For a while, Joey Thompson and Sean Russel Herman followed the typical roadmap when it came to making a career in comedy.
Both Thompson and Herman had moved to Los Angeles, where they went through the usual Hollywood hustle of making content, auditioning, performing — rinse and repeat.
It was only when Thompson, a Greer native, moved back to his home at the start of the pandemic that his comedic career took off.
“It’s funny, because I left Greenville to go to LA, but the most successful I’ve ever been in entertainment was leaving LA and discovering the team of people here,” Thompson said.
Now that success is coming to fruition with “Up and Coming,” a new TV show being filmed in Greenville County. The concept of the show came from a skit Thompson wrote, filmed and edited with Herman, who had decided to move to Greenville, too, after visiting Thompson early on in the pandemic.
“We actually made that video a week before I was going to leave and then it blew up overnight,” Herman said. “So I ended up deciding to stay.”
The video, “People From ‘Up and Coming’ Cities,” has since racked up millions of views, with Thompson’s TikTok account alone garnering more than 4 million unique likes.
Filmed in Greenville, the video follows two city planners of a so-called “up and coming city” as they tout the “opportunities” that abound. They brag about getting both a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods, along with numerous breweries and coffee shops.
“The video struck a nerve across the country,” Herman said. “We were on news channels in so many different cities that found it relatable.”
Now Herman and Thompson are working with Greenville-based Radical advertising agency to launch “Up and Coming” as the first offering from Radical’s expansion as a full-scale media production company, Radical Productions.
For Radical owner Ryan Alford, who initially hired Herman and Thompson to create social media advertising campaigns, the decision to film a full TV series was an obvious one.
“Doing marketing right now for clients, we’re seeing this convergence of entertainment being really what breaks through on social media,” Alford said. “I see the future of marketing and the future of content as these worlds coming together.”
The TV show takes the original concept of the skit and expands it. It follows two city planners of a fictional city (which has similarities with Greenville) who find themselves in over their heads when they accidentally market their small city so well that they begin to see exponential growth. The show then tracks the economic growing pains as they deal with newcomers, a changing culture, infrastructure problems, gentrification and of course traffic, all while the two planners who started it all see their personal lives begin to bend under the pressure.
“The ideas they bring are good and semi-progressive, so people like them, even though they themselves have very sordid personal lives,” Thompson said.
With Alford serving as executive producer, the team plans to shop the original pilot to streaming platforms once it is completed in the coming weeks, while also considering other options, including launching the show themselves online and using sponsored content and other marketing strategies.
But for the whole team, the goal is broader than just one show.
“Personally the goal has always been to build some form of economy or environment that is based in entertainment in Greenville,” Thompson said. “We have a super team of people here and we’re trying to build that up.”
“Up and Coming” is produced by Radical productions, with Thomas McFadden serving as assistant director. Oliver Lollis, vice president of business development for Radical, acted and co-produced.
