By this point, you’ve probably heard that Ned Fulmer is no longer a Try Guy. So what’s next for the quartet-turned-trio? In a video posted on Oct. 3, Eugene Yang, Zach Kornfeld, and Keith Habersberger laid out the basics of what transpired on the backend that led to Fulmer’s removal and how they’re moving forward.
They began by explaining that this past Labor Day weekend, fans reached out to say they had seen Fulmer, the group’s resident wife guy and father of two toddlers, “engaging in public romantic behavior” with a known employee. “We just want you to know that we had no idea this was going on,” said Habersberger. “All of that information was just as shocking to us as all of this has been for you this week.” As the team began an internal investigation, Fulmer was removed from “work activities,” which meant editing him out of videos and not including him in shoots.
Once it had been determined that Fulmer had “engaged in conduct unbecoming of [their] team,” the company removed Fulmer as a manager and employee on Friday, Sept. 16. “This is something we took very seriously,” said Yang, “We refused to sweep things under the rug. That is not who we are, and is not what we stand for.”
Now the three remaining guys are trying to figure out what their future looks like without one of their founding members. “We are just sort of figuring it out all one day at a time,” said Yang. “We look forward to introducing you to the next era of the Try Guys ahead,” Kornfeld concluded.
Here’s what we know about what’s next for their business and brand:
The business
Fulmer, Yang, Kornfeld, and Habersberger left Buzzfeed in 2018 to start a business around the Try Guys brand. At that time, they said each member had invested 25 percent in the company, called Second Try, LLC. They’ve since grown that business to include more than 20 staff members, a sparkly office in Los Angeles, and a brand worth millions.
Now, all that is at stake with the public attention on Fulmer’s very public exodus.
In addition to being a financial headache, it’s a personal one, too. Habersberger says their staff “don’t deserve the negative attention our brand is now getting because they didn’t do anything.” He called them “some of the most talented creative minds in the world” and clarified that the trio’s “primary focus right now is making sure [staff] feel comfortable and proud coming to work… there’s just no world in which we could have navigated all of this without them.”
The TV show
Earlier this year, the Try Guys finally landed a television show. No Recipe Road Trip with the Try Guys began airing on The Food Network on the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 31. The show was a spin-off of their popular “Without a Recipe” series on YouTube and had been given a primetime evening spot to air. After the scandal broke, Food Network moved the final episode to air on the morning of Friday, Sep. 31, effectively burying it on their schedule.
Who knows how the show performed ratings-wise, or if The Food Network planned to pick it up for a second season, but No Recipe Road Trip with the Try Guys is definitely no longer a priority.
New YouTube videos
The guys have a business to run, so videos will keep coming. They noted that Fulmer would be edited out of videos that had already been shot, including the new season of “Without a Recipe.” Cutting a quarter of their content out is a hefty task, and their editing team has been working their magic for several weeks “digitally removing” Fulmer from their videos. “I want to give major props to our editing staff for how deftly they’ve handled that,” said Kornfeld.
But there are some appearances by Fulmer that can’t be erased. “There are several videos that we’ve deemed as fully unreleasable,” Kornfeld sais, “And that’s a decision that has cost us lots of money… but it’s a decision we stand by proudly.”
“Right now we’re focused on bringing the best content possible between now and the end of the year,” Habersberger continued, “and then figuring out what the future of this channel looks like from there.”
Branded YouTube videos
Branded videos can be a huge part of a creator’s business, and it’s one of the ways the Try Guys make money. A recent video sponsored by BetterHelp clocked over one million views, which is hugely valuable to a brand. Habersberger noted that upcoming branded videos will include Fulmer, as a result of contractual commitments to those brands. “So when you see a video that’s sponsored in a few weeks and you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of weird!’ Well, yeah, it is kind of weird. It’s just how things are.”
