Emma Chamberlain, the YouTuber who redefined vlog culture in the late 2010s, is charting a new creative course. After her acting debut in Forbidden Fruits, which premiered on March 27, Chamberlain is making it clear she’s not chasing blockbuster leads. She wants the quirky stuff.
“I didn’t want to go into anything and be the lead,” she said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on March 12, adding she felt that would be “too much pressure.”
Instead, she described her debut role as the “perfect-sized” part. In the film, Chamberlain plays a character named Pickle alongside a cast that includes Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Alexandra Shipp and Victoria Pedretti.
The Roles Emma Chamberlain Actually Wants
Chamberlain isn’t angling for rom-com leads or franchise tentpoles. She said she is interested in roles in films by directors such as Wes Anderson and Tim Burton, particularly in “weird, indie” or darker-themed projects.
“For me, anything in a Wes Anderson film, anything in a Tim Burton, a creepy Tim Burton movie,” she told People Magazine.
She cited films including Coraline, Napoleon Dynamite, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom as favorites — a list that reveals a lot about the kind of screen presence she envisions for herself.
“Being some sort of nerdy character or being a b****, being a full-on mean girl vibe, that would be so fun to me,” she told the outlet. “But I also love haunted vibes, so a Tim Burton-y thing could be awesome, too.”
Why Emma Chamberlain Surprised Even Herself
Chamberlain described her experience acting in a feature film as positive — and genuinely unexpected.
“Playing a character is something I really enjoyed more than I expected,” she said. “No one, including me, really anticipated enjoying it to the extent that I did.”
That candor tracks with the self-aware persona that built her YouTube audience in the first place. She’s not overselling the pivot. She’s naming what worked, what she wants next and how much pressure she’s willing to take on.
What ‘Forbidden Fruits’ Is About
The film offers a darkly comic premise. Reinhart plays Apple, a retail worker who secretly leads a cult with coworkers Cherry and Fig.
“But when new-hire Pumpkin (Tung) challenges their performative sisterhood, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate,” according to the film synopsis.
Chamberlain’s character Pickle fits into this off-kilter ensemble — a tone that aligns with exactly the kind of projects she says she wants more of.
Whether Wes Anderson or Tim Burton come calling remains to be seen. But Chamberlain has made her wish list public, and her Forbidden Fruits debut suggests she has the instincts to back it up.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
