What began as a fun exercise in recreating outlandish dishes from film and television has since evolved into a multimedia empire with Andrew Rea at the helm.
The last decade has been an absolute whirlwind for the 38-year-old film school graduate, who could have never dreamed of the success he’s enjoyed as a YouTube personality with over 10 million subscribers (and counting). That visibility has allowed him to collaborate with the likes of Alton Brown and Jon Favreau.
“If I dreamt that 10 years ago, I’d be like, ‘Why torture yourself for things that are never gonna happen?’” Rea told me over a recent phone call. “Now I’m interviewing my heroes and really interesting people that I deeply admire. It’s definitely not something I would have been capable of even five years ago—much less when I started out doing this.”
Rea attributes his ascent to a dislike of stagnation.
“I never want to get stuck in one thing,” he explained. “I want to keep trying to keep it relevant, keep it big. I want to keep making new things.”
Interview with Binging with Babish creator Andrew Rea
Josh Weiss: Binging with Babish has gone through a major evolution these few years. What was the mindset behind that paradigm shift and the creation of your sister channel, Beyond Babish?
Andrew Rea: The channel definitely went under a lot of changes over the past four years. I had a big mental breakdown in 2022. I took a month off, came back, and was slow getting back into it. I had been working hundred-hour-plus weeks for years since Covid and just spun out really hard. I wanted to come back and make my work enjoyable and sustainable. One of the answers to doing that was creating more content with live audio. I was still editing all my own shows and with a live audio show, I don’t need to edit … And by doing live audio stuff, I can completely entrust my editors to take my existing audio and make it make it good.
So, that was a huge unlock for me in terms of just making the work sustainable, which is where the different series, like Botched, What’s in the Fridge, and the ranking content originated from. The ranking content was such a big success, that we started weaving it in as part of our regular content. We found this kind of bifurcated our audience a little bit. It created an audience that loved the ranking content and an audience that loved the cooking content. That’s why we more recently split all the ranking content and non-cooking related content onto its own channel, Beyond Babish, where I’m thrilled to say that it’s flourished on its own. And now, we get to keep cooking on the main channel, which was something I always wanted to try and do. And now, I’m really glad that we get to put some hardcore attention into making some high-level cooking content there.
Weiss: When the channel first started, fans only saw you from beneath the neck for the longest time. Now, you’re the literal face of the entire brand. Was it difficult making that transition from semi-anonymity to full-on public figure?
Rea: It was terrifying, yeah. If you go back and watch my first episode of Basics ever, I would call it a deer in the headlights performance. I was just reading a short script that I myself had written in my apartment. I remember showing the footage to somebody I was dating at the time, and they were like, “You might not have the kind of personality to be on-camera,” and I agreed. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t think I have this in my DNA.” I learned over the past 10-some-odd years that very few people just have it in their DNA. It took years and years of practice and warming up to it, having more celebrity guests on, that pushed me well outside my comfort zone. The first big expression of on-camera presence was Botched, where I really got to let my freak flag fly, and people responded to it, which was really nice. Now I’m interviewing my heroes and really interesting people that I deeply admire. It’s definitely not something I would have been capable of even five years ago—much less when I started out doing this.
Weiss: Speaking of which, You recently moved into the podcasting space via In the Booth with Babish, with Alton Brown (Good Eats) and Tony Hale (Toy Story 5) as flagship guests…
Rea: It’s been kind of a perfect fit. I’ve always wanted to do a podcast. I’ve been waiting for the right partner. We found that in Botched, I still get massive butterflies and cold, sweaty palms leading up until the cameras roll. But as soon as I sit down with my guests and the cameras start rolling, it’s the most natural, easy-breezy thing in the world. So, it’s been very encouraging for me as a host, and it’s been really enlivening to see these different sides of people that I really admire and grew up watching. It’s very surreal. It’s really wild to be able to have these intimate conversations with them about food.
Weiss: There are a number of food-themed podcasts out there. What unique elements would you say your show brings to the sub-genre?
Rea: I have a very hard time saying this, because I’m pretty self-conscious and am not a big back-patter, but me. I think that I bring a new kind of voice to podcasts in general. I’m very rough around the edges, and I’m also very effusive and genuinely excited to meet my guest. I think it results in some very disarming and personal conversations. People tend to open up to me because I’ve been in therapy for almost two decades now and I’ve become very interested in what makes people the way they are. What stories have led to the person that they’ve become? I think food is a very interesting lens to explore that through. There are definitely other food podcasts. I’m not going to say mine is better or worse, but I will say that it is distinctly mine, and that it is an expression of what I would want to listen to in a podcast.
Weiss: You name-dropped Alton Brown and Good Eats several times on your channel long before he was a guest. What’s that been like getting to meet some of your heroes?
Rea: I can’t explain. He’s epic, he’s a monolith in my industry and in so many of our collective minds. He created Good Eats entirely himself. He was such an inspiration in that way. When I was in high school and I wanted to be a filmmaker, I was looking at him, I was looking at Robert Rodriguez. People who were just doing it; sometimes in their houses and building it all themselves. And so, to meet him and shoot with him for a week was ridiculous. We shot for two days in Atlanta, and then flew to New York to shoot for two days here. To rank every cocktail with him and get sh**house drunk with him and get matching tattoos. We got matching tattoos! I got matching tattoos with my childhood hero. It’s one of the most surreal and incredible things that I wouldn’t have dared dream. If I dreamt that 10 years ago, I’d be like, “Why torture yourself for things that are never gonna happen?” And it happened! It’s insane. Now we’re boys and we text. It’s really, really cool. All I can say is, meet your heroes. Sometimes, they’re not what you expect and you can be disappointed by them, which I think is good. It humanizes them. Celebrities aren’t perfect people—your heroes aren’t perfect. But then, other times, they’ll completely blow you away and just wholly both confirm and upend every expectation you had about them. Aton is one of those people. He’s a transformative figure.
Weiss: Would you say getting noticed by Jon Favreau really opened the celebrity floodgates?
Rea: That was the first moment for sure. I got a couple tweets here and there, but I think he was the very first one.When I hit a million followers, he tweeted congratulations. I had just signed with [talent agency] WME and, on a whim, I was like, “Hey, if I wrote a letter to Jon Favreau, could you put it in front of him or at least his reps?” And they said, “Yeah.” So, I wrote this letter and heard back the same day that he wanted to do something … He, like Alton, was just a completely transformative figure. He gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever heard in my life. He was like this amazing uncle [who] is just full of wise advice and incredible creative tendencies. The one time I made him laugh in that episode was the moment where I was like, “Okay, maybe I can do this. If not today, then one day.”
There’s been myriad experiences like that now and I’m still an imposter syndrome, self-doubt kind of person. My neuroses is not being able to believe in myself, and thinking that this is all going to come crashing down when people discover that I’m no good at this. It’s definitely been helpful to have been proven wrong so many times and still a constant practice I engage in that I encourage everybody to [practice]. Because I never thought this kind of stuff would happen for me ever. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. And that’s why I say meet your heroes because you never know. You never know.
Weiss: Cook Unity has been a longtime sponsor of your channel and now you’ve partnered with them to deliver your own culinary creations to hungry fans. Can you talk about the evolution of that professional relationship with them?
Rea: I’ve always loved their business model [which is] go to local restaurants, talk to the owners, [ask], “Does your staff want more hours?”, have them come and make some meals they’re already making in your restaurant, and sell them on our platform. It’s been a boon for a lot of small businesses owners and restaurant operators. These are restaurant employees and people trained to make these dishes to be sold in restaurants, so you end up with a really high-quality product, which I really loved before I started working with them. I continue to get the meals delivered weekly, because they’re really good, and they’re a quick, easy meal, especially on a weekday. A year ago, we started talking about the possibility of my joining the platform; they wanted to start onboarding creators to some extent. I’m the first in that pilot program, and they’ve given me complete creative freedom. I’ve asked them for wild specialty ingredients, like lap cheong sausage for my fried rice, and they’ve delivered. All the recipes I wrote myself, front to back. They didn’t have a fried chicken recipe where I was like, “Okay, just put my name on that!” I wrote every recipe and had Chef [Chris] Ratel come to my studio, where we spent a day workshopping flavors. Then we went to the Cook Unity test kitchens and workshopped, “How do we make this scalable? How do we maintain quality with reheating?” Stuff like that. I was directly involved in the entire process, front to back, and it’s been a really, really cool experience.
Weiss: Tastes and algorithms invariably shift over time. How do you navigate those changes?
YouTubers are all small business owners. It’s kind of like owning and operating most small businesses [in which] trends change, materials change, audiences change. And in this case, yeah, the algorithm has changed massively. When I started out, I wouldn’t have dreamed of uploading a video longer than 10 minutes. In fact, to celebrate four million subscribers, I did a Lord of the Rings special [where] the final edit came out to 23 minutes. So, I ended up splitting it into two parts, because I was like, “There’s no way I’m putting out something more than 10 minutes here. The algorithm will sink that.”
And now, because YouTube has shifted to wanting to be seen on TVs and larger formats, they’ve prioritized longer run times. Now, I want to try to hit at least 20 minutes. I want to basically make an episode of a television series. That poses creative challenges, but also a lot of opportunities. Like you said, I had to learn to become camera-ready, because that was the only way I was going to be able to make content that long. Something 45 minutes long with me doing voiceover would take weeks—months even. That’s a tremendous undertaking and so, we’ve shifted with the trends, but in ways that have been sustainable for all of us working here; in ways that still light us up. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over and over again, so I’m very grateful that I’m doing different stuff now than I did when I was starting out.
Weiss: Your dream of opening a bed and breakfast (Bed n Babish), which you mentioned in some of our previous conversations, is finally a reality. It just opened in the spring, right?
Rea: That venture is a little on hold at the moment, because the house is complete and I had my first guest out there, which was very cool. But there’s so much going on right now that I can’t focus on it. I’ve been focusing on cooking and doing the podcast. Another big pursuit that’s imminent at this point is…I’m sure you’ve seen [Obsession writer-director] Curry Barker’s world and the way YouTubers are blowing up the box office. I have a film background, I went to film school, I worked in visual effects and post-production for seven years before I got into YouTube. It was always my original aspiration, and I’ve been working on a script for 10 years now. I picked it back up about two years ago in earnest, and really started trying to create a feature screenplay. I needed a good ending, finally found it, and have written a short that is both a proof of concept and also a standalone story about a metaphysical character I dreamt of so many years ago. We’ve got it casted, we’ve got our crew lined up, we’ve got the studio space rented. It’s happening, and we’re making a short.
Weiss: I’m glad you brought up Curry Barker because Obsession is obviously dominating the cultural conversation right now, along with Backrooms. There are two food items in both movies—and I won’t spoil anything if you haven’t seen them—but I’m curious if you have plans to tackle recreations of them anytime soon?
Rea: I would love to as a tribute to my fellow YouTubers. I would love to maybe make a special episode about the food from the films. It’s a clunky title, but we’ll figure out. I’m just so thrilled they’re getting the spotlight and that new and bold creatives are being given these kinds of opportunities. I really look forward to seeing what comes of the industry, what comes to theaters as a result of these [two movies]. I feel like this is the beginning of a massive shift. But I would love to explore the food in these movies. I haven’t seen Backrooms yet, so I don’t know the food in that, but I’m excited to go see it.
Weiss: So you have seen Obsession. Does that mean we’ll see a cat sandwich video in the near future?
Rea: That was one of the most upsetting parts of that movie because I have a cat who I’m obsessed with. I have an unhealthy relationship with my cat. It’s a horror movie and there are times when I get mad at horror directors, like, “How dare you make something so horrible?!” And then I’m like, “You know what? You’re a horror director. Hats off. You did it, you horrified me.” I’ll see if I can find a cat analog. [jokingly] This is New York City, there are strays everywhere.
Weiss: I know this is a very job interview-y question, but where do you see yourself in five years?
Rea: I never want to get stuck in one thing. I want to keep trying to keep it relevant, keep it big. I want to keep making new things, hence the podcast, hence the short film, hence [the partnership with] Cook Unity. No matter where I am in five years, I hope that I’m continually changing and growing as a personality, as a business owner, and as a person. Because that’s where I’ve found so much of my meaning, is in breaking into new arenas and seeing if I can sink or swim.
