Like many YouTube creators, Rachel Accurso and her husband and collaborator Aron Accurso had no intention of turning their videos right into a profession.
Rachel had been a teacher, but became a stay-at-home mom after their son was born. Aron, a trained musician and composer, had a day job (an evening job?) on the Broadway production of Aladdin.
In 2019, Rachel began posting videos to YouTube under the channel name Songs for Littles, creating something of an alter ego, Ms. Rachel. The remaining, they are saying, is history.
Ms. Rachel has grow to be one of the crucial powerful people creating educational entertainment programming for preschoolers, with greater than 17.5 million subscribers on YouTube, and the second season of her show on Netflix was the largest kids launch in that platform’s history.
“One in every of the funny things is we wouldn’t have predicted that we together had some skills that may be really helpful to create a kids show,” Rachel says in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It type of just happened.”
Because it happens, each Rachel and Aron have musical theater backgrounds (Aron made a profession out of it), they usually say that the experience has helped them significantly in turning Ms. Rachel into the success that it has grow to be.
“Rachel and I each did the BMI workshop [the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop], which is songwriting for musical theater. We were each Dramatist Guild fellows, which is one other program for writing theater specifically,” Aron Accurso says. “But loads of that have has helped us with find out how to tell a story and about pacing and that kind of thing. And typically, once we have now all of the pieces, our ideas for the episode, I’ll use note cards to map out what goes where and check out to determine what we’re missing.”
At a time when PBS is imperiled because of a funding rescission, Ms. Rachel has emerged as an educationally focused alternative. In truth, the pair were inspired by PBS programming that may resonate with any millennial: Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers chief amongst them, with Fred Rogers’ philosophy particularly top-of-mind (Rachel says she ceaselessly recommends the PBS app to oldsters, “as you may walk away and know you could have something that’s backed by research and really top quality”).
“You could have to place loads of care into into media, since it really affects kids,” Aron says.
“The ‘why’ behind the corporate is, ‘Is this beneficial for teenagers?’ So it’s pretty easy to make decisions,” Rachel adds. “I believe also we’re type of big kids, especially me.
“After I was working with kids, all my time, 20 years, working with kids in person, I attempted things out on them too, and I used to be like, ‘Oh, all of them like pretending to sleep. They like pretending to eat. They like pretending to have a magic wand, and switch you right into a frog, and you then start saying ribbit, they loads of times enjoyment of kind of similar things.’ That have with the youngsters is something that may be really hard to duplicate unless you you had all that point with the youngsters.”
But music is at the center of Ms. Rachel, and plenty of parents may not appreciate the thought and care that goes into the songs, with detail and production values that few other children’s shows (even those on traditional TV) could match.
“I do love the music from my childhood, from those shows, and desired to emulate that,” Aron says, noting that he’ll occasionally bring a few of his Broadway musician colleagues into the studio to record. “It’s something that I like, creating the best quality music that we are able to for the youngsters, because I do think they appreciate it, and the parents appreciate it. And so I would like to bring my A-game to our show, and we actually like writing songs. Sometimes I write a song, or sometimes Rachel and I’ll write a song together, and it was something we did before the show, and we love bringing those original tunes to the show.”
Adds Rachel: “I like that Aron brings real instruments as well, like a horn section, to toddler music. I believe it’s really cool to show kids to those real instruments and arrangements, he puts a lot excellence and care [into it], I believe it is perhaps the Broadway background,I remember watching the Broadway shows when he was working on Broadway and fascinated about how, it’s the best level, and it’s wonderful to observe people at that that top level of experience. Aron’s really the musical genius behind the show, and he also is admittedly wonderful with creating the scripts with me and editing. He type of wears loads of hats.”
Indeed, Aron says that the primary videos on the Ms. Rachel channel he edited himself in iMovie, before eventually moving to Final Cut Pro. Now, they’ve a studio, with editors that work for them, though the couple remain closely involved in every video and edit.
“I believe we do know we have now something that’s that’s working,” Rachel says, her enthusiasm bubbling over. “I can’t fake being real. I just, I like children a lot.”
Aron added that they operate under “the identical guiding light” that they’ve had since starting the channel.
“What’s best for the youngsters, that guides all of our decisions,” he says.