EXCLUSIVE: A Florida-based filmmaker who has garnered a massive following on social media for calling out crooks, conmen and racists could become the inspiration behind a new TV project, if actor-producer Greg Grunberg has his way.
Michael McWhorter, better known to his more than 6 million followers on TikTok as TizzyEnt, made a name for himself in 2021 by exposing a woman who was selling fake Covid vaccine cards during the pandemic. Since then, his daily posts seeking justice for victims of verbal and physical harassment, as well as straight-up criminal acts, have become catnip to his myriad followers, including Grunberg.
McWhorter has become so ubiquitous in his quest as a social crusader that people frequently tag him in video posts whenever a person is victimized. Even if he stopped actively looking for cases of wrongdoing, McWhorter says he has enough tips in his inbox to keep his social media feeds packed with content for months.
“He is the Castle of social media sleuthing,” said Grunberg, in reference to Nathan Fillion’s portrayal of a bestselling author-turned-crime solver in the old ABC drama Castle. “I’ll be in my car or somewhere and I’ll see a video where he nailed somebody and that person is now paying the price for what they did. And hopefully it teaches other people, ‘Oh yeah, civility is a thing and we need to be kind to each other! Oh, I can’t just say what’s on my mind!’ When I hear that, it gives me faith. It really does. Tizzy is the perfect character to bring a new kind of procedural drama to light.”
Unlike other influencers, McWhorter doesn’t make life-changing money off his social media posts. Instead, his day job has been working as a filmmaker on music videos, commercials and indie projects in the Sunshine state. He edits his TikTok videos on his phone to save time, and never uses a script. “I sort of run [lines] in my mind ahead of time as I gather assets I might need … photos, articles, screenshots … but I never have them written out,” he tells Deadline. “I just go off the cuff from there.”
It’s not just the subject matter that makes his videos so compelling. Distinctive with his deep voice and Santa-like beard, McWhorter is both authoritative and immensely relatable as he shares appalling acts of misconduct caught on video, like the couple who spewed racist language at a fellow bar patron, or the man in a Tesla who terrorized women in a frightening act of road rage, or the Utah woman who has been berating her neighbors with racist language for months.
McWhorter posts the videos and asks his followers to help identify the perpetrators. Most the time, an answer comes back in days, if not hours. Take the case of that Utah woman, who’s been repeatedly filmed screaming the n-word to the interracial family who lives nearby. McWhorter just posted the video on December 11; within hours, the town mayor and Utah Rep. Andrew Goddard weighed in, while several news outlets picked up the story (the family has since retained an attorney).
“I hate it. I wish it couldn’t happen,” McWhorter tells Deadline. “We have this blurred idea of what free speech is. Like, ‘Hey, who’s it hurting? It’s free speech.’ And it’s like, no, when you say certain things and it’s combined with other things, then it is a crime. You’re not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater for a reason.”
What’s more shocking to McWhorter is how, despite the proliferation of gotcha videos on social media, how many people still haven’t changed their tune. “I don’t understand how every single person, the second they see a phone come out, don’t completely change their attitude,” he said. “They go like, ‘What are you doing? Everything’s fine. I don’t understand why you’re recording me.’ And 99% of the time, they’re happy to repeat it.”
Grunberg, whose company Gobstopper Pictures obtained the life rights to McWhorter, stumbled on the call-out creator the same way anyone does these days — by surfing X. “I find it fascinating how he works alongside the authorities to catch people using, as he puts it, the internet as one big small town,” said Grunberg, best known for his work on Heroes and Alias. “And it just fascinated me. So I immediately direct messaged him and I said, ‘I am a big fan of yours. If you’d ever want to develop something or work together, let me know.’ And that’s how our relationship started.”
“It wouldn’t be a show about me. It’s more about the idea of what I do,” added McWhorter, who also takes time to post about other hot button issues — like this summer’s strike in Hollywood. “I’m not anything special. It wasn’t like I was a detective for many years and now I’m doing this thing. I’m just a guy who has a bunch of people who follow me who are very engaged and helpful. If I post about someone and no one messages me, sometimes I’m not going to find the person. If no one shared it, if it didn’t go anywhere, if nobody saw it, it’s not going to happen. So I kind of rely on a social crowd-sourcing for this information. I can focus on this one thing for a moment, make a video about it and then put it in front of people who have their own vested interests, who are trying to chase stuff down or help. This could be done by anyone.”
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Source: DLine
