The Man Who Got Catfished First

Get Nowhere to Hide, my weekly letter about doing the uncomfortable: kenrideout.link/newsletter

In 2006 Nev Schulman got a MySpace message from an eight year old girl in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who wanted to paint one of his photos. Then her mom wrote. Then a dozen relatives and friends sent Facebook requests. Then her 19 year old half sister started flirting. Nine months in, something was too good to be true, so Nev and his brother flew to Wisconsin, drove into the middle of nowhere Michigan and knocked on the door with the cameras rolling.

That footage became Catfish, the buzziest film at Sundance in 2010, and the word everyone now uses for a liar on the internet. MTV turned it into a show that ran 12 years. The Manti Te’o story broke during the first season and Adam Levine played Nev on SNL. In 2020 he finished second on Dancing With the Stars.

This week I sat down with Nev, one of my closest friends, to talk about dancing for the president as a kid, the bar mitzvah video business that made him the Darth Vader of the New York film scene, where the word catfish actually comes from, the episode MTV could never air, the Birdman story, and the Instagram DM about a motorcycle ride that got him his wife.

We also get into running. He did his first triathlon on a borrowed bike with Casey Neistat in 2015, ran his first New York City Marathon that fall in 3:34 and was under three hours by 2018. We met on the start line in 2021. Since 2023 he has run his marathons as a guide for Achilles athletes. Last Sunday he ran New York with his wife Laura, and she went 3:29.

Catfish ended two years ago and he is working on bringing it back. In the meantime he got his real estate license and sells apartments with his dad. Hope you guys enjoy this one.

Follow Nev: @nevschulman

His book: In Real Life