The Atlanta Reign’s recent streamer announcement has people wondering who it was they were seeing and why did he wake up in Steven “Kodak” Rosenberger’s bed?
The Overwatch League expansion team has announced the signing of streamer Jared Gilmore on Twitter. The announcement was accompanied by a peculiar video. The clip starts off with Gilmore in bed, dreaming about receiving an Atlanta Reign jersey and tweeting about his first day streaming for the OWL team. Then he suddenly wakes up from his slumber and starts talking to himself.
“Man that was a weird dream. It was like I joined the Atlanta Reign. It all felt so real,” Gilmore mumbles.
The camera then pans over to another corner of the room, where Kodak is playing on his phone.
“What’re you talking about? You’re on the team. Now get out of my room,” Kodak says.
The performance was undoubtedly worthy of an Oscar nomination. But it left a lot of questions for Atlanta Reign fans. First, how did he end up in Kodak’s bed? This is unfortunately not a question with any answers yet provided. The second question is a bit easier to answer: Who is Gilmore?
In a recent Reddit thread regarding Atlanta’s new addition, many esports viewers admitted they had never even heard of Gilmore. In fact, many users in the discussion declared that their own Twitch follower count is higher than GIlmore’s. Going by CowboyBeBAMF, many of Gilmore’s current Twitch clips only have a hundred views, which seems to have thrown off the OWL community.
But Gilmore has a much bigger following outside of esports, where he starred in the television series Once Upon a Time through the show’s seventh season. Gilmore started the dramatic role when he was 11 years old and served as Emma Swan’s biological son. The show’s creators felt he naturally brought the right characteristics out and was a perfect fit. The role won Gilmore a Young Artists Award’s Best Performance in a TV Series – Lead Young Actor award in 2012.
“I relate to Henry because I’m 11 and also have a very good imagination. I enjoy making up and playing games in worlds with alternate realities myself,” Gilmore had said upon receiving the role.
Gilmore previously had a supporting role in Mad Men, where he received the Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series award.
Gamers are still curious as to why a child actor was recruited by Atlanta Reign over a streamer with a larger following. But many speculated that branching outside of pro streamers would possibly give the Atlanta Reign a new audience who may not otherwise have watched Twitch streamers or been familiar with the Reign brand.
No details of Gilmore’s contract with Atlanta Reign have yet been revealed.
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