Fancy a high-stakes love triangle, a billionaire romance, or a revenge thriller all happening in less than two minutes? All you have to do is scroll through your phone. Vertical dramas, designed specifically for smartphone viewing, have exploded in popularity over the past two years, with platforms such as ReelShort and DramaBox commissioning hundreds of episodes at a rapid pace.
For aspiring performers, vertical series actors are proof that short-form doesn’t mean small-scale. Vertical dramas require stamina – they are shot on long production days, with the crew often shooting dozens of one- to three-minute episodes in a day – and the ability to hook an audience within seconds. It takes an actor of serious talent to play a lead. Increasingly, they’re operating in their own circuit. “You see the same people over and over, no matter what the role is,” says vertical actor Kasey Esser. “It’s starting to mimic a little mini Hollywood.”
Below are a handful of vertical drama actors making waves in the space.
Kasey Esser
Kasey Esser didn’t have a traditional start in acting, but his face is everywhere in vertical drama. Labelled the breakout star of the vertical industry by Rolling Stone, the 37-year-old, whose professional background is as a gym owner and writer, has now had his fair share of success.
“[Acting] was always a childhood dream,” Esser told Pulp magazine. “I probably didn’t even know what that meant at the time, but I wanted to do it.” Although he still owns a gym in LA, he decided to make the leap to acting during the pandemic. “I was like, ‘OK, it’s now or never’,” he says. “Around January 2021, I took my first acting class. And I never looked back.”
Since then, Esser has starred in over 35 vertical dramas, accumulating over 400 million views. In 2026, he produced his first vertical, Love in the Shadows, which he also starred in. “The most well-known [vertical drama] is actually the first one I did, Fated to My Forbidden Alpha,” he says. He applied because “the story felt really different from the norm, from what you normally see. So I thought I’d give it a shot.”
His story is very much a case of being in the right place at the right time. He submitted a tape for Fated to My Forbidden Alpha, but he initially didn’t receive a response. Then his friend saw the producer of the vertical advertising role he’d already auditioned for on Facebook, so he reached out to her again. “I booked it, basically that day," he says. His career proves that vertical drama doesn’t always follow traditional casting logic. The industry moves fast and, sometimes, rewards initiative.
J. Bell
LA born and raised, J. Bell (formerly Jessica Ruth Bell) is one of vertical drama’s most famous faces, appearing in shorts such as Alpha, She Wasn’t the One and Bye Mr. Ex, Your Commander Is Calling. Her background includes working as Elsa at Disneyland in Hong Kong and supporting roles in films such as 1660 Vine. She’s also starred in commercials and theatre, including The Tragedie of Macbeth in 2019 at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, which Broadway World described as a production that asked “audiences to move about SCLA’s 22,000-square-foot building, [which was] transformed into all locations for the play, filled with floating daggers, tapestries that come to life, and bleeding walls.”
Her training included stints at the UCB Training Center and the Acting Center, both known for screen technique and improvisation. So it makes sense that Bell was able to transition to vertical dramas. “When you believe in yourself, it ups your talent, it ups your skills,” she said in a 2023 interview on building success. “It really matters how much you believe in yourself and your dream.”
Noah Fearnley
Fearnley moved to Los Angeles, a major hub for vertical drama filming, in 2020, just before the real boom in the genre. Timing? Impeccable. Since then, he’s become a regular across the micro-drama space, clocking appearances in dozens of short-form series, including supernatural romance titles such as Fated to the Alpha. His TV debut was the vertical Morgan’s Secret Admirer. “When I first started doing verticals, there were like eight or 10 actors,” he told Digital Journal. “Now there are tens of thousands of actors doing verticals, so the space has grown exponentially.”
Having made his name in the vertical space, Fearnley is expanding into the mainstream market, starring in Ryan Murphy’s Love Story as Michael Bergin. “Coming from the vertical drama world, where you are filming 110 or 120 pages of scripts, I have done a lot, and I have played the lead male many times,” he told Digital Journal. His trajectory underlines something increasingly clear: Verticals can be career accelerators.
Teig Sadhana
Teig Sadhana was born in London and raised in Australia, and, until six years ago, he was walking dogs for a living. That was before he trained at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York. “Acting has always followed me around,” he told Canvas Rebel in a 2025 interview. “It became clear that the art form was trying to speak to me, and eventually, I was brave enough to listen.”
His studies went well, and vertical dramas soon took over his life. “Since then, I have spent the last year filming vertical dramas here in New York, and have had a great time learning to fill the shoes of the ‘leading man’ roles I’m cast in,” he told Canvas Rebel. Other titles he’s starred in include After Awakening: Siblings Strike Back and My Boss Is a Secret Sperm Donor.
“Verticals have given me an incredible opportunity to form a career for myself so fast and so early out of drama school,” he says. He even won the Rising Star Award at the first Vertical Drama Love Fan Awards.
“[Now] casting directors are reaching out to me from all across the film and television industry,” Sadhana told the Times. It’s not unusual for him to be paid $1,000 a day when filming, and he lives very comfortably in New York.
Robert Keefe
Born and raised in Leeds, Robert Keefe is a dual UK and US citizen who describes himself as “a whole tea, Paddington Bear, red phone box thing.” His starring roles have included Daniel Bennett in Stole Your Alpha for Revenge and Leon Sheeran in The Heiress Returns.
He’s often a leading man in vertical dramas, but, as a child, Keefe cut his teeth on small parts in British TV shows My Parents Are Aliens, Coronation Street, and Emmerdale. During his youth, he also admits to changing his Leeds accent to “a more general British accent” to book more work, while dedicating time to “creating a convincing American accent that fit with [his] vocal range.”
“I try to find work that creates a diverse repertoire of roles, mixing in action with drama and comedy and romance,” Keefe says of his vertical drama career. “I will happily go back to a role I have played before if it means working with a familiar cast and crew as well.”
The fundamentals of breaking into this corner of the industry are the same as those for traditional jobs. Train, meet as many people as possible, and understand how you look on camera. If you’re early in your career, ensure that you have the groundwork in place to become a professional actor first. From there, monitor casting calls for vertical series actors – more are popping up every day. “In China, revenue surpassed the cinema box office last year, reaching $6.9 billion,” according to the Times. “The dramas are also on the rise in the UK, with production companies popping up to take advantage of the increasing demand.” Right now is a great time to break into the vertical drama industry, so put yourself out there and you may be lighting up phone screens soon.
