American Vandal's Jimmy Tatro tells Jimmy Kimmel about drawing dicks, and being one to Tyler Perry

“Former YouTube star” is pretty much 2018 shorthand for “insufferable douchebag,” so Jimmy Tatro didn’t do his rep any favors by starting out by telling Jimmy Kimmel that having his parents at Thursday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! taping was in danger of “killing his swag.” At least, the YouTuber-turned-actor managed to walk back the fratboy vibe a bit while talking to Kimmel—about how hard it’s been for him to break out of being typecast as dudebro fratboys. (See: Grown Ups 2, 22 Jump Street, other credits where he played guys named Lance, Dick Dawg, and Bodhi.)

Still, his real world reputation as internet personality almost cast him the last(?) fratboy gig he took, as he was convinced a fellow YouTuber was prank-calling him as Tyler Perry. Yeah, it was Tyler Perry, offering Tatro the role of Sean (a fratboy) in Boo! A Madea Halloween. Well, Tatro weathered the storm of potentially alienating one of the most successful independent film producers in the country just fine in the end, not only landing the role of Sean in what was no doubt a movie that exists, but also by channeling his lunkhead dude persona into the role of Dylan Maxwell, the dick-doodling protagonist in the first season of Netflix’s surprisingly subversive, season-long, faux-documentary dick joke, American Vandal. Telling Kimmel that he is, in fact, now asked to draw penises all over his head shots, Tatro explained to Kimmel that this latest iteration of his career as a professional dickhead is proving even harder to escape. At least he wasn’t the Turd Burglar—that shit could get messy.