For a YouTuber who has devoted untold hours to documenting, critiquing and forecasting every facet of her favorite television show, the Holy Grail is a guest appearance on the show.
Alianne Russell
That dream came true this week for College of Charleston senior studio art major Alianne Russell when she appeared on an episode of ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars.”
“I was absolutely thrilled,” Russell says. “I’m still in shock. This is the highlight of my YouTube career.”
Originally from St. Petersburg, Fla., Russell has lived in Spartanburg, S.C., the past several years. In the College’s School of the Arts, her studio art concentration is painting, but she hopes to pursue a career in film after graduation.
Known to its legions of loyal viewers by the acronym “PLL,” the popular teen drama follows a group of high school girls in a small town as they piece together clues in an effort to locate a friend who has mysteriously vanished.
Russell says one of the main reasons she is such a big fan of PLL is the online community that has built up around the show. Now in its fifth season, PLL has become incredibly popular on social media, as fans take to the Internet after each episode to dissect scenes and share theories.
RELATED: Watch Alianne Russell talking about her appearance on PLL.
“I used to watch this show by myself and I wished I could talk to people who liked it, too, and who dove into it as deeply as I did,” Russell says. “That’s why I started my YouTube channel.”
When she first started video blogging about the show two years ago, her channel, “Pretty Little Vlogger,” didn’t attract much interest. But she enjoyed making and editing the videos and remained passionate about the show, so she kept at it.
“I rarely had any views and hardly ever got comments,” she recalls. “But slowly and surely those numbers would grow every week and a small community was built around my channel.”
With 3,000 subscribers, her YouTube channel was popular enough to pop up on the radar of the show’s producers. As part of a Halloween fan appreciation episode that aired Oct. 21, 2014, the show reached out to PLL’s super fans, including Russell, and asked them to submit videos for possible inclusion on the show.
When her video made the final cut and aired on national television, she could hardly believe it. The day the episode premiered also happened to be Russell’s birthday.
“My friends had a small birthday party for me and we all watched the special together. I was just on the edge of my seat all night waiting to see me,” Russell says. “To actually be on the show that I’ve talked about and dedicated time to for two years now is a dream come true.”
