Who are Cameo’s most requested TV stars? From the 90 Day Fiancé’s Big Ed to Lindsay Lohan, see who rakes in the most cash from personalised video messages in 2021

Sep 4 , 2021

Cameo’s TV stars, including RHONY’s Luann De Lesseps, Lindsay Lohan and RHONY’s Sonja Morgan. Photos: @countessluann; @lindsaylohan; @sonjatmorgan/Instagram

The app – where fans can pay for videos from their fave celebrities – first focused on athletes, but soon found reality TV stars like RHOBH cast members raked in millions

Kate Flannery (NBC’s The Office) recorded wedding messages amid the pandemic in 2020, while RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Carson Kressley has even done break-up videos

On Cameo, one-time American Idol hopeful William Hung still bangs. So does reality TV star Big Ed and the Seinfeld Soup Nazi.

The app that connects the famous and their fans with personalised messages has shared a ranking of the most popular small-screen celebrities, and the list may surprise you. Reality personas like Luann De Lesseps (The Real Housewives of New York City), Sandra Diaz-Twine (Survivor) and Captain Lee (Below Deck) are popular, and so is Bull star Michael Weatherly, Lindsay Lohan and comedian Andy Dick.

Cameo, created by Martin Blencowe, CEO Steven Galanis and Devon Townsend, launched in 2017 and is valued at US$1 billion. It offers customers recorded video messages, video chats and direct messages with their favourite actors, musicians, comics, reality stars, sports figures, political personalities, content creators and even famous animals.

Cameo makes money by taking a 25 per cent commission from each celebrity’s sale, which ranges from the pricey (Shark Tank businessman Kevin O’Leary charges US$1,500) to the affordable (former Bachelor villain Courtney Robertson can be booked for US$20).

Sonja Morgan. Photo: @sonjatmorgan/Instagram

The company initially focused on athletes, but one of Bravo’s Real Housewives opened Galanis’ eyes to the opportunity that awaited in genre of reality TV.

“Midway through the first summer, we started onboarding the first television talent, and Sonja Morgan [from The Real Housewives of New York City] was probably one of the most important,” Galanis says. “People started writing to us and saying, ‘Hey, we want [RHONY cast members] Luann. We want Bethenny. We want Ramona.

“We just found immediately once Sonja got on, that reality TV was going to be a big vertical, and at the same time we started doing really well with people from The Bachelor and Bachelorette. And they didn’t have to be the Bachelor; they didn’t have to be the Bachelorette. It could have been anyone that had a memorable moment on the show and had fans.”