Fans of Italy’s version of the "Got Talent” talent show series will get to see the online sensation with the largest following on TikTok in the new season when Khaby Lame joins the panel of jurors in the new season.
The Senegalese-born content creator has more than 154 million followers on TikTok
The Italian social media star Lame was picked to join "Italia’s Got Talent,” NBC News reports. The Senegalese-born content creator has more than 154 million followers on the popular video platform.
Lame, who turns 23 on March 9, rose to fame in 2020 when he launched a TikTok channel to post comic skits that mocked influencers. The posts instantly went viral during coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.
Lame will join the talent show alongside another new face, pop singer Elettra Lamborghini. Record producer Mara Maionchi and Italian-American actor and YouTuber Frank Matano are returning as judges.
Lame joined TikTok three years ago after being laid off as a factory worker in Italy. He amassed a following on the platform amid the COVID-19 pandemic with parody videos he created during quarantine, Variety reports.
"The pandemic had just started, and I was bored with a lot of time on my hands so I started making videos on TikTok,” Lame told Forbes in a 2022 interview.
"Every day, I spend at least three hours looking for the right video to parody,” he explained. "I always try to be careful to not offend anyone with my videos, and I always prefer to joke with light-hearted parody.”
Lame’s videos have received more than 2.3 billion likes in total, and each clip typically draws tens of millions of viewers.
"I started doing this for fun and I never expected anything of this,” he told Forbes about his incredible reach online.
As the New York Post reports, Lame was a year old when he immigrated to Italy with his parents from Senegal. In June 2022, he became the world’s top TikToker with 142.8 million followers at the time.
"It’s my face and my expressions which make people laugh,” Lame said in an interview with the New York Times in 2021. Lame rarely speaks in his videos, calling his visual humor a "global language.”
Since becoming a social media star, Lame has fan pages dedicated to him in multiple languages including German, Arabic and Portuguese. He is also working with international brands, such as Italian pasta maker Barilla. Last year, Lame was a member of the Cannes Film Festival’s #TikTokShortFilm jury.
"Being an international star, I’m much more in demand,” he told Forbes.