We Made Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier Go on An Awkward First Date
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Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier have the social media game on lock. Between the two of them, they rack up an impressive following...and with millions of fans on Facebook, Twitter, Vine, YouTube, and Instagram, it was only a matter of time before other industries took notice. Though they got their start making videos and clips online, the digital wunderkinds are branching out into a more traditional role: movies.
The Outfield, which is out today on iTunes, tells the story of three best friends and teammates who have to navigate their senior year of college together. (Joey Bragg costars as the third amigo in this crew.) The boys deal with things that are real to most teenagers' lives: falling in love, choosing a college, and interacting with your family at a time when you're still trying to figure out who you are.
It's fitting that Cameron and Nash, who are IRL friends, would make the leap together. They both grew up on their digital platforms and brought their fans along for the ride, growing ever closer with each other and their followers as they did so. The two caught up with Teen Vogue to talk about the transition to acting and how it differs from the work they've made before, how they bond with their fans, and what their eventual career goals look like. If anything, it's proof that whether you have a million followers or a hundred, you're still answering the same big questions about life — and that you're never as alone as you might feel.
Teen Vogue: Can you tell us about the movie?
Nash Grier: It's these three best friends who grow up together and they have this unbreakable bond. The movie follows them from the beginning of the baseball season to their start in life — when kids are seniors, graduating high school, and deciding what they want to do with their lives.
Cameron Dallas: Yeah, it's about coming of age and it's a really fun film. But my character has to decide between if he wants to continue his love life or to choose his career that's going to be his ticket outside of this small town. He feels like he's stuck.
NG: It's all about the decisions that we make in our lives. My character has the conflict about what his true passion is. He has to choose between what everyone thinks it is and what everyone's telling him to do, and then what it actually is. It's a lot about finding yourself, and telling and showing kids that. It's a lot of real experiences and I think kids are going to get a lot out of it so that's what I'm most excited about.
CD: And parents, too. If I was a parent, I definitely would want to watch it because I think you can kind of see where kids are coming from. My character Frankie has a dad who is an alcoholic, and they're really poor. He feels stuck in Peoria, and he's looking for his one ticket out. And right now, it's baseball so he's trying to focus on baseball but at the same time he has to help his family make ends meet. So he has to work with his dad, he scraps metal, and a lot of the times it's illegal. They pull metal pieces off cars and stuff like that and sell it. And he can't really focus, but he ends up falling in love with a really cool girl. Her dad's wealthy and her dad tells me, and she stops focusing on school...
NG: Don't spoil this.
CD: AND THAT'S ALL YOU GET. [Laughs] I reel you in and that's all you get.
NG: There are some cool things in it, and friendship is a big one of them. We had a scene that was real as hell and it was really coming from the heart and someone on set was like, "It's cool how close you guys are." Friendship's a huge one and definitely allows us to do the movie.
CD: And shooting the scenes, especially, because we had chemistry before the movie. It was so easy to relax and be real about it…just react and not try to act all, but just to be in that scene and in that moment.
TV: And in your real lives, have you experienced that growth in friendship?
NG: Yeah, definitely. Especially in these industries, and how fast they move, you get to see who's real and who's loyal and who's not.
CD: It's interesting. We go through a lot of trial and tribulations. I think we're really relatable to our fans and our friends anyway. Like we share a big part of our lives with them and they relate to that, too. So in a way they don't live the life that we live, but they see everything.
NG: They live through it.
CD: They probably know a lot more than some of my family members.
NG: They know more about me than I know about myself.
TV: Is there anything that you do try to keep off your channels?
CD: For me, it's personal family matters.
NG: I'm pretty open with everything. Everything I make, I go into it with the thought of, alright, what should I make for my people today? So there's never anything I'd hide from anyone.
CD: But not like a video, is there anything...say your dog died, or say something happened that you didn't make a video...?
NG: I don't know. I'm pretty open with most things that happen in my life because people help me through those things. Literally, if it's bad news or whatever, they're always there to help me through with support, which is the best thing with our relationship with our fans. If you look at Tom Cruise, I'm sure more people know Tom Cruise than me and he should probably have more fans than me, but the relationship that I have with the people that support me is like, we're best friends. We're like family. I don't know if I'd hide anything from them. And there's been some pretty crazy stuff that's happened in my life and all of them know about it and all of them see it and that's awesome.
TV: How was it different to shoot a movie that has a script and isn't based on your lives rather than all the stuff that you make?
NG: It’s very fun and eye-opening. I fell in love with storytelling, and especially long-form storytelling. With a Vine or a YouTube video or anything that we create, we're the directors, producers, actors, writers…We're all of it. When you're living out someone else's vision and being an actor, that's your only job. You don't have any other job, so you can really focus. It's just fun pretending to be somebody else and doing it to the fullest, to the point where I was that character for however many months.
CD: The directors, Eli and Michael, would give us the scene. We went through the script and we spent a lot of time before filming going over the script and reading it with each other. And instead of on Vine or YouTube where we're coming up with a concept, we're shooting it, we're editing it, we're pushing it out, we're marketing it, we're doing all of that, we kind of just play the role. So it's interesting to go and talk to someone and they give you their vision for the scene. Then it's your job to go and push that vision that they have out on camera. And what excites me is doing that scene and then coming off and having the directors coming up to you like, “Wow, that's amazing, that's exactly what I wanted.”
NG: Because you did your job if you did what they want. And that's the scariest thing. You really have to trust your director to get whatever it is out of you. He's going to tell you what you really need to do because he knows how he wants it to look and no one else does. You can shoot a whole movie and rehearse and read the script 50,000 times but after the movie's done, you're not going to see it. You have no idea what it will look like. It's really up to the director. So that's the eventual goal for me, I want to be giving those visions to people and maybe give myself some of my own visions. Directing and writing and all that stuff. If I can eventually tell my own stories like that and do it in a long-form way rather than a short-form way, that's how I want to transition.
CD: I want to continue acting, and maybe moving into more traditional movies and then doing movies with Fullscreen and stuff like that.
NG: That's the cool thing with us, we get to double-dip. So there's these indie films, and then there's these smaller budget films. And then there's the big ones, the 100 films that Hollywood makes every year that we're getting into now because of what the internet's allowed us to do. They're all very different films, we have options to do whatever which is the coolest thing.
CD: I want to continue doing both, and then just staying true to what we got big off of, which is posting on Twitter, posting on Instagram, posting on Vine and Facebook, and just keeping my creative intact and keeping that connection with my fans.
TV: Is that something fans have been worried about, that you'll abandon one platform for another?
CD: I'm sure it's crossed their minds but just remembering and staying true is the biggest thing. And they're very close. If I start to feel distant, they'll tell me, “Cameron, why haven't you posted?” and it's like oh, shoot, I need to post.
NG: They're honest as hell. You will get a raw opinion from millions of people no matter what you do. So that's good because we'll always know, okay, this is what they want next. We know our audience best and we have the best access to them, so if we can keep going with that by the time we're filming movies ten years from now and still have an audience that we can reach with our fingertips, that would be amazing. I think that's been the end goal, to stay true to where we started, keep our creativity going, and just keep taking steps forward.
TV: Because you guys are so phenomenally busy, do you ever feel the need to just take a break and distance yourself?
NG: I put my phone down for weeks at a time sometimes, and I don't even use it.
CD: Yeah, this guy does it a lot more than I do.
NG: Once I'm on it too much, it drives me crazy. I go on there for fun — that's why I started doing all of this. But once it gets overwhelming, I just need to put it down for a few hours and I can't have anyone talk to me.
CD: What I've noticed too is that when I'm by myself, it's not fun. But when I'm with other people that are doing it, too, it's exciting. Let's say I'm by myself and I'm starting to get sick of it, I'll start hanging out with other people, it's a gradual thing. You don't just jump in like, oh, let's start filming videos. You do some funny stuff, you're excited, and then you're like, oh, I should video tape that.
NG: The stars gotta line up. You gotta see in a way like, alright, with what I have, what could I make the most viral? That's what a lot of kids do. They live their lives and they have plans to make videos that day but they just live and find the story as they go. That's what we did. I started in school making videos and in my classroom with my teacher, and I had no followers. But that's how it got started. And it would go to bigger and cooler things and then we were on TV shows doing it, and it just turned into mayhem.
People feel obligated to show their lives on these platforms. They want someone's opinion, and I don't think it should ever be like that. It should be to have fun and to keep your memories. That's one of my favorite things about this. We're just logging our memories as we go. We'll always be able to go back and look at a picture or look at a video and remember everything that happened around that time, and that's the best thing.
TV: What's the one thing you're most proud of having created?
NG: A voice, for sure. From being a kid that had no voice at all, literally only his parents and his sports team listened to him…That's the coolest thing ever to see me, of all people, being in the real world and having a voice and an influence. And that should show everyone that they can do it. It really only takes one person to make a difference. If one person can do it, and everyone has that mindset, then that makes the world a better place.
CD: I wouldn't even know. The voice thing is pretty cool, he really got that one. I think the thing I'm most proud of is building a connection with people and being able to help them through things. Let's say someone's going through some crazy thing in their life, and they're looking for an out and something that's going to help them. Being able to be that thing is pretty amazing. Creating that connection with a fan is what it's all about for me.
NG: What I had to realize when I started doing this is you can help people through just being yourself and just living your life and setting an example and doing good...just being you. People see that and they feed off that, and they feed off your happiness and your success and they use it for themselves. That's been the coolest thing to see, the people that we can affect firsthand.
It's so different with every person. But there's some people who I knew were suicidal and they watched our videos and it helps them see some sort of light and it keeps them going.
Girls...and guys, too...that get bullied, people that have issues, anything that someone needs help with. There's a right way to handle things and a right way to look at things. So if you look at bullying, what we promote is that it's a waste of time. Why would anyone ever degrade someone when there's tons of bad things going on in the world? Just use your time on something else, or don't even bother going on their page and commenting. Because people take that to heart, they kill themselves from people telling themselves to kill themselves. Like, what the hell? That shouldn't ever happen. I think that's the biggest thing our generation needs to learn, that we should be hate-free. If you're going to hate on something, don't say it. Just keep it in your head, don't waste your time and don't waste someone else's time.
The Outfield, which is out today on iTunes, tells the story of three best friends and teammates who have to navigate their senior year of college together. (Joey Bragg costars as the third amigo in this crew.) The boys deal with things that are real to most teenagers' lives: falling in love, choosing a college, and interacting with your family at a time when you're still trying to figure out who you are.
It's fitting that Cameron and Nash, who are IRL friends, would make the leap together. They both grew up on their digital platforms and brought their fans along for the ride, growing ever closer with each other and their followers as they did so. The two caught up with Teen Vogue to talk about the transition to acting and how it differs from the work they've made before, how they bond with their fans, and what their eventual career goals look like. If anything, it's proof that whether you have a million followers or a hundred, you're still answering the same big questions about life — and that you're never as alone as you might feel.
Teen Vogue: Can you tell us about the movie?
Nash Grier: It's these three best friends who grow up together and they have this unbreakable bond. The movie follows them from the beginning of the baseball season to their start in life — when kids are seniors, graduating high school, and deciding what they want to do with their lives.
Cameron Dallas: Yeah, it's about coming of age and it's a really fun film. But my character has to decide between if he wants to continue his love life or to choose his career that's going to be his ticket outside of this small town. He feels like he's stuck.
NG: It's all about the decisions that we make in our lives. My character has the conflict about what his true passion is. He has to choose between what everyone thinks it is and what everyone's telling him to do, and then what it actually is. It's a lot about finding yourself, and telling and showing kids that. It's a lot of real experiences and I think kids are going to get a lot out of it so that's what I'm most excited about.
CD: And parents, too. If I was a parent, I definitely would want to watch it because I think you can kind of see where kids are coming from. My character Frankie has a dad who is an alcoholic, and they're really poor. He feels stuck in Peoria, and he's looking for his one ticket out. And right now, it's baseball so he's trying to focus on baseball but at the same time he has to help his family make ends meet. So he has to work with his dad, he scraps metal, and a lot of the times it's illegal. They pull metal pieces off cars and stuff like that and sell it. And he can't really focus, but he ends up falling in love with a really cool girl. Her dad's wealthy and her dad tells me, and she stops focusing on school...
NG: Don't spoil this.
CD: AND THAT'S ALL YOU GET. [Laughs] I reel you in and that's all you get.
NG: There are some cool things in it, and friendship is a big one of them. We had a scene that was real as hell and it was really coming from the heart and someone on set was like, "It's cool how close you guys are." Friendship's a huge one and definitely allows us to do the movie.
CD: And shooting the scenes, especially, because we had chemistry before the movie. It was so easy to relax and be real about it…just react and not try to act all, but just to be in that scene and in that moment.
TV: And in your real lives, have you experienced that growth in friendship?
NG: Yeah, definitely. Especially in these industries, and how fast they move, you get to see who's real and who's loyal and who's not.
CD: It's interesting. We go through a lot of trial and tribulations. I think we're really relatable to our fans and our friends anyway. Like we share a big part of our lives with them and they relate to that, too. So in a way they don't live the life that we live, but they see everything.
NG: They live through it.
CD: They probably know a lot more than some of my family members.
NG: They know more about me than I know about myself.
TV: Is there anything that you do try to keep off your channels?
CD: For me, it's personal family matters.
NG: I'm pretty open with everything. Everything I make, I go into it with the thought of, alright, what should I make for my people today? So there's never anything I'd hide from anyone.
CD: But not like a video, is there anything...say your dog died, or say something happened that you didn't make a video...?
NG: I don't know. I'm pretty open with most things that happen in my life because people help me through those things. Literally, if it's bad news or whatever, they're always there to help me through with support, which is the best thing with our relationship with our fans. If you look at Tom Cruise, I'm sure more people know Tom Cruise than me and he should probably have more fans than me, but the relationship that I have with the people that support me is like, we're best friends. We're like family. I don't know if I'd hide anything from them. And there's been some pretty crazy stuff that's happened in my life and all of them know about it and all of them see it and that's awesome.
TV: How was it different to shoot a movie that has a script and isn't based on your lives rather than all the stuff that you make?
NG: It’s very fun and eye-opening. I fell in love with storytelling, and especially long-form storytelling. With a Vine or a YouTube video or anything that we create, we're the directors, producers, actors, writers…We're all of it. When you're living out someone else's vision and being an actor, that's your only job. You don't have any other job, so you can really focus. It's just fun pretending to be somebody else and doing it to the fullest, to the point where I was that character for however many months.
CD: The directors, Eli and Michael, would give us the scene. We went through the script and we spent a lot of time before filming going over the script and reading it with each other. And instead of on Vine or YouTube where we're coming up with a concept, we're shooting it, we're editing it, we're pushing it out, we're marketing it, we're doing all of that, we kind of just play the role. So it's interesting to go and talk to someone and they give you their vision for the scene. Then it's your job to go and push that vision that they have out on camera. And what excites me is doing that scene and then coming off and having the directors coming up to you like, “Wow, that's amazing, that's exactly what I wanted.”
NG: Because you did your job if you did what they want. And that's the scariest thing. You really have to trust your director to get whatever it is out of you. He's going to tell you what you really need to do because he knows how he wants it to look and no one else does. You can shoot a whole movie and rehearse and read the script 50,000 times but after the movie's done, you're not going to see it. You have no idea what it will look like. It's really up to the director. So that's the eventual goal for me, I want to be giving those visions to people and maybe give myself some of my own visions. Directing and writing and all that stuff. If I can eventually tell my own stories like that and do it in a long-form way rather than a short-form way, that's how I want to transition.
CD: I want to continue acting, and maybe moving into more traditional movies and then doing movies with Fullscreen and stuff like that.
NG: That's the cool thing with us, we get to double-dip. So there's these indie films, and then there's these smaller budget films. And then there's the big ones, the 100 films that Hollywood makes every year that we're getting into now because of what the internet's allowed us to do. They're all very different films, we have options to do whatever which is the coolest thing.
CD: I want to continue doing both, and then just staying true to what we got big off of, which is posting on Twitter, posting on Instagram, posting on Vine and Facebook, and just keeping my creative intact and keeping that connection with my fans.
TV: Is that something fans have been worried about, that you'll abandon one platform for another?
CD: I'm sure it's crossed their minds but just remembering and staying true is the biggest thing. And they're very close. If I start to feel distant, they'll tell me, “Cameron, why haven't you posted?” and it's like oh, shoot, I need to post.
NG: They're honest as hell. You will get a raw opinion from millions of people no matter what you do. So that's good because we'll always know, okay, this is what they want next. We know our audience best and we have the best access to them, so if we can keep going with that by the time we're filming movies ten years from now and still have an audience that we can reach with our fingertips, that would be amazing. I think that's been the end goal, to stay true to where we started, keep our creativity going, and just keep taking steps forward.
TV: Because you guys are so phenomenally busy, do you ever feel the need to just take a break and distance yourself?
NG: I put my phone down for weeks at a time sometimes, and I don't even use it.
CD: Yeah, this guy does it a lot more than I do.
NG: Once I'm on it too much, it drives me crazy. I go on there for fun — that's why I started doing all of this. But once it gets overwhelming, I just need to put it down for a few hours and I can't have anyone talk to me.
CD: What I've noticed too is that when I'm by myself, it's not fun. But when I'm with other people that are doing it, too, it's exciting. Let's say I'm by myself and I'm starting to get sick of it, I'll start hanging out with other people, it's a gradual thing. You don't just jump in like, oh, let's start filming videos. You do some funny stuff, you're excited, and then you're like, oh, I should video tape that.
NG: The stars gotta line up. You gotta see in a way like, alright, with what I have, what could I make the most viral? That's what a lot of kids do. They live their lives and they have plans to make videos that day but they just live and find the story as they go. That's what we did. I started in school making videos and in my classroom with my teacher, and I had no followers. But that's how it got started. And it would go to bigger and cooler things and then we were on TV shows doing it, and it just turned into mayhem.
People feel obligated to show their lives on these platforms. They want someone's opinion, and I don't think it should ever be like that. It should be to have fun and to keep your memories. That's one of my favorite things about this. We're just logging our memories as we go. We'll always be able to go back and look at a picture or look at a video and remember everything that happened around that time, and that's the best thing.
TV: What's the one thing you're most proud of having created?
NG: A voice, for sure. From being a kid that had no voice at all, literally only his parents and his sports team listened to him…That's the coolest thing ever to see me, of all people, being in the real world and having a voice and an influence. And that should show everyone that they can do it. It really only takes one person to make a difference. If one person can do it, and everyone has that mindset, then that makes the world a better place.
CD: I wouldn't even know. The voice thing is pretty cool, he really got that one. I think the thing I'm most proud of is building a connection with people and being able to help them through things. Let's say someone's going through some crazy thing in their life, and they're looking for an out and something that's going to help them. Being able to be that thing is pretty amazing. Creating that connection with a fan is what it's all about for me.
NG: What I had to realize when I started doing this is you can help people through just being yourself and just living your life and setting an example and doing good...just being you. People see that and they feed off that, and they feed off your happiness and your success and they use it for themselves. That's been the coolest thing to see, the people that we can affect firsthand.
It's so different with every person. But there's some people who I knew were suicidal and they watched our videos and it helps them see some sort of light and it keeps them going.
Girls...and guys, too...that get bullied, people that have issues, anything that someone needs help with. There's a right way to handle things and a right way to look at things. So if you look at bullying, what we promote is that it's a waste of time. Why would anyone ever degrade someone when there's tons of bad things going on in the world? Just use your time on something else, or don't even bother going on their page and commenting. Because people take that to heart, they kill themselves from people telling themselves to kill themselves. Like, what the hell? That shouldn't ever happen. I think that's the biggest thing our generation needs to learn, that we should be hate-free. If you're going to hate on something, don't say it. Just keep it in your head, don't waste your time and don't waste someone else's time.
