Degen Pener previously wrote about how SpaceX IPO billionaires will impact L.A. real estate, the challenges of aging in Hollywood, rats at some of L.A.’s hottest restaurants and why more people in Hollywood are smoking cigarettes.
In more than two decades in Hollywood, TJ Wilk has been many things. He’s worked as a male model. He’s been a reality TV cast member. A waiter. A personal trainer at Equinox. And an in-demand manny hired by the likes of Usher.
But now, for the first time since he moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue his Hollywood dream, Wilk is working full-time as an actor. And it wouldn’t have happened without the eruption of verticals onto the U.S. entertainment landscape. Since 2023, the 47-year-old has filmed more than 30 mobile-first microdramas — those melodramatic and propulsive narratives that are delivered in addictive 60- to 120-second nuggets of storytelling.
His first was a 56-episode werewolf tale called Her Desired Alphas, which has racked up 28.8 million views on the vertical app ReelShort. “I learned what a vertical was when I got on set,” he tells me. “On my very first scene on the very first day, we were like nose-to-nose. It was so different than anything I’ve ever done in acting class or in a commercial. Everything has to fit into the [vertical] framing.”
“It was an interesting learning curve,” Wilk continues. “And from that first movie, I literally haven’t stopped working.”
His 10th vertical, Love Me Later, Pay Me Now, took him to China for a shoot at “a legitimate billionaire’s compound” in Zhuhai, where the cast also were housed. “The whole thing was made out of Italian marble. They would serve us breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day,” Wilk recalls. “I actually had a moment where I started crying because I just couldn’t believe I was there making a movie when a year before that I was in an acting class, sitting in a cold, hard, very uncomfortable chair, three hours a day, twice a week. I never imagined that I would be in another country in this billionaire’s mansion playing a lead role.”
In March, one of Wilk’s newest series, Drowning in His Restraint — in which he plays a bodyguard and secret hitman — racked up massive numbers. Released on both TikTok and the vertical app LoveShots, the viral hit has had more than 1.6 billion views, cementing Wilk’s status as one of the biggest stars of the format. Access Daily co-host Mario Lopez even called him “the unofficial king of verticals.”
That kingdom comes with an asterisk.
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