Celebrities, including Adam Waheed, Coodie Simmons and Josh Richards, stopped by Influential Beach during Cannes Lions this week.
Simmons, who directed the Emmy-nominated Kanye West doc “Jeen-Yuhs,” shared why it’s important to now tell the story of Ernie Barnes, the first American professional athlete to become a noted painter.
“I think Mr. Barnes inspired so many people, definitely in our culture,” he told Pvnew. “Just know that you can do something other than sports — you can do art. In our households, we didn’t really have art.”
Simmons, 52, said that Barnes, who died in 2009 at age 70, “was told as a young teenager that black people didn’t express themselves that way.”
“We’re going to tell all of those stories and with Mr. Barnes’ story,” the screenwriter continued. “He had a bunch of collectors from back in the day like Ethel Kennedy to Kanye West.”
For his part, Waheed, a content creator who was named on Forbes’ Top Creators list last year, said that he wants to model his career after comedians Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow.
“Adam Sandler has done a great job in creating some of the most classic comedy films — same with Judd Apatow,” the 30-year-old told Pvnew. “From the creation standpoint, of course, I would like to act and everything but it’s not something I have to do.”
The viral star, who has more than 5.6 million followers on Instagram, said he wants to have his production company create projects to help the comedy world, which he said hasn’t seen a “massive comedy film” in “maybe five or so years.”
“So really, I just wanna come and fill in those shoes and you know, make a new generation comedy film for my audience and any audience in general that loves comedy,” Waheed concluded.
Richards, the creator of GenZ Media Company CrossCheck Studios, told Pvnew that he thinks internet sensation Jake Shane — known as Octupusslover8 on TikTok — is one of the best up-and-coming talents within the last year.
“I would say he’s probably the most viral creator in 2023 on TikTok, specifically. He was making a lot of really fun videos where he’d start replying to his comments,” the 21-year-old told us.
