A Billion Views And Counting: How Nicole Mattox Became The Queen Of Vertical Drama
Darlings, quick question. When you’re lying in bed at midnight telling yourself you’ll stop after one more video, what are you watching? If the answer is those addictive little soap operas that play vertically on your phone in minute long bursts, then darling, we have your new favourite person. Her name is Nicole Mattox, she has a billion views on a single app alone, and the industry has crowned her the Queen of English-speaking Verticals. Yes, actual royalty. Revamp Magazine sat down with her, and here is everything teens actually need to know about the woman quietly ruling the future of television, one swipe at a time.
First Things First: What Even Are Verticals?
Before the history books, a vocabulary lesson. Verticals, as Nicole explains beautifully in the interview, are today’s version of serialised storytelling, essentially modern soap operas created specifically for your phone. Each series runs roughly the length of a feature film, but it’s chopped into quick, addictive one to two minute episodes that you scroll through just like social media. It is storytelling designed for how people watch content now, which is to say horizontally challenged, attention divided and emotionally invested, apparently.
If that sounds like a gimmick, consider the numbers: Nicole has completed more than 25 projects and clocked over a billion views, and that is just within one app. A billion, darlings. For context, that is more views than most traditional television shows will ever see. The medium is the message, and the message is currently screaming.
From Broke Actress To Full Time Star In Two Years
Now for the origin story, which is every bit as compelling as her onscreen material. Nicole got involved in verticals in 2023, right as the format was starting to enter the US market, and she is disarmingly honest about where she was at the time: a broke actress in LA, genuinely grateful for any opportunity to act. She had no idea the format would take off the way it has, or that it would allow her to become a full time working actress just two years later. Her verdict, delivered with evident sincerity: she is incredibly thankful for everything verticals have opened up for her.
We found this genuinely moving, darlings, and it rhymes rather nicely with our recent Alex Farell feature, the Liverpool teenager making techno from his bedroom at twelve before anyone deemed him ready. The most interesting careers of this decade are not being handed out at traditional gatekeepers; they’re being built by people who took the strange new door when everyone else was still queuing at the old one. Nicole saw a weird emerging format and said yes. Two years later, she’s a monarch.
No Rules, Real Time, Total Energy
So what keeps her excited about the vertical world? Everything, is her answer, and she backs it up. The space is still so new that there are no rules yet, which means the people working in it are actively shaping what this corner of the industry could become. Being part of something evolving in real time is, in her words, incredibly energising, and she’s simply grateful to be along for the ride and to help build it as it grows.
There is a genuine lesson here for any teen reading, darlings: the “no rules yet” industries, whether that’s vertical drama, hard techno or whatever comes after them, are precisely where careers get made fastest. The established worlds have waiting lists. The new worlds have vacancies.
The Texas Roots Beneath The Crown
Extra texture from our own digging: Nicole grew up in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas, and is now LA based, with Revamp noting the blend of southern warmth from her Texas roots and the ambition of a true creator. Her IMDb already lists a stack of credits across short films, television series and vertical dramas, including a turn in Lady Outlaw, and her Instagram bio carries a claim we fully endorse: she was voted vertical legend at the first ever in person vertical awards. An awards show, darling. For verticals. We told you this thing had its own civilisation now.
She has also spoken to Authority Magazine under the gloriously-soapy headline “Give Me More Soapy”, talking TikTok era acting, freezing in the rain on set and owning her niche, which confirms our suspicion that she is as game as they come.
The Dream List
And what of the future? Nicole is refreshingly open about wanting roles that challenge her in new ways, whether deeper dramatic work, romantic comedies, or something unexpected like action or thriller. She loves projects that let her grow and surprise herself. Her dream collaborators read like a cinephile’s Pinterest board: directors who prioritise character and performance, with names including Greta Gerwig, Olivia Wilde, Lulu Wang and Shawn Levy, plus actors she admires such as Florence Pugh, Glen Powell, Zendaya and Andrew Garfield, adding that honestly she could name a dozen, and that she loves working with passionate, collaborative people willing to play. Bottom line, in her own words: she’s open to anything that tells a great story and lets her stretch as an artist.
A queen with taste, darlings. The Gerwig call must surely be coming.
The Tiger Beat UK Verdict
A billion views, a crown she earned from genuine hustle, a healthy disrespect for outmoded rules and a dream list pointed squarely at Hollywood’s top table: Nicole Mattox is proof that the future of entertainment is being written, quite literally, portrait shaped, right now. Do yourself a favour and find her work before the algorithms serve it to everyone you know. This is the name to know in the vertical revolution, and Tiger Beat UK is formally declaring ourselves early adopters.
Keep it locked right here for more from the Queen herself, darlings, because something tells us the coronation is only just beginning. Long live the swipe.
