Action Bronson: The Realest Reality Star Of 2016
In an age of celebrity artifice, the food-loving, weed-smoking rapper is as genuine as it gets.
Action Bronson sits on a maroon, floral-patterned couch in front of a green screen, wearing a white hoodie with a few grease stains on the chest. His giant beard hides his neck, and his glassy eyes are barely open as he watches the History channel’s Ancient Aliens.
This is probably how the rapper would enjoy spending a weekday afternoon (minus the green screen), but this is work: He parlayed a Cheap Seats-like 4/20 special into a ten-episode season of Traveling the Stars: Action Bronson and Friends Watch Ancient Aliens, which is just the latest step of Bronson, real name Arian Asllani, turning his interests into a viable career.
The show features Bronson and friends watching and talking about Ancient Aliens while smoking weed and ordering outrageous amounts of high-end takeout food (Bronson was a respected New York City chef with an online cooking show, Action In the Kitchen, before starting his hip-hop career). By description, it has no right now be as entertaining as it is, and the show itself seems to be aware of that: The first episode opened with a voicemail recording from a frustrated viewer, who says, “You guys need to be dumped off the air, [that] Ancient Aliens show. You need to fucking go. People need to be informed, they don’t need to have idiot fucking comments from you morons sitting on fucking TV… you assholes. You’re doing a disservice to the fucking world.”
But it works, because in a sense, Bronson functions as a modern day Dean Martin. Aside from his music, Martin branched off into comedy, movies, television, and celebrity roasts, sharing his enchanting personality and interests with the world in every medium on which it could exist in his time. Action Bronson is doing something similar, but instead of wearing suits, hosting variety shows and crooning his way into our hearts, he raps about cooking and sports, gets high on TV while watching his favorite stoner shows, and travels the world eating gourmet food (on his VICELAND show Fuck That’s Delicious).
While music is ultimately the foundation upon which the empire is built, musicians today are almost equal parts social media stars and brands, consistent providers of content across a variety of channels. Through reality endeavors across platforms both digital and traditional, Bronson has established himself as a reliable personality of a contemporary subculture, and he’s made it appear effortless.
Historically, reality TV has mainly presented a few types of people: The beautiful person looking for love, fame or something similarly superficial (The Bachelor, Big Brother), the celebrity who is more notable for their reality TV endeavors than their creative output (Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Paris Hilton’s The Simple Life), or the cultural alien whose values and lifestyles are wildly different from those of their viewership (Duck Dynasty, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo). This really limits the audience for the format in a time when it should be broader than ever, when people are famous based solely on their Instagram and Vine accounts, when fans of actors and musicians want so badly to know what their favorite entertainers are like in their personal lives.
It wouldn’t work if Bronson didn’t have the personality to prop his empire up, but as far as we’re able to tell, he seems like an uncommonly genuine public figure. This is extremely valuable in an age of celebrity artifice, where PR campaigns are so carefully manicured to present the “ideal” image of a revenue-generating person. Those can work, but fans want authenticity: Personalities like Kanye West, Donald Trump, and Action Bronson are so engaging because they say what’s on their minds, regardless of what it is, and that reality is refreshing.
Even though Bronson’s music and TV shows are by their nature a presentation, it doesn’t feel like it’s censored or molded by focus groups because the situations he puts himself in lend themselves to transparency. The format of his two TV shows is loose, which gives his gregarious character room to flourish. He doesn’t keep his guard up because whether he’s eating pulled pork sandwiches in New York or talking about dinosaurs with Tyler, The Creator, he’s in a vulnerable position, enjoying himself too much to want or need to put on any sort of front (he also might be too high to effectively fake anything).
He feels unfiltered, and I have to believe he’s that way off-camera as well. On April 29, 2015, Action Bronson performed a concert at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine, and I was there. Before his set started, a couple friends and I were standing by the stage, and I noticed a lanky middle school-aged kid in basketball shorts with a laminated credential around his neck come out from a side tunnel. He was holding a plastic container and seemed excited, like he wanted to tell somebody something, so he approached us and said, “I just met Action Bronson.”
My friend asked the kid how it was, and he said, “Great, he gave me a steak.” He opened the container and showed us the large piece of meat that Action Bronson had apparently just treated him to backstage.
“Is that the best steak you’ve ever had in your life,” I asked him. He took a bite, nodded, said, “It’s pretty good,” and walked away, presumably to share his story with whoever would listen to it.
It was a spectacularly on-brand moment for an Action Bronson concert: food, music, and behind-the-scenes insight into what it’s like to be in a room with the famous rapper. Sounds like a good idea for a reality show.
