He was one of YouTube’s first stars while in High School. Tajh Lewis along with some friends focused on making relevant and relatable comedy for an audience he feels still doesn’t get enough story recognition.
“I was a high school kid at the time, just kind of looking at my surroundings. And I just wanted to make, like, relatable comedy stuff that related to people my age,” Lewis told Barrett News Media over a Zoom call.
Born in Manhattan, Tajh Lewis grew up in Brooklyn until the age of 9 and moved to Rockland County in New York. This experience motivated the then-young teen to develop his YouTube channel. “I started my channel, which is called The Shadow Show, around 2006 and just made funny skits and stuff. From there I started to develop more as a writer,” Lewis said.
He acknowledged the channel changed as he grew older, “It kind of evolved from being a high school kid to being Black in a PWI, which is a predominantly white institution, and then just kept evolving and evolving, evolving from my perspective.” He added his main thread is also his strength, “It was always making some type of relatable comedy. It was kind of a point of confidence for me. I might not be the biggest or the tallest or the strongest, but I can make you laugh.”
Over time, Lewis developed a series on YouTube, educating the public on Black American History. “It’s weird saying this in 2024, but [back then] there wasn’t a lot of representation growing up.” He added, “There’s not a lot of Black history that was told to me outside of slavery, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. The same culprits, right? So every February, I went out and did my own research.”
Tajh Lewis noted this work was intertwined with his comedic tagline “Real talk that’s real funny,” because he wanted viewers to learn and be entertained. “I was just like, there’s so many, contributions that we’ve done as a people. Not only music and athletics but also invention wise, engineering wise. There’s so many contributions we’ve made,” he said.
Lewis began his own production company in 2016, “Because I was writing, directing, acting in producing everything myself, I had a knack for video editing. So I started taking out more seriously, started doing more clientele work.”
The YouTube star is now taking his efforts to both the silver and streaming screens. He has a short film green-lit for 2025 and is developing a pilot. However, Lewis wanted it to be known what he develops isn’t just another “Black film” saying, “In media right now, I think the message got a little crisscrossed. I think Hollywood kind of was like, ‘Okay, you guys want to see yourselves? So we’re going to put you in everything.’”
While Tajh Lewis appreciates the effort he noted, “They just throw us in a bunch of stuff and they’re just greenlighting a bunch of stuff, but they’re not focusing on the story and making it good.”
He later added, “So then the narrative becomes ‘Why are we giving them the opportunity to do this and all of [these films] bomb in the theaters and nobody watches this stuff on streaming?’ It’s not that because they were Black, it’s because the story is bad.”
Lewis notes his media production company, Radio Digital, does not create and develop stories like Hollywood. Instead, its focus is on stories. “My CEO likes to say that, ‘We are the Black A24.’ We try to make thought-provoking, well-produced, off-the-charts story, off-the-charts cinematography, but from people who are mostly Bipoc. We’re all Black and Hispanic.”
Focusing on scripting, Tajh Lewis’ goal is to better represent minority groups in film.
“I would say, as a people we have different representations and different stories to tell that aren’t just from this disenfranchised, hood perspective. And I think stories can get too caught up in that.” Lewis also added, “On the flip side, we have the racial trauma, true stories that need to be told. But they’re told too much, whereas a Black person, I know what it is to be Black in America. I don’t want to go watch a movie about how hard it is to be me. You know what I mean? I want to have the same escapism as my white and European counterparts.”
His ideas are catching on. His short film Black is Black was received at film festivals around the country and won three awards. Lewis said of his team, “We have two big short films under our belt. One feature with Amazon.”
He added, “We just finished production for, a new short film we’re working on called Break a Leg. And that should hopefully be coming out 2025, but we’re in post for it right now.”
In all this silver screen effort, Lewis won’t be forgetting the platform that made him famous in the first place, YouTube. He will be re-branding The Shadow Show later this year. Like from the very beginning, the channel will continue to develop and grow just as Lewis does. This year will bring him an exceptional amount of new content influence as he is getting married and having a baby.
While preparing for two major life events Lewis is spending his time sharing his influence with young people at the Brownsville Recreation Center. “You’d be surprised how many kids could have direction, if they just have people that look like them, that care about where they are and can give them the tools to get to the next level, give them other variations of what their life can be.”
Tajh Lewis added, “You know, a lot of the kids right now they love music. So cool, you want to be in music, and you want to be a musician. It’s very hard to be in that industry. But you can learn how to be a sound engineer and how you can turn that passion into profit. Right? You can work your way up in that way. So maybe you’re not the talent necessarily, but you can be the songwriter. You can be the sound engineer, you can be the producer.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll is a news media columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
