When FX partnered with People Inc. to drive interest and tune-in for the launch of The Beauty — a campy thriller built around the provocative promise that “One Shot Makes You Hot” — the challenge was clear: break through to a young, culturally fluent audience in a way that felt native rather than promotional.
The solution? Integrating the show into InStyle’s popular mockumentary social series, The Intern, which features InStyle staffers and comedic influencers interacting through office mishaps, playing editorial staff in the real editorial offices. The concept was to have InStyle Editor-in-Chief Sally Holmes, feeling the pressures of working in fashion and beauty, opt to inject herself with “The Beauty” and turn into supermodel Lauren Chan, to extremely funny (and ultimately, messy) results. When Fashion Features Editor Madeline Hirsch follows suit (transforming into model Beca Michie), the office spirals into hilarious absurdity.
This four-episode season of The Intern expertly wove in the concept of FX’s new show and created excitement and buzz for the premiere among InStyle’s leaned-in Gen-Z social audience. By seamlessly embedding the show’s premise into entertainment-first storytelling, this season of The Intern received over 4M video views across Instagram and TikTok, along with 25k engagement and 905k impressions.
InStyle already had a success story on its hands with The Intern. With Editor-in-Chief Sally Holmes and Deputy Editor Jonathan Borge at the helm — plus a talented team of influencers and producers — the series quickly became a hit: one episode alone hit three million views on TikTok in 24 hours, with 99% of those viewers being non-followers and 59% under the age of 24.
When FX’s agency, OMG23, challenged People Inc. to ignite buzz for The Beauty, we saw an opportunity to turn a hit series into a cultural launchpad: The often vain fashion world spoofed in The Intern was the perfect sandbox for this satirical premise. Holmes was on board to morph into a supermodel after taking “The Beauty,” with the on-screen version of herself having an array of chaotic side effects. The InStyle team worked closely with FX to create the storytelling around the mockumentary series, which is largely based on improv, and worked to find the perfect talent to bring the idea to life. We found them in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover star Lauren Chan and model Beca Michie, who each gave brilliant performances as they ran wild through the office, high on The Beauty’s supply. The writers were careful to also spoof the nature of sponsored content, often breaking the fourth wall and blurring the lines between parody and promotion.
Produced on an accelerated timeline to complement The Beauty’s premiere and drive tune-in intent, the crossover became more than a sponsored integration. It was written in the stars as a perfect melding of two high-profile projects that poke fun at the world of fashion and beauty in a sharp, self-aware way.
The InStyle team fully embraced the absurd, taking The Intern on a truly over-the-top ride while keeping its signature humor intact, carefully preserving the editorial credibility that has made it such a standout success in the first place. From tongue-in-cheek performances by a team of charismatic editors to the excitement from FX’s team and the reception of InStyle’s Instagram and TikTok audiences, everyone was authentically in on this season’s joke.
Models Chan and Michie fully committed to the concept, delivering delightfully over-the-top performances that surpassed even our expectations. Despite the hilarity, The Beauty was front and center at every turn — ensuring audiences understood the show and were inspired to tune in. As Borge told Rachel Karten in a recent interview for her Link in Bio Substack newsletter, “At InStyle, social isn’t just a channel, it’s a storytelling platform, and I think that’s one of our key strengths. The Intern doesn’t exist to send people back to the site. It’s built to live natively and encourage followers to stay on the platform and keep watching. There are many different metrics of success (engagement, video views, a change in demographics). We do everything that we can to ensure healthy traffic, but we also think of social as original storytelling, and each post should be as engaging as possible.”
