Humphrey's love of humanity prompted her to create an impressive cast of easily recognizable and relatable characters in her comedic TikTok skits, all of which she writes and performs in. It started simply as a post-COVID project, and the more engagement she got, the more seriously she took it. Humphrey realized that her most popular content gave viewers a look into relatable "point-of-view" (POV) scenarios based on common interactions, so she decided to run with that.
“People like seeing themselves in other people,” Humphrey says, explaining how she develops her characters. “It doesn’t make them feel alone. I think that’s the power of comedy, it connects people and brings people together.”
She found her niche by breathing life into characters inspired by her own experiences, the experiences of others and stereotypes found in movies and television. Humphrey started small, writing skits such as “POV that one girl in high school” about, well, that one girl in high school who was incredibly popular and dare we say equally annoying.
The “POV” recipe worked and gave rise to a cast of popular characters: The Leasing Manager, The Crazy Aunt, FBI Agent Ross, That One Mom and a number of characters inspired by female leads from different movie genres. Now, Humphrey successfully works as a full-time content creator and regularly gets millions of views on her videos.@madison.humphreyy Gues we found a new back scratcher for chance #fyp #momsoftiktok #momlife #momlife #moms #comedy #relatable #couplecomedy #trending ♬ original sound - Madison Humphrey
Before she made the risky decision to do content creation full-time, she was a broadcast journalist. With a journalism degree from the University of North Texas and a position as a sideline reporter, she regarded social media simply as an outlet for what she truly loves: acting.
Prior to her time at UNT, Humphrey studied acting at a film school in Virginia, where she learned about human physicality, movement and interaction and how to convincingly imitate them. Her people-watching habit, or less creepily, “observational skills,” serves as a tool to understand situational behavior so she can create believable characters.
Her content is easy to digest because it's not too dramatized. One of her most popular characters, a leasing manager, is one that really gave her platform legs.
“The leasing manager was almost an experiment for me to play around with my physical comedy and my writing,” she says. “You know, all of her facial expressions, movements, her moods — all those little things that you typically see a leasing manager do.”
Humphrey hit the nail on the head, and anyone who's had to deal with a leasing manager can see why. For example, one of the leasing manager skits has over 15 million views because it capitalizes on a far-too-common tenant-leasing manager interaction: feeling completely helpless when it comes to unfulfilled maintenance requests.
Humphrey is incredibly talented at molding her characters with expression, and she does it all with deep intentionality. Though her platform has a comedic focus, her expressive range is wide. It's easy to tell each of her characters apart at a glance. Even without the descriptive text at the top of her videos — nearly always starting with a “POV” — her characters are identifiable by their clothes, posture and facial expressions.
Humphrey hopes to pursue acting professionally, but the social media landscape can be a hindrance while trying to make industry changes. Some view TikTok acting as inadequate for building a professional acting portfolio, but Humphrey has had the opposite experience.
“I had seen other content creators that do acting talk about how they can’t get roles because they are classified as just a TikTok actor,” she says. “It scared me for a while, but I recently got signed to an acting agency that I had been submitting for since I was like 15 years old.”
POV: When you see a North Texas TikTok star on the big screen.
