Cheryl Shuman has run the Beverly Hills Cannabis Club for more than two decades, serving high-grade strands to A-list celebrities and throwing exclusive pot parties for the Hollywood elite. VICE met up with the self-made cannabis queen to tour her extensive weed farm, see how she runs her business, and hear how the drug helped her fight cancer.
John Di Domenico has been impersonating Trump for more than a decade, a job that's gotten seriously demanding since the election. VICE met up with the actor for a competition between the world's leading Trump impersonators at LA's Laugh Factory, where he showed off his routine and explained what it's like to act like the president for a living.
Rick Twombley and Griff King are celebrities on gay Instagram, and they’ve found a way to monetize their sexy selfies. The married couple posts workout videos, cooking demonstrations, NSFW photo galleries and relationship advice on a subscription-based site called OnlyFans. On this episode of Fameish, VICE meets up with them in their Atlanta home and finds out what it’s like to sell a gay dream.
VICE went to Los Angeles to meet Kevin Blatt, who's now become Hollywood's go-to guy when it comes to releasing or obtaining a celebrity sex tape. After releasing Paris Hilton's '1 Night in Paris,' Blatt's been involved in sex scandals with A-list celebrities and was even an expert witness at the Hulk Hogan-Gawker trial. On this episode of 'Fameish,' he leads VICE through the underground celebrity sex tape industry, arguing that his business has done "more good for people than bad."
Joel Osteen is one of the world’s most famous televangelists. The Houston pastor fills arenas, draws more than 20 million monthly viewers to his televised sermons, and has sold millions of copies of his Christian self-help books. He also has a doppelgänger. On this episode of 'Fame-ish,' VICE meets Michael Klimkowski, a struggling LA comedian with an uncanny likeness to the famous pastor. He’s turned his resemblance to Osteen into his most successful bit—impersonating him in public, at Osteen’s own book signings, and, most famously, at a sold-out Osteen event in 2017 where he managed to make it all the way up onstage. We sat down with Klimkowski to hear when he realized he could pull off the impersonation, what it’s taken to perfect it, and how his 15 minutes of fame have affected his comedy career.
27-year-old Alicia Amira, originally from Denmark, is a self-proclaimed professional bimbo who says she aspires to look like a sex doll. To fund her body modifications - Botox, breast enlargements, and eventually a hip enlargement, removing a rib and sewing two fingers of her hand together to look like a doll hand - she makes private video content for her fans and is about to launch a new category of bimbo porn. She is also a feminist.
Makeup artist Kika has gained a massive online following with her tutorial videos—only instead of walking people through how to contour and draw on freckles, she specializes in intricate, mind-boggling illusions, somehow making it look like entire swaths of her body disappear. She’s used her one-of-a-kind gift with body paint to tie her stomach into a knot, turn herself into a wooden doll, and transform into Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, racking up nearly half a million YouTube subscribers along the way—an accomplishment that, just a few years back, she would’ve never thought possible. VICE met up with Kika at her home in Serbia to check out her studio, watch her work firsthand, and hear how she went from an amateur hobbyist to a YouTube star.
Kiara Cervantes is a CBP officer, who after being photographed with Vice President Mike Pence at an immigration detention facility, became a viral sensation as “#ICEbae.” In this episode of Fame-ish, Vice catches up with Kiara to hear what it feels like to wake up in the middle of a culture war and try and navigate 15-minutes of fame.
Pure Flix is a family-friendly faith-based streaming service dubbed the “Netflix for Christians” which has become a mini media empire, bankrolling movies, shows. For this episode of FAME-ish we meet Emma Elle Roberts, an actress who has become famous in faith films but if trying to break out into the mainstream. We follow her as she weighs the pros and cons of leaving faithbased work behind and how she will be judged either way regardless.
Patricia became a viral phenomenon in 2012 after being falsely accused of bringing her five year old daughter into a tanning salon. The media attention and public scrutiny that ensued was as incessant as it was vicious. Now, she’s attempting to start a fresh chapter in the spotlight– by running for US Senate in the state of Florida. We follow her campaign trail and find out what life has been like since being branded ‘Tan Mom’.