Jasmeet Raina (known for years on the Internet as Jus Reign) swears he always wanted to go to film school. That didn’t pan out.

But he still had stories he wanted to share: satiric takes on growing up in a Punjabi Sikh family in 21st-century Canada, sketches about navigating race and racism, and pop-culture send-ups. With no understanding of how to get started in traditional media, Raina turned to YouTube.

“YouTube was a place where I could make whatever I wanted to make, however I wanted to make it, at my own pace and on a very limited budget,” says Raina. He launched his channel in 2009, in time uploading over 160 videos and amassing nearly a million subscribers. He’d made it—right?

But in 2018, Raina vanished from the platform. His disappearance was much speculated on, but in 2020, word broke that Raina was developing his own series, Late Bloomer, about a millennial content creator from a Punjabi Sikh family trying to make it big. The show’s first season landed on Crave earlier this year.

Why the switch? One reason was the challenge TV presented. “It felt like YouTube had become very easy for me,” he says. “I had figured it out. The challenge aspect was a big part of it.”

Another reason was Raina’s desire to break out of the niche he’d created for himself on the platform. His channel was decidedly a comedy one, and he figured he had stories that didn’t quite fit that mould—and that might resonate with a larger, more varied audience than his YouTube following.

“I just wanted to rebrand myself a bit and showcase that I was able to make different types of storytelling,” he explains. “TV just seemed like the next logical step in terms of telling a longer-format narrative in a way that could reach my audience, and different audiences as well.”

Raina knew he needed a production partner with experience in TV to help him develop the project, and Pier 21 Films (The Beaverton, Run the Burbs) fit the bill. The team there was excited by the show’s potential from the jump.

Nicole Butler
Co-CEO of Pier 21 Films

“He had developed an entire pilot and an entire vision of what he wanted to do with the show before we got involved,” says Nicole Butler, co-CEO of Pier 21 Films. “The pilot showed ability of execution with structure and with storytelling, which is what you really look for when you’re looking at a project to get behind.” They got behind it.

Many of the elements of the pilot Raina showed to the Pier 21 team—in which the protagonist, Jasmeet Dutta (played by Raina), tries to hunt down his lost laptop and keep the nudes stored on it from seeing the light of day—remained intact for the show’s first episode. Raina may not have attended film school, but he was a pro at keeping audiences riveted and wanting more.

“I really wanted to make the world feel as authentic as possible with the budget that we had. So I brought principles—guerrilla-style shooting and getting things done on a very, very tight budget—from YouTube to TV.”

Jasmeet Raina

Nevertheless, YouTube isn’t TV, and Raina still had much to learn. About working with a larger team instead of on his own, about planning for all stages of production, and about assuming the mantle of leadership on his show. But Raina rose to the occasion, and he likes to believe he had a few things to teach the industry as well.

“There’s an easy way to make TV shows, where you can get things done from A to B and have it nice and neat,” says Raina. “But I really wanted to make the world feel as authentic as possible with the budget that we had. So I brought principles—guerrilla-style shooting and getting things done on a very, very tight budget—from YouTube to TV. It was a nice mix and match.”

Another way he shook things up was with his heavy use of a language other than English or French on his show (in this case, Punjabi). Raina insisted on this, in order to make the world of the show as authentic as possible.

According to Butler, Pier 21’s role in achieving Raina’s vision was to listen, then to use their experience and resources to find solutions that brought that vision to life—including working with funding agencies to see what was possible, within current guidelines, around the use of Punjabi. Says Butler, “I think Jasmeet is really right in saying that sometimes the systems that we work in do not fully capture what audiences are looking for. There are barriers. But it’s important not to see those barriers as the be-all and end-all that is going to stop you from creating something that you really believe in.”

They certainly didn’t stop Raina. And his determination to create the show he envisioned is paying off: Late Bloomer has been renewed for a second season. Raina’s audience is clearly growing, as he’s being stopped in the street by viewers with whom the show has struck a chord, “from a 60-year-old Somali cab driver to a white dad from Sarnia.”

“I even had a Russian Uber Eats driver who slammed on his brakes when he saw me on the street,” says Raina. “He didn’t know how to speak English, so he used his Google Translate app to tell me how he felt about the show. Even though the show is in English and Punjabi, two languages that he has little familiarity with, he still was able to relate to it. It was, like, this beautiful experience.”

Raina’s advice to other YouTube creators looking to cross the bridge to traditional television is the same philosophy that has helped him thrive in this new (to him) ecosystem: “Just stay true to exactly what type of story you want to tell and what you’re trying to do, despite the challenges. Audiences can feel when something is real and something is sincere. If anybody tells you that there’s one way to do something, don’t believe it. And understand that whatever industry you step into is also evolving, and you can be part of that evolution.”

MORE CANADIAN CROSSOVERS

Jared Keeso did it first with Letterkenny. Jasmeet Raina is doing it with Late Bloomer. More and more social media personalities are parlaying their online fame into a small-screen career.

Here, several other Canadian stars who have made the jump:

BOMAN MARTINEZ-REID

Boman Martinez-Reid’s TikTok Channel, featuring his family and friends in reality-TV parodies, gained so much popularity over the pandemic (it now boasts over 2 million followers) that Bell Media sought him out.

The result is Made for TV with Boman Martinez-Reid, a self-referential mockumentary in which the creator finds a TV genre that suits him. “Social, vertical video makes for a different type of comedy than horizontal video,” says Martinez-Reid. “[TV] has to be a little more standalone. But I feel that we were wise enough to know that.” You can watch the series, co-produced by Alibi Entertainment, on Crave.

SPENCER BARBOSA

Spencer Barbosa isn’t new to television—she hosted Family Channel’s preteen show We Are Savvy when she was just 12—but it’s the 10 million followers on her body-positivity TikTok channel that helped land Barbosa her latest gig.

Flawed is a docu-reality show that will begin airing on Bell Fibe TV1 this fall, featuring “makeunders” and “vulnerable photo shoots” that help participants accept and appreciate the skin they’re in.

JAE AND TREY RICHARDS

These Toronto brothers have been purveying comedic content on YouTube—and running a streetwear company—under their brand 4YE for years. They partnered with Counterfeit Pictures and Bell Media to make The Office Movers, a show about their real-life experiences as employees at their father’s office moving company.

They’ve been working on digital projects with Bell since 2015; their new show will air on Crave. “We’ve been groomed and we’ve been exercising in the gym, and now we’re ready to go show our talents,” Jae told Playback.