He made his Greek mom a TikTok star.
It all started on TikTok in late 2020 when stand-up comedian Gus Constantellis donned a light-colored pageboy wig and spoke with a strong accent to demonstrate how his Greek mom makes tzatziki. Soon, he began filming his mom, Julia. In a 2021 video, Julia tiredly leaned against the kitchen stove, smoking a cigarette down to the filter. He asks her in Greek what dishes she prepared for Christmas and then translates her answer. That video garnered hundreds of comments from Gus’s 240,000 followers, many of whom identified as children or grandchildren of immigrants who found similarities in Julia’s behavior: tough yet caring, cynical yet supportive. Gus, now 32, drew inspiration from his experiences as a first-generation American and created a Greek character for many of his videos. These videos quickly gained popularity on TikTok, especially during the pandemic. The videos often focused on Julia’s exceptional culinary skills as she expertly prepared classic Greek dishes like kourabiedes (butter cookies) and spanakorizo (rice with spinach), but it was her natural comedic timing and straightforward delivery, combined with Gus’s translations and infectious laughter off-camera, that captured the audience. The online success prompted him to consider working on a cookbook with his mom. She agreed. After all, the idea of preserving family recipes was not only practical. Gus began exploring some of his mother’s recipes shortly after moving to Los Angeles in 2014 to work as a television writer. It was here that he encountered some quirks. In some recipes, ingredients were measured with a certain red cup. He had to call his mom to clarify the volume. Returning to New York in 2018 to pursue a full-time stand-up career, Gus had more opportunities to personally learn Julia’s culinary secrets, enhancing his own skills—something that was clearly important to her, as she often claimed in her son’s videos that he and his brothers needed to learn her recipes before she died. Of course, the mother passed away, but the cookbook with her recipes was still published.
https://xrust.ru/news/310807-on-sdelal-svoju-grecheskuju-mamu-zvezdoj-tiktok.html
