On the morning of Nov. 19, 28-year-old Caleb Phelps, who runs the 5.6 million subscriber YouTube commentary channel oompaville, got an unexpected call from Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson — the largest creator on YouTube. Donaldson aimed to address the controversies swirling around him over the past few months.
“I don’t know how I got the MrBeast interview,” Phelps told Passionfruit when reached via Discord call. “First (Donaldson) is like ‘I’ll come out there, but plans might change.’ And then he calls me, they get on a plane, and then he’s in my living room a couple of hours later. It was very weird, very odd, and a very short, short time frame, very short time frame.”
Like most commentary channels, Phelps examines the day-to-day controversies of internet creators or celebrities. In fact, he’d already made a half dozen videos looking into many of the allegations brought against Donaldson, including mold being found in his Lunchables competitor, Lunchly, and the firing of Donaldson’s second-in-command Ava Kris Tyson after claims she had engaged in sexual misconduct with her assistant.
During one such video, Phelps interviewed former MrBeast employee Dawson French, who had released a scathing exposé on his Dogpack404 channel claiming Donaldson had engaged in illegal lotteries and faked his videos. In the weeks following that interview, however, French’s videos had been called into question after a video essay by fellow commentary YouTuber SoggyCereal debunked some of the claims using information and interviews provided by MrBeast and his team.
“Doing this interview [with Phelps] made sense because you’ve literally had the other side on here,” Donaldson said, referring to French.
It should be noted that Phelps also has a history with Donaldson. In 2021, Donaldson partnered with creator economy startup Creative Juice to invest $250,000 in Phelps’ candy business for a percentage of his YouTube channel. Phelps responded on Reddit that his contract ended with them in Jan. 2024, that he had never spoken to Donaldson “until after the DogPack” videos, and that his relationship with Creative Juices “had nothing to do” with Donaldson.
“I do not have a business relationship with Jimmy and to assume otherwise would be to ignore facts and take part in a bad-faith destruction of my character and the things I’ve built,” Phelps said.
To that end, Phelps said, there were no limitations or questions that couldn’t be asked before the interview. “And, you know, if I requested evidence, or if, like, my team, while editing, we had a question on something, we sent him those questions, and then he responded.”
In addition, Phelps said he spent “two hours” preparing for his interview with MrBeast which included writing questions and setting up cameras in his home. Earlier that day, Phelps had launched his video game studio and demo for his first title, which is something he admits he cared a lot more about than this interview.
“I was very concerned with my video game. That’s my number one priority,” Phelps said. “I spent more time in unity that day than I did writing questions for a MrBeast interview, which is kind of embarrassing.”
When Donaldson landed his private jet in Texas and arrived at Phelps’ house in a black SUV, there were only about 10 minutes of small talk before the interview began. Over the next two and a half hours Donaldson shared that he “more than likely” plans on suing French who he believes was “intentionally manipulating things to be not true and posting it online.”
Donaldson also claimed that the moderators on the 159,000-member subreddit r/YouTubedrama were “suppressing “ positive content about him and allowing “false” information to spread.
“That’s not a conspiracy theory, we can find quite a few,” Donaldson said in the interview with Phelps. In a Google Doc linked in the video’s description shared by Donaldson, there are over two dozen deleted posts from the subreddit about Donaldson, French, and fellow YouTuber Rosanna Pansino. The head moderator of the subreddit shared that these posts were deleted for either being duplicates, information that should be collected in a “mega thread,” or unsubstantiated rumors.
“Jimmy is super insecure about his image and the sub is meant to be a place where people can be critical of YouTubers,” sub moderator Plopmcg33 told Passionfruit. “I do not think the mod team is biased. To be honest, most of us are burnt out on the MrBeast stuff so we’ve been trying to keep it as unbiased as possible.”
Phelps did get to ask some follow-up questions after the interview relating to allegations that Donaldson had knowingly pumped certain cryptocurrencies he had invested in before selling them off. Stephen Findeisen, the investigative journalist behind the 3.8 million subscriber channel Coffeezilla, helped write those questions after he posted a video nearly two weeks ago looking into these claims. In response, the MrBeast team claimed that Donaldson didn’t manage his crypto wallet or fund, a sentiment he also echoed in the interview. In a video on his side channel, Findeisen found Donaldson’s answers “disappointing” and that there was “very little coming to grips with this is bad, and it was bad.”
However, there were also allegations that Phelps missed raising entirely, including Donaldson’s current relationship with his former lieutenant Tyson and the fact that he wasn’t aware of her inappropriate behavior.
“I really didn’t think about it for some reason, and it seems so obvious,” Phelps said. “My intention initially was to hopefully provide some kind of clarity and like a conversation that’s based in mutual respect of two people that you know, if I ask him stuff, he’s gonna answer and people can pick apart his answers if they want.”
