The hidden side of Jake Paul

“Are we doing video?” Jake Paul asks, half-aiming the question at me and half-directing it towards his representative on the Zoom call. “Err, yeah?” I reply. “I don’t usually upload the video from these sorts of chats, but…”

But it would seem strange to interview one of the biggest screen presences of the last decade and not have him appear, well, on screen.

‘Biggest’ replaces ‘most popular’ here, given the word ‘popular’ tends to imply widespread affection, and it’s fair to say that Paul is more well-known than well-liked. Controversies have arisen at intervals since the American emerged on Vine in 2013, three years before his two-season stint on the Disney Channel series Bizaardvark. Paul, 27, has nevertheless only seen his profile grow in the decade since, with 20 million YouTube subscribers and 27m Instagram followers at the time of writing. Still, he does not identify as a YouTuber or influencer anymore; he’s a professional boxer.