As a voracious consumer of pop culture, Salt Lake City native Madison Murphy said that she has become a big fan of “The Rundown,” the daily recap that screens on the Snapchat account of E!, the entertainment-obsessed cable channel.
For one week — which started Wednesday, Feb. 9 — Murphy, 28, isn’t just watching “The Rundown.” She’s the host.
Murphy auditioned for the gig in December, when E! put out a casting call for temporary replacements for regular host Erin Lim Rhodes, who is out on maternity leave.
When Murphy, who lives in Alpine, made her audition video, she said, her husband joked that he “couldn’t believe she was filming this thing that she’d consumed for so many years.”
It’s a “dream job,” Murphy said, and it’s hard to pick a favorite part of the gig. She’s looked forward to something like this for so long, she said, that when it came to filming on the first day, she was so nervous she felt like she could cry. But Murphy says the E! News team helped her practice, and even encouraged her to add her own creativity to the lines.
The Snapchat show stuffs a lot in six minutes. On Friday’s episode, Murphy talked about sightings of several celebrity couplings, reflected on feeling old because her “boyfriend,” Zac Efron, is playing a father in the upcoming remake of Stephen King’s “Firestarter” — and then introduced a montage of red-carpet interviews with Will Smith and the stars of “Bel-Air,” a new drama based on Smith’s ‘90s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
“The Rundown” averaged 1.5 million viewers per episode, according to the network. The show runs three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Shifting the traditional TV news recap to a platform like Snapchat, Murphy said, points to a larger trend of how younger audiences consume news.
“Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram — they’re all gearing towards, like, Gen Z or, like, younger millennials, because they’re a powerful generation and they’re really invested in things. They’re invested in social justice issues and things like that,” she said. “I think the easier it is to access for them, the better.”
“The Rundown” is Murphy’s first “official” dip into pop culture reporting, but it’s not her first media project. Since January 2020, she has been the host of a comedic bi-weekly podcast, “The Bad Broadcast,” with an accompanying Instagram account.
The podcast really took off during the COVID-19 lockdown, in part because her husband, Matt, who is a composer, always had extra microphones around the house.
At first, Murphy just wanted to try it out, but that changed as she received more and more positive feedback.
“We talk about a lot of different stuff on the podcast,” Murphy said. “I do a lot of my listeners’ submitted stories, like worst dates, worst in-laws, worst roommates, things like that.”
She also does what she calls “pop culture deep dives — just because that’s what I love.” Some of those deep dives have covered such stars as Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.
Murphy’s pop-culture love started when she was young — growing up as the youngest of eight children, and the only girl in a house full of brothers.
“I didn’t have a lot of feminine things around me all the time,” she said. “I remember just obsessing over female protagonists. I always loved ‘Miss Congeniality’ and ‘Lizzie McGuire’ — all of these movies and TV shows that were about women.”
Her favorite pop culture is the “nostalgic” kind, referring to pop culture from the late ‘90s and early 2000s, she said.
Making her podcast has emboldened Murphy to try new things — including auditioning for E!
“I’ve learned to just say ‘yes’ even if it’s scary,” she said. “Even if you don’t get it, it’s good to get out of your comfort zone and try new things, because you really don’t ever know.”
For her submission video, Murphy responded to the prompt of “hot takes on an entertainment news story” with five different answers: Ranking the best movies featuring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; arguing that Oscar Issac should be cast in the new “Magic Mike” movie; predicting Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian will fizzle out; reminding people of the forgotten celebrity couple of Michael Sheen and Kate Beckinsale; and opining that the “sexiest” couple in Hollywood is comic actress Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone (who has directed her in several movies).
Murphy noted that Utah, despite its stodgy reputation, is becoming a focal point of pop culture. “When we got a “Real Housewives” franchise, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s coming, it’s starting, people are going to see that [Utah] can be a fun, cool place for people to be in.’”
She’s talked to people in her podcast audience, particularly women in her age group, who want to work in the pop-culture space.
“If you look for it, it’s there, but it’s hard to kind of get past a veneer of Utah and kind of what people think Utah’s like,” she said.
Salt Lake City, she added, is “such a fun city. There’s a cool comedy scene that’s growing, and a cool restaurant scene. I just think that in the next few years, we’re going to see Salt Lake really thrive in those areas.”