimmy Fallon\u2019s The Kids Tonight Show and also produced SNL50: The Homecoming Concert.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show will feature interviews, comedy bits as well as music and segments with the general public. There will initially be ten weekly episodes for season one. The goal is to produce 45-minute episodes for YouTube and then have them also cut down for various platforms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSomething that I\u2019m really excited about, especially with a show that is like this, is trying to be this democratized version of late-night, in terms of run-time, filming time, actual time on the ground. I\u2019m really excited to just sit with people to do these long-form interviews, and not worry about having to fit into any time slots or anything like that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\tOutside Tonight is not the first late-night show to launch on YouTube. Ben Gleib launched Good Night last month<\/a> with Kevin Smith as his first guest, and others such as Brittany Broski\u2019s Royal Court, which recently launched its third season<\/a>, are in a similar world. But it\u2019s a high priority for YouTube, which has been helping Shapiro-Barnum promote it in recent weeks.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tHe said that he didn\u2019t think his show could work on another platform. \u201cI feel like YouTube has gotten to this amazing place where it\u2019s like we are just making the TV ourselves. We are pretty we\u2019re not waiting on anybody to open any door for us or unlock any budget, like we are going to brands with an idea, getting it funded ourselves, and are up in production with that project within less than a year of coming up with the idea,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s very freeing and exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe launch coincides with a troubling moment in late-night where politicians and administration officials are trying to censor what the likes of Jimmy Kimmel are saying and The Late Show was axed for \u201cfinancial reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\tShapiro-Barnum is not a political figure but he knows that YouTube allows him to say what he wants. \u201cYou see this light censorship that\u2019s happening across late night, left and right. My writers\u2019 room, producorial team and myself will be the people making all the final calls on that without needing to worry about a higher-up, with some hammer, controlling us, which is really exciting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a video teaser, Shapiro-Barnum said that he\u2019s going to try \u201creally, really, really, really, really hard\u201d to make it work. \u201cI\u2019m not stressed at all. Gone are the days where late night is dominated by straight, white men named Jimmy. Enter a bisexual white boy named Julian, and that makes all the difference to me,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe referenced the early work of Conan O\u2019Brien as an inspiration and is aware that they are going to be \u201cthrowing stuff at the wall\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI bet a lot of it isn\u2019t going to work. I\u2019m okay with that, because this isn\u2019t one season for me. This is many, many, many seasons. I want to be competitive with traditional late-night,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just over a week, Julian Shapiro-Barnum is launching Outside Tonight, a late-night show that shares DNA with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,91664,111,139,69,236509,437,4139],"class_list":["post-467276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-julian-shapiro-barnum","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outside-tonight","tag-tv","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}