Dylan Dror is only 15 years old, but his agenda is just as busy as that of a CEO of a high-tech company. So is the envelope by his side: he has agents from the Roberto agency, he is surrounded by photographers and music producers, and of course, his parents, who act as agents for everything.
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Dylan Dror
( Photo: Oz Moalem)
What made people connect with Dror’s content are the unconventional things he does, or as they call it in Gen Z parlance, ‘challenges’.
Dror, born and raised in Gan Yavne. When he was one year old, the family moved to Gan Darom. When he was 12 years old, a friend of his father’s, a photographer by profession, came to their home. “He knew me as a mischievous kid who makes nonsense and a mess in a cool scene,” says Dror, “He saw the trampoline and the pool at home and told me I had to do something and upload it to YouTube.
“I streamed with him, I just recorded myself having fun, uploaded it to YouTube and it caught on. From there I started more vlogs, more challenges, I raised the level and brought psychological challenges and special stunts time and time again, things that are rarely seen in Israel.
The challenge of the squid game
(From Dylan Dror’s TikTok page)
“When I saw that the Tiktok platform started to catch on, I started uploading the videos from YouTube there as well. At some point I realized that you can’t stay forever only on social networks and now you can say that I have already developed into other areas such as singing and acting. I try to touch as many areas as possible.”
Book about the series ‘Ronnie and Tom’.
“It’s a children’s program based on Hamitzer’s books. We filmed two seasons and in the meantime the first one has aired. The filming was not easy and very intense in the middle of the summer, in crazy heat in Tel Aviv, it was an experience. I play Roni, an orderly boy with a meticulous lifestyle, who always invests, Studying and getting good grades in school.
“Suddenly a new girl named Tom comes to school, they start fighting and don’t get along and then Roni comes to her house, which is not a normal house, she lives on the bus, he apologizes to her, they become friends and go on adventures together. There are all kinds of problems and crimes that happen at school And they are looking for the one who committed all the crimes together.”
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Dylan Dror. “The whole family was excited and shocked by my game”
( Photo: Oz Moalem)
What was it like for you as a 15-year-old to play a lead role in the series?
“This is my first acting role and I was really surprised and impressed with myself. It was very exciting to do it, the whole family was excited and shocked by my acting, and so was I. I took what I know and know from the internet and I expressed it in the game as well.
“It’s very different from what I usually did, I was a host on ‘Shastos’ on the children’s channel in the last season and I do vlogs and online challenges, but this time it was different because you have a character and you have to concentrate on it and remember texts. In the vlogs I am Dylan, I am who I am, but here I have to play a character. I never studied acting, but before I went to the audition I worked with Or Ben Melech and he really taught me a lot.”
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Dylan Dror. “The filming for the music videos in Iceland was a huge experience”
( Photo: Oz Moalem)
When we met Dror, he was shooting a music video in the South Tel Aviv area for a cover of the song ‘Fall and Rise’ by ‘Shebak S’ together with Shai Horowitz known as ‘Shark’. The cover will be added to four original songs that the boy has already released – ‘Take a breath’, ‘Always come back to me’ and the last two singles for which music videos were filmed in places with crazy landscapes and amazing nature in Iceland, ‘A lonely island’ and ‘Fifteen’.
“I didn’t know from a young age that I would be a singer,” he admits, “but with all the advertising on the Internet, I also tried the field of singing and realized that I like it. Soon a cover and some other original songs that I wrote together with my music producers will be released, all with elaborate music videos. The filming Clips in Iceland had a huge experience.
“My photographer was there on a family vacation, he came back and told me and my dad about the breathtaking landscapes there. We just had to shoot a music video for my two new songs, so at the height of spontaneity we packed our bags and went – me, dad, the photographer and the director and we shot in the amazing nature of faraway Iceland. It was frozen to the point that in a second I cut my hands off, but overall it was psychedelic, challenging, and I really enjoyed it.”
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Wertheimer. participating
( Photo: Dana Koppel)
“I have my own show and I’ve been performing in a lot of places for a year and a half. I bring some guys who participate in my vlogs to participate in the show with me as well, make the kids have fun, sing my songs and do all kinds of challenges for them live. For example, I have a cage with Cockroaches, I call the mothers and children to come up on stage, put cockroaches on their hands and bring prizes to those who brave it. Basically, I just bring Dylan to the stage – I sing, go wild and have fun.”
It seems that today thanks to the Internet anyone can become a star.
“Anyone can upload whatever they want to the network and suddenly there will be one video that explodes and everyone knows it. I think it’s beautiful that anyone can express themselves, and those whose content is good will also be published and successful.”
Do you feel like a celebrity? Do people stop you on the street?
“I define myself as a 15-year-old boy who does what he likes and uploads it to YouTube, but what I actually see are children at concerts and that I can’t go to the mall because I get stopped every second for a selfie. Whenever I go to the mall with my friends, I find myself between Full of kids, all of whom are crowded on me while my friends are on the side eating falafel. Sometimes you want to eat falafel with them, but overall I don’t complain, I love it, I hug everyone and take selfies with everyone.”
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Hamitzer The writer of the series
( Photo: Shaul Golan)
How are the reactions you get from the environment?
“My family is very supportive and helps me and this is not obvious, my father is just like my agent. From a social point of view, there are those who support me and there are those who have distanced themselves from me as a result of all this. My truth is that there is no problem with that at all, those who do not want to be near me and are not interested in my company, It’s all good. Of course there are downsides to living the life I live and there’s less time for a lot of things, but I think the upsides outweigh the downsides.
“As long as I’m having fun, I don’t care what people say. On YouTube, all the comments are encouraging, because it’s an audience that chose to watch me, but on Tiktok it’s different because it reaches people and different opinions, and there are some that you don’t like. I’ve had a few times when I was bullied at school During the break, they told me that their son was sick of me and asked me to make a birthday greeting video for him, it’s nice.”
Do you have time for studies, family, friends and hobbies?
“I make time for everything. At first it was a bit messy because I wasn’t ready for it, but today I find the balance between a normal life and life as a network star, singer and actor. I have a diary on my phone that I manage, and that way I know when I have Talk. If I know that the guys plan to meet at the field or one of the friends has a birthday, I write it down in my diary so that I don’t forget and I don’t schedule anything about it. As for the studies, for me it is above all.
From the series Ronnie and Tom on the Nickelodeon channel
(Photo: from Dylan Dror’s Tiktok)
“There are days I have to not come, but if that happens, then of course I complete everything. All in all, I do what I love and enjoy. The workload is not easy, but it’s worth the price. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it. Order My day usually goes like this: I get up at seven in the morning, get organized, get on the bus to school at half past seven, come back at noon for photos or meetings or just meet up with friends.”
Did you believe you would reach this state at the age of 15?
“I never imagined for a moment that I would end up in such a situation. It started with the simplest part, a 12-year-old boy opens a YouTube channel and records himself for fun. Fortunately, the right people opened different doors for me to different places. I am living the dream and enjoying every moment, even though there are difficult moments through”.
What is your most viewed video?
“During the time when the Netflix series ‘The Squid Game’ aired and was a hit all over the world, I made a video in which I took the challenges they did in the series and I did it in Israel, only on a friendly level and without murders and all these things like in the series. I uploaded this video to Tiktok and it reached 90 A million views. It went viral around the world in countries like the US, Brazil, the Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia and Russia.”
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Dylan Dror. 90 million views
(Photo: Oz Moalem)
Any more dreams left? What will you do when you really grow up?
“The truth is that I still don’t know. It seems to me that I will go in this direction of actor and singer because right now I am enjoying it, but I am not sure at all, because there is a situation along the way where I will say that I am fed up and stop.”
Dylan’s challenges
What fascinated him the followers and how did he gain so many? Here are some examples
A football game of him and four other friends against one Maccabi Haifa player.
Breaking the Guinness record and making the world’s largest sushi.
Flight to the worst hotel in Europe and documentation of the stay there.
24 hour challenge on a crane until someone breaks.
24 hours in the largest water park in the world.
Building an armored truck and trying to break into it, 24 hours on a climbing wall.
Making the world’s largest matzah on Passover.