Smosh Announces Four New Cast Members Joining the YouTube Comedy Giant [Exclusive]
Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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Few names are as associated with the early days of YouTube as Smosh. Founded by Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox in 2005, the sketch comedy channel that first took off with their lip-synced "Pokémon Theme Music Video" has grown by leaps and bounds into a multimedia company with a fleet of channels, boasting a combined 45.4 million subscribers and 31 million social media followers. Their productions have gone beyond two-man sketches into a wide slate of shows, from Smosh Reads Reddit Stories to BoredAF and entire live productions, like We're All Gonna Die, all with a massively expanded cast. The coming spooky season will only see the troupe get even busier, with the aforementioned show returning to Los Angeles' Dynasty Typewriter in November and December with new horror scenarios and a new season of Werewolf bringing a new game of treachery and strategy online on October 23, just in time for Halloween.
With so much on the agenda for Smosh and the company looking to continue growing, the creator-first entertainment giant is adding a few new names to its regular ensemble. Collider can exclusively announce four new cast members who will be fully integrated throughout Smosh's digital and live programming going forward, and they're faces that fans will be familiar with. Courtney Theophin, Eli Gonzalez, Emily Wirth, and Tatyana Guchi are all coming aboard full-time after making their presence known across the brand in recent months. Their entrance comes as Arasha Lalani, who had been with Smosh since 2022, left to work on her independent projects, like her 7EQUIS-produced call-in confession show Fesspool.
Theophin, Gonzalez, Wirth, and Guchi join a cast headlined by Padilla and Hecox, alongside Shayne Topp, Courtney Miller, Damien Haas, Keith Leak Jr., Noah Grossman, Olivia Sui, and more. Smosh has been consistently adding talent about every two years, with the most recent wave welcoming Spencer Agnew, Tommy Bowe, and, from Mythical Entertainment, Trevor Evarts. CEO Alessandra Catanese felt the latest quartet made total sense as new members of the team not just due to their talents, but because of the relationships they'd already built with the rest of Smosh's actors and how well the community has already embraced them. She said:
“Building the Smosh cast is something we approach with a lot of care because the chemistry among our performers is core to everything we create. Courtney, Eli, Emily, and Tatyana began appearing as ‘friends-of’ across several series, and their talent, rapport with our ensemble, and the response from our community quickly made it clear that they belonged at Smosh. They will only strengthen our creativity as we continue to push the boundaries of comedy and evolve our programming.”
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.
⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)
💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)
⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)
🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)
01
What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.
02
How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.
03
What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.
04
How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.
05
Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.
06
What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.
07
What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.
08
What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.
Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.
Harry Potter
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped.
- This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be.
- The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love.
- The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again.
Lord of the Rings
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
- This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
- Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
- Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument.
Star Wars
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
- Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution.
- The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
- You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time.
Star Trek
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
- The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
- Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
- You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it.
The New Smosh Cast Boasts a Diverse Comedic Resume
All four new actors have built solid resumes in the realm of comedy before joining Smosh. The multi-hyphenate Haitian American Theophin previously brought his absurdist sense of humor to various teams under the Upright Citizens Brigade and also works as a producer at NPR. Gonzalez, meanwhile, has a resume spanning live comedy, television, and more, including appearances in the NBC hit comedy St. Denis Medical, Prime Video's Bosch: Legacy, and the upcoming Baywatch reboot at Fox. Like Theophin, he also has experience at UCB as a house member of Harold's team and on popular shows like F-ck This Month and Menudo Comedy.
New York comedian Wirth joins Smosh after years of stand-up, including recorded sets with Cracked Comedy Club and Newcomers at the Bell House, as well as a guest hosting gig with NowThis's Are You Okay?. She's also creating her own series at Funny or Die, titled We Saw a Dragon. Last but not least, Guchi brings a Black, queer, and Asian perspective to her work as a musician and comedian, previously being named a Laugh Factory Fresh Face, being heard on SiriusXM's Netflix Is a Joke Radio, and serving as creative director for the improv group Bernie Mac & Cheese. Her stand-up work at Cracked Comedy Club and Newcomers: An Emerging Comedy Showcase has also been filmed. In their own statement, Hecox and Padilla hailed the new hires for giving the Smosh team more comedic perspectives to pull from in growing their content offerings further.
"We’re so excited to welcome Courtney, Eli, Emily, and Tatyana to the Smosh cast. Each brings a distinct background, comedic perspective, and energy that opens up new possibilities for what we can create together. We can’t wait for our audience to get to know them better."
Smosh launches a new season of Werewolf on October 23, and new We're All Gonna Die live shows throughout November and December at the Dynasty Typewriter, which will also be available through live-streaming and video on demand. More programming will be unveiled in the coming weeks. Visit the official Smosh website and keep an eye on their YouTube channels — Smosh, Smosh Games, Smosh Pit, Smosh Cast, and Smosh Alike — for new releases and updates. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
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