The future of interviewing: How Brittany Broski’s Royal Court is changing the game
Is unscripted the new way to go?
Now is a time where we have more information about celebrities than ever. But nobody wants to see the exact same interview over and over again, where it’s just dull promotion with recurring questions. Interviewing styles are shifting, and so are audience needs, and therefore traditional talk shows now have new competition to look out for.
Brittany Broski was featured in Vanity Fair’s The New Late Night Issue, alongside other rising interviewers such as SubwayTakes’ Kareem Rahma, and Hot Ones’ Sean Evans. Even though they create completely different content, they exist in the same realm: they are the next generation of interviewers, who are changing the game. Brittany established her own channel Royal Court out of her love for Game of Thrones and dragons, Rahma interviews people on the subway, and Evans asks deep and unique questions from celebrities who are trying not to cry while eating spicy wings.
Brittany first appeared on TikTok as ‘kombucha girl’, and the story is quite short on that: she tried kombucha for the first time, filmed her reaction, which then became a meme. The next day she woke up with millions of views and realised that she would try to ‘ride this wave’ and possibly make a career out of this.
She has built her whole brand on the fact that she is a ‘certified fangirl’, which is something that women are usually scrutinized for, however she used it to her advantage. Because being a fan of something/someone means you care, and caring is cool. She created her own unique interview show called Royal Court on YouTube, the tagline of which is: ‘Welcome to Royal Court, where pop culture royalty compete for a spot on my trusted council’, in the words of Brittany.
She divides her episodes into three different parts: starting out with an interrogation with a spotlight on the artist (both figuratively and literally) then comes a part, where guests usually bring some type of gift, which could be food specific to where they’re from, merch, or a one of a kind item, so this is called the ‘Royal Tribute’. Lastly comes the ‘Coat of Arms’, where she makes the guests draw their family crests, while asking them more serious questions about their careers. Also, all guests dress up in a cape and some type of head accessory, which further adds to the interviews not being perfectly polished: they might have a Dior set hiding under that cape, but that’s not what the focus is on.
Brittany has had some of the biggest names across industries on her channel, such as Tony Hawk, Kyle Maclachlan, Anne Hathaway, Charli XCX, Elijah Wood, and many more. The fact that Broski cares so deeply shows in her interviews, as similarly to Sean Evans, celebrities usually get surprised by how deep she goes in her research, and she sometimes even brings up facts that the celebrities themselves don’t even remember. Another thing she does successfully, is bring out the funniest parts of celebrities. She asks whimsical questions which require whimsical answers, and it is so evident, that most of these celebrities don’t even hesitate. Their personalities are right there, it just depends on the questions whether they show those personalities or not.
In a world filled with questions about what actors took from set and what their favourite memory is from filming, Brittany’s interviews are a breath of fresh air. In her ‘realm’, using the example of The House of Dragons’ Matt Smith, the topic of conversation goes more in the direction of how he would greet a dragon whose name he forgot.
So, what really is it about these shows that makes people watch them time and time again? It’s the fact that they’re unpredictable, real, and human. Celebrities are humans just like us, and if Dylan O’Brien says that a pack of 8th grade boys scare him and would make him run as fast as he was in The Maze Runner, then that is as real as it gets, in my opinion.
Cordelia Cullen is an English Literature and Creative Writing student at Oxford Brookes, and also the president of the Media, Journalism, and Publishing Society. Being a fan of Brittany and Royal Court, she said that her favourite thing about the show is the unexpected answers Brittany manages to extrapolate from her guests.
‘With Royal Court we get this different perspective from these celebrities where they feel more like tangible human beings, because they are going off the dome with these answers. It makes it so much more palatable as a viewer to watch something that feels more organic.’
Brittany can so neatly bring up deep cuts of these celebrities’ lives that almost every episode has a ‘How did you know that?’ moment, which just makes the interview work even more. ‘I think by disarming them in that way sometimes works, because you get a more laid-back version of them, and she does that so well’, added Cordelia.
If you grew up in the early 2000s and were a fangirl, fan fiction was not an unknown concept to you, and Brittany is no stranger to it either. She famously wrote one about Cole Sprouse, which, to his complete surprise, she shared with him when he went on Royal Court. This was one of the very first episodes that blew up and completely shocked people, as the thing about fan fiction is that it is mostly anonymous, and private.
However, what Brittany did in this situation is let go of that fear, and show it to Cole. If you really think about it, he is also just human, which is why his reaction was genuine and hilarious: he was giggling while reading it, could not put it down, and even asked Brittany to sign it for him. To this day, this is the second most watched video on Royal Court with 6.8 million views.
One of her recent videos was with Harry Styles. Yes, THE Harry Styles, who Brittany described as THE guest. One thing the public knows about Harry Styles is that we actually don’t know much about him. Other than paparazzi pictures and the following stories that circulate from there, Harry is a very private person, especially since his solo career started when One Direction split up. He doesn’t go on press tours, and only does a few interviews (mostly with Zane Lowe for Apple) upon album releases.
For his new album Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally, he joined Brittany Broski’s Royal Court, making her audience lose their minds, with people in her comment section saying ‘I didn’t know this was an option’, and even the official YouTube channel commented ‘IS THAT HARRY’ we scream in unison’. In short, this was a shock to a lot of people, even to the ones working at YouTube.
In this episode, Harry talked about his favourite English swear words, how he could audition for Britain’s Got Talent with his talent of ‘eating a remarkable amount of yogurt’, and how he made the discovery that the equivalent of girl dinner is eating a rotisserie chicken over the sink, also known as boy dinner.
His chemistry was immediate with Brittany, as he kept up the banter with her, sang bits of Shania Twain’s Honey I’m Home, and he even said that he was getting too comfortable on the show. And as a plus, he mentioned that he watches Mike Tyson’s 10 greatest knockouts on YouTube if he can’t sleep at night. You probably did not think that this was the information you’d find out about Harry Styles in 2026, but there you go.
In all seriousness, these mundane moments are what bring us closer to celebrities, and allow audiences to connect with them more, which is why keeping up these interview styles is important for fandom culture as well.
Cordelia added that ‘at the end of the day we put celebrities on such a massive pedestal so it’s kind of nice to take them off it a bit, and just to see them as themselves. It’s just breaking down that barrier’.
At the end of her interviews, Brittany always asks guests whether they would like to promote something, and even though most do, some of them even choose not to bring up their upcoming projects, which justifies the vibe of the interview. The interviews are actually more about getting to know them more as humans, rather than getting to know their projects.
Ever since her success, Brittany has been brought on the red carpet for the House of Dragons, Mickey 17, and Gladiator 2. She also hosted the Global Fan Event for Dune: Part Three, and she continues to wow the industry with her talent, making it to Time Magazine’s TIME100 Creators in 2025. This shows that the industry is opening its eyes to her talent as well, reserving a spot for her in the future of interviewing.