Stevie Wynne Levine of Mythical: Digital-native creators have earned recognition in the entertainment industry (2024)

As the Executive Producer of Good Mythical Morning and Chief Creative Officer of Mythical Entertainment, the largest independently-owned, creator-led studio, Stevie Wynne Levine has been actively involved in the evolution of digital content since the earliest days of the industry, helping to propel the astounding growth of the Mythical brand founded and led by YouTube creators Rhett & Link.

When she initially joined the LA-based company, the entire company worked out of the proverbial startup headquarters: a converted garage. Now, only a decade later, Mythical Entertainment has evolved into a prominent production studio employing over 100 people and producing a diverse array of TV-quality content. Its flagship series, Good Mythical Morning, has also become the longest-running and most-watched daily show on the Internet. We spoke with Stevie about how digital creators are challenging traditional gatekeepers and why she hopes Emmy recognition might be in the very near future.

What were the early days like working with Rhett & Link?

I joined Rhett & Link in January 2013 to produce a first-of-its-kind half-hour YouTube variety show called The Mythical Show. At that time they were working out of Rhett's converted garage along with one employee who was shooting and editing Good Mythical Morning. Back then, Good Mythical Morning was simply a way to connect daily with their fans on their “second channel,” and it was made truly in the moment in a scrappy vlog-like format. Our higher quality production efforts were reserved for our larger, more popular projects, including major music videos that at the time were receiving tens of millions of views each.

What does the operation look like today and how has your own role shifted in the process?

Well, we’ve upgraded from a garage into virtually an entire Burbank city block, with multiple buildings that house a handful of soundstages, workshops, and other production facilities, and from that one employee to one hundred Mythical Crew members. So there's been quite the evolution of our team in the past 11+ years. After the wrap of The Mythical Show, we took our method of high quality production and applied that to Good Mythical Morning, turning it from a vlog into a more traditional daily variety / comedy show. It was during that time that we saw views go from thousands to millions as people tuned in every Monday through Friday to get their fix.

How do you think of Good Mythical Morning as it relates to its traditional TV counterparts?

We've always compared ourselves to the well-known stable of broadcast TV late-night shows given the nature of our shows’ formats, and for the past handful of years we've been extremely conscious of how we compare to their Nielsen ratings, which help us quantify just how many people we reach and what that Mythical means in the larger consumer entertainment landscape.

The truth, on the page and in the numbers, is that we rank right alongside those traditional peers. But what’s more notable, is that not only do we outrank all of the big hitters in that 18-34 demographic column, but we double the viewership of all of the other late night shows combined for that age group. We are making television for the internet generation, inspired by the formats and genres that have entertained so well for the past 75 years of the medium, but with our own internet-first interpretation of those classic forms.

Why do you think the traditional gatekeepers are so reluctant to recognize digital creators?

That’s a good question! I’ve definitely been frustrated with this seemingly pervasive idea that digital creators are not good enough to enter into traditional media, as if their talent is somehow invalidated because they originated organically online, self-started, versus in a casting session or a network pitch. But recently I’ve tried to put myself in the shoes of executives in the traditional industry, and I’ve thought… they are simply afraid of change. Just as human beings. They are being put into a psychologically reactive state right now and all they are trying to do is control what they know, just so that things don’t change. Because change can be scary. But the positive counterpart to reactivity is creativity- we’re reactive at our most stressed, at our worst, and we’re creative at our best. Doesn’t the entertainment industry at large deserve us all collectively to be in our most creative state?

What do you see as the next frontier for the entertainment industry?

It’s time for the traditional entertainment industry to start recognizing digital creators as legitimate, proven talent. There is TV-quality content on YouTube that deserves the recognition from the industry that the audience has been giving it for years, in the form of awards yes, but also in terms of closer collaboration between successful creators and the large legacy studios. The traditional gatekeepers have accepted streaming as legitimate, and the door is open for the Netflixes and Hulus of the world to receive traditional entertainment accolades, so what's separating YouTube, the largest streaming platform in the world, from being in contention with the others? Mythical has been producing TV-quality content for over a decade that rivals the viewership of its traditional comps. It's time.

Photograph by Jasper Soloff