After 12 years, roughly a billion views and an awful lot of awkward eye contact, the internet’s most famous first date is calling for the check. Amelia Dimoldenberg announced on Instagram Sept. 3 that Chicken Shop Date is ending after a final run of episodes. She called the show her “very own romcom” and said that while she once thought it might be part of her forever, she’s ready to move on.
Amelia redefined the celebrity interview
Chicken Shop Date started as a column in a youth club magazine in London, written by a 17-year-old. Dimoldenberg moved the idea to YouTube in March 2014, and the format has barely changed since: a celebrity, a plate of fried chicken and a conversation staged as a first date. Her deadpan delivery does a lot of the work. So does her rule against meeting guests before the cameras roll, which is why the discomfort reads as real.
The early guests came from the UK rap scene, not Hollywood. That changed in 2021, when her date with Jack Harlow went viral and the show became a required press-tour stop. More than 115 episodes later, the guest list includes Cher, Paul McCartney, Andrew Garfield, Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish. Dimoldenberg also turned the persona into a second career as a red-carpet correspondent, where the Garfield bit first caught fire.
The numbers are worth sitting with. Her YouTube channel has more than 3.4 million subscribers. Across social, the show’s following grew from 830,000 in 2022 to 4.4 million.
Leaving on a high note
Ending a show at its peak is the part fans are struggling with. According to Dimoldenberg, the peak is the point. “I’ve spent my entire twenties sitting across from the most incredible people, people I’d always dreamt of meeting,” she wrote in the announcement. The implication is that a format built around being 17 and hopeful has a natural expiration date.
What’s on the horizon for Amelia?
Dimoldenberg is taking the awkward-flirt comedy to film. She’s writing and starring in a rom-com with Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures, playing a journalist whose routine celebrity interview turns into an actual romance. Art imitating a chicken shop.
She’s also developing a young adult drama for the BBC, announced at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Her pitch for it: her version of Skins. Both projects run through Dimz Inc., the production company Chicken Shop Date built.
A few more dates are still in the pipeline before the shop closes for good.
Featured image courtesy: Chicken Shop Date