YouTube stars Max & Harvey talk to Kidsday reporters

We met YouTube stars Max and Harvey at the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan before their performance earlier this year. We love their videos and the show was even better!

Did you friends treat you differently when you became famous?

Max: Our friends in school did not treat us any differently when we became famous. We have been friends with them for two years because we just came up to high school in England. So, no, they didn’t treat us differently in any way.

Harvey: Some of the kids that didn’t know us that well did kind of treat us differently but not in a bad way. They were like, “Oh my gosh, you are famous!” but we are not really.

What is your favorite social media?

Harvey: Mine is Instagram just because it has videos and pictures and you can text people.

Max: I will give you two. I like to post on Instagram but I like to watch YouTube.

What is the strangest thing a fan has ever done?

Max: OK, you guys are kids, but we are going to tell you a story anyway. It is a weird one. We finished a show in Boston and we came out the back. As we came out there was a parent and a fan who came out the other way to meet us. The mother came up to me and Harvey and said, “Could my daughter have your shirt?” We asked if she meant our merch, and she said, “No, the one you are wearing.” We said no.

Harvey: But we didn’t give her the shirts. That was a weird one.

Why are you Max and Harvey when the H comes first in the alphabet?

Harvey: In all honesty, I think it is just because the syllables work and the sound of it. It also sounds better than Harvey and Max.

Max: We have other twin friends and we’re sure you have seen them in videos. They are Tom and Emily. We don’t call them Emily and Tom because of the syllables. It just kind of works like that.

Do you ever see bad comments on social media?

Max: There were definitely more bad comments toward the start. We know others do this, but we don’t tend to read our comments because we saw from the start that if we read them, we will get upset about them. We just scroll past the bad ones. There is no sense in getting into the bad ones because that is what the people commenting on the bad comments want.

Harvey: We do read the good ones. If you see a bad comment, all they are trying to do is get attention from you. The majority of the time, they don’t even mean what they are saying. There is no point in reading it and reacting. That is giving them the attention that they want.

What is your favorite subject in school?

Max: You might expect me to say drama or music, but it is actually P.E. because we don’t get to do it as much now. I don’t get to do sports anymore. Before this I was quite a sports person, but now I don’t have the time.

Harvey: I really like history. A lot of it has to do with the teacher, and I also like learning about and having the knowledge of what happened before and then being able to tell other people as well.

Who recorded your first YouTube video?

Harvey: I think that would have been our dad. Our first YouTube video was one we actually did before we started doing this. We were actually on tour for “The Sound of Music.” You know what Broadway is, obviously — we did it in the London’s version of Broadway, and it is called West End.

When you are on tour, what do you miss most about home?

Harvey: Other than family, obviously, our dogs and our cat are the main things we miss. It is just nice having pets. I could never imagine not having pets.

Max: And our beds.

If you weren’t in show business, what would you like to do?

Harvey: Even if we weren’t doing what we are doing right now, I think I would always want to do something with the entertainment business whether it be writing songs for other people. I love magic so I would like to do that, but it would be something in the business.

Max: I would want to still be involved in the entertainment business but it would probably be something with sports like football — oh, sorry! — soccer.

Do you have any pets?

Harvey: We have two dogs and a cat.

When you come to New York City, what do you look forward to seeing the most?

Harvey: I love Times Square, just the colors and everything like that. It is just amazing walking around.

Max: M&M’s World. New York at night is something I get really excited to see. When we come here, we also see a show on Broadway. To be honest, it is not too much different from the West End, but it has a different feel about it. It feels more like they put a lot more effort into it on Broadway.

Who comes up with your video ideas?

Max: We both do. I will probably have more ideas for YouTube videos and Harvey has more ideas for music and singing.

Are your friends ever in your Musical.ly and other videos?

Harvey: Yes, so a lot our friends from the neighborhood are in them. But when we are out here in America, we will also do videos with people we meet up with. And we can do them at their house or our hotel room or whatever. It just depends where we are, but the majority are our friends from our hometown.

Do you like people doing your makeup and hair?

Harvey: I really don’t! Whenever we have to do TV — which we don’t do much — we rarely ever wear makeup, but when you are on TV you just kind of have to. When we go in, I tell the person, sorry if I blink too much or whatever because I don’t even know what half the stuff is going on my face.

Max: I kind of feel bad for whoever does my hair because I know straight away after they are done, I am just going to do my own thing. I am going to sort out myself. So I think there is no point in doing my hair, but I say, “Fine, spend 15 minutes on my hair, I am just going to do over myself.”

Ursula Gavan and Gina Romano’s fourth-grade class, Sunrise Drive Elementary School, Sayville