Kingdom Geek’s Katie Wilson Told Us What SHE Geeks Out About
As one of the hosts of the Kingdom Geek video podcast, Katie Wilson knows a thing or two about geeking out.
Opposite co-host Andre Meadows, Katie hosts the weekly podcast to chat with celebs about all things related to geekdom and pop culture, from superheroes and video games, to sci-fi and fantasy TV and everything in between.
Katie recently took the time to chat with us and answer all of our pressing questions, so keep reading to find out more about her geek roots and what it really takes to be an internet personality dedicated to the geek cause.
Sweety High: Tell me a little bit about your history with geek and gamer culture.
Katie Wilson: I grew up playing video games with my dad starting from the time I was 5 years old. I was an only child, and I only really had him to play video games with me.
I've also always been a really big fan of Xena: Warrior Princess. I started watching that when I was really little and that spiraled me into a love of all things medieval fantasy, and it just kept going from there. But when I was little, I never in a million years thought I could have a job that revolved around that stuff.
SH: How did you start doing work that would eventually lead to Kingdom Geek?
KW: I moved out to Los Angeles and started booking work as an actress for large YouTubers who wanted to do sketches and short films on their channels. I started gaining all these followers by being an actor on other channels, so I decided I wanted to start my own channel to be able to showcase the things I love and find an audience that loves the same sorts of things. That's how I started growing my YouTube channel.
My Kingdom Geek co-host Andre Meadows and I had also been working together a lot. I believe we became friends through some YouTube event, but the very first time we worked together he asked me to play Princess Peach in a Mario video he was doing. We also hosted for the Hallmark Channel on a geek and gamer segment for a show, and we kept booking a lot of work together as hosts. Fullscreen saw that and they were doing new talkshows for their platform, so they reached out to us. They wanted us to do a show and said we could do pretty much whatever we wanted and we jumped at that opportunity. We got to sit down with the team and help design the set and develop what we wanted our show to be. It's evolved over the course of the last year into what it is now and it's been a lot of fun.
SH: What's something about your job that you think most people don't know about?
KW: I think people don't understand how hard maintaining a YouTube channel is or get that YouTubers are constantly working. When you're an actor, you can go in and everything is set up and ready for you, but when you're making videos online, you are the actor, director, writer, editor and sound person. You're in charge of every single element of the video, so it's kind of a 24/7 job. We're working on the weekends and over holidays and it's a lot more time-consuming than people understand.
SH: You ask this on Kingdom Geek all the time, but what are the things that you geek out about?
KW: Currently, I'm still geeking out about the video game Overwatch, and I'll always geek out over medieval fantasy like Game of Thrones and Xena: Warrior Princess. Also, I love The Walking Dead. I love television and there are a lot of shows I geek out about. Also, Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda.
SH: What's the most memorable experience you've had thanks to Kingdom Geek?
KW: I have two. The coolest guest we've had is Milla Jovovich, who was just on the show. She's fantastic and absolutely incredible, and for us to have Milla in was great. She's been such an inspiration to me as a strong female character in the extremely successful Resident Evil franchise. And because of Kingdom Geek, Andre and I got to host at San Diego Comic-Con for the SyFy Channel. That was awesome and we got to meet some really cool people.
SH: Do you ever feel pressure to keep up with what's happening in geek culture? How do you balance what you want to consume as a fan, and what you have to because of work?
KW: I definitely have to stay up on everything. I'm constantly attached to my phone—even more than I'd want to be at times—but I always want to know what's going on in new movies, television and games and what's happening in pop culture, gaming and the geek world.
As far as what I consume in order to make videos, I pick and choose things that really mean something to me. I'm not one of those people who want to post a video unless I really like what I'm talking about, so it's got to be a piece of news or a new show or game coming out that I'm really excited about. I need to make a personal connection with it.
SH: Do you have any advice for young women who want to do what you do?
KW: Most importantly, ask for what you want. So many times young women feel like they need to constantly work their way up—which they do—but fear can prevent them from putting themselves out there. In my experience, just taking a leap and saying, "Hey, I would like to do this" has gotten me a lot further in my career and I've gotten to do some really cool things just because I've asked.
My biggest regret is actually being afraid to put myself out there, as well as trying to figure out who other people wanted me to be. That's the hardest thing to learn, and if I could tell my younger self, I don't even know she'd listen. Success comes with really being confident in yourself, knowing who you are and what you like, and not letting those things pull you back. Instead, use those things to launch you forward.
Want to learn more about how you can turn your love for gaming into a career? Click HERE to read how Liz Finnegan, senior editor at The Escapist, did just that.