Prey‘s Predator used to be an Anthony Bourdain-inspired food vlogger
Dane DiLiegro played professional basketball and ran a YouTube channel before becoming the new Predator
Film Features Predator
Prey, the latest Predator movie, is a very good action movie. And part of what makes it all work is its new Predator, a lankier and more hot-headed intergalactic hunter portrayed by a six-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch-tall actor named Dane DiLiegro who, we are pleased to report, used to be an Anthony Bourdain-inspired food vlogger.
On DiLiegro’s YouTube channel, last updated two years ago, the future alien menace is just a guy making cartoon expressions in video thumbnails and filming himself doing stuff like visiting “the MOST FAMOUS BUTCHER IN THE WORLD” or telling the internet, “i found UNDERGROUND CHEESE!”
The videos are what you’d expect. DiLiegro heads to different places—mainly Italy in the videos posted on YouTube—and shows off local foods and the people who make them.
As explained in a New York Times article, DiLiegro “dreamed … of being the next Anthony Bourdain, hosting a show on culinary travel.” During this period, he apprenticed with a Tuscan butcher (the “MOST FAMOUS BUTCHER IN THE WORLD” featured in the above video), and created his YouTube channel and the Adventure Monday show “to pitch to producers.”
Before this, DiLiegro, perhaps unavoidably for anyone who stands nearly seven feet tall, spent many years playing professional basketball in Europe. Knowing that he couldn’t work as an athlete forever, he tried to get his food vlogger career going but ended up being pulled in a different direction.
DiLiegro took a job as an actor’s stand-in and was told by a stunt coordinator that he should start going out for roles as monsters. Soon enough, DiLiegro was in a Korean Netflix show, Tom DeLonge’s Monsters Of California, a Disney+ show, an episode of American Horror Stories, and, eventually, Prey. He “learned how to mime” and “studied acting.” As the Times article quotes him, he would like “to play a human, too” at some point.
We’d like to think, though, that none of these studies prepared him for the role of an apex predator that travels far and wide in search of exciting new organisms to kill quite as well as his time as a food vlogger. After all, wasn’t it the butchers of old who first gave us the eternal maxim, “if it bleeds, you can cook it?”
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15 Comments
I honestly felt chemistry between him and the fur trader interpreter. gorgeous men impaling.
I give the guy credit for instilling personality (and a NEW personality, not a retread of what we’ve seen) in a character that’s invisible or just CGI’d to shit and back half the time.
Movement is everything in those roles, and he nailed it.
Related, I found out the actress who plays Kimiko in The Boys does cooking videos sometimes
I found that recently too. Great video, too bad the carbonara looks so atrocious.
She is just an absolute delight in every way.
This is an abomination of carbonara.
“just a guy making cartoon expressions in video thumbnails”Ahh the ubiquitous “YouTube Face” as annoying as it is, because everyone does it, Matt Farrah over at The Smoking Tire hired a research firm, to study why certain videos get views and others doesn’t and it is a proven FACT that the “YouTube Face” does in fact drive more views for a video than just about anything else you can put in a title or thumbnail.
Used to be referred to as someone who needs a punching, or a face in need of a fist. As a mid-westerner, it is pretty uncanny valley to see someone overly expressive with their face. Immediate distrust. That girl with the too-big-for-my-face glasses and Mr. Beast that are all over YouTube make my skin crawl.
your not wrong but you can’t argue with results lol. Just making “that” face alone will increase video views regardless of the name or content of the video.
I’m from the Midwest, too (MN), so I guess that is a factor. However, I think for me it’s the ingratiating upbeat motivational speaker/saleman aspect of those faces that gets to me. I don’t mind emotional displays, but only when they’re authentic. I’m also not a big fan of clowns either, so maybe that’s another reason.
Ehh, I want nudes of the guy who plays the brother.
Jesse Ventura followed up his praise of Amber Midthunder with more for him, saying he did the late, great Kevin Peter Hall proud.
I was hoping this was going to be a bunch of videos where a guy in a Predator costume makes guttural growls at the camera while gesturing at a very confused sushi chef.
The director also did movie and video game Vlogs before YouTube was a thing. @dannyTRS = Totally Rad Show
I’m disappointed this wasn’t the in-universe backstory about what he did on the home planet.