big bucks
Inbetweeners star James Buckley reveals eye-watering SEVEN figure amount he’s made making videos for fans
INBETWEENERS star James Buckley has revealed he’s earned around £1.6million from messaging fans.
The actor, 35, turned to the app Cameo during Covid as he struggled to find work, but admitted he didn't initially want to get involved because he didn't think people would be interested in receiving video messages from him and feared his fragile ego would not be able to handle the rejection.
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But he was persuaded to join by the app's co-creator Martin Blencowe in March 2020 and now he believes he may have sent as many as 40,000 messages at £40 a time.
But James, who played Jay Cartwright in The Inbetweeners, said Blencowe had originally told him he should charge people £150 a message, but he replied: "I'm not charging people that for a 30, 45 second video."
Buckley added the Big Fish podcast: "I don't want to take the p**s out of people. I was like 'What would I pay? I'd pay £40'.
"I kept saying 'this is going to be really, really embarrassing - my tiny fragile ego. I'm not the most confident person, this is going to send me to dark places. I'm going to sign up for this thing and nobody is going to want a video from me'.
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"And it turned out everyone did."
James said he still sends messages every day but has cut down because of other commitments, as he's returned slowly back to acting and also has a hugely successful YouTube channel.
He continued: "I've calmed down a little bit now. Definitely during lockdown when I needed something to do with my time.
"Jay is way more interesting and way more funny than me. It's always 'happy birthday, let me know if you ever want to come down the caravan club, I'll teach you how to put the balls in'. Stuff like that, which people really enjoy.
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"It's quite a big chunk of my income. I'm a bit more lax on it now just because I don't have as much time as I did when we were in lockdown and we had all the time in the world.
"I charge £40. Some people charge hundreds of pounds. I just thought 'I need something to do with my time, I need to bring in some money as well because my diary went empty for a year. Covid turned out to be a great big f***ing sledgehammer through most of the projects and things that I had all lined up for the year.
"It was a godsend financially. But I never wanted to take the piss. I'm in the business of making people happy. I don't want to rip people off.
"I have done tens of thousands. Tens and tens of thousands, maybe thirty, forty thousand, something like that."
Asked if he's a Cameo pound sterling millionaire now, he said: "Yeah, I am. I still do it. I do it every day, little and often."
Asked if he'd really done 40,000, he replied: "Yeah, maybe. Over thirty definitely."
But dad-of-two James, who married Clair Meek in 2012, said despite Cameo and the large amount of money he also rakes in on YouTube from his vlog page and gaming channel, he earned far more at the height of The Inbetweeners.
He added: "I don't earn as much money now as when I was making box office smashes with the Inbetweeners movie. But that was never a drive. If I was still driven by money and fame you'd see me on TV a load more. I would have done a load more stuff after the Inbetweeners.
"Us four boys at the height of the Inbetweeners, especially after the first film came out, we were probably for one summer, for about four weeks, the biggest celebrities in the country at that point.
"We had everything come to us - all the scripts come to us, 'can you do this, can you endorse this, we're thinking about making this film, would you be in this sitcom?' Everyone wanted a piece of us at that moment.
"All four of us would look at them and go 'No, I don't think that's for me'. I took a year off. A couple of months after the first Inbetweeners film came out I became a dad for the first time. I was like 'I want to do this, I want to see how I get on with this little fella and spend as much time with him'.
"I'm just starting to get back in the swing of things and I've just done a four-part drama for Channel 5 with Neil Morrissey."
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"I want to get back on the horse. I've just left it about a decade too late."
Listen to the full interview on the Big Fish with Spencer Matthews podcast on now.
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