Do You Know Who I Am?: Battling Imposter Syndrome in Hollywood

By Jeremy Fall

Amid the frenzy of flashing cameras and shouting paparazzi at the 2006 Grammy Awards, a dark-haired six-foot-seven teenager emerged from a taxi and strode confidently along the red carpet in a sharp tuxedo. After glad-handing celebrities, mingling easily with music business notables, and duping an unsuspecting usher, young Jeremy Fall slipped casually into his seat next to a major industry power couple. But this brazen gate-crashing stunt was just the first in a succession of increasingly daring “fake it until you make it” self-promotion ploys that would take the success-driven Los Angeles high school student and nightclub doorman from his hardworking single mother’s modest apartment near Skid Row to the height of lifestyle TV fame as a popular celebrity chef-restaurateur. And yet, from his early days managing the velvet rope at hot Hollywood nightclubs like Les Deux while fielding text messages from young celebs like Lindsay Lohan and Ashton Kutcher to later overseeing his wildly popular breakfast-for-dinner joint Nighthawk, Fall was struggling 24-7 with Bob, the nagging inner voice bringing him down. Even as he effortlessly prepared his signature drunken challah French toast on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives after a frantic one-day crash cooking class with his staff, Bob’s endlessly looping “Fraud!” drumbeat pounded in his head. Well-known among the “in” crowd of Hollywood and music industry elites, no matter how much outward success he achieved with a million Instagram followers, Fall was drowning in self-doubt, anxiety, and depression as he battled imposter syndrome, a psychological condition that affects so many others worldwide. At its debilitating zenith, Fall announced on social media that he struggled with mental illness and then deleted his Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. When he reappeared online after two months of deep soul searching, he was a changed person, fumbling his way determinedly toward authenticity and truth. In this heartfelt and heartbreaking coming-of-age story, Fall digs deep to share how he evolved from a teenager who was dogged by fear and confusion, into a successful marketing-and-branding campaign entrepreneur and beloved philanthropist in the burgeoning worldwide NFT and Web3 community of digital artists and collectors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Originals
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094443577

Jeremy Fall

Jeremy Fall is a Los Angeles‒born award-winning restaurateur and celebrity chef. The only child of a French Afro-Caribbean mother and a Tunisian Jewish father, he grew up in the restaurant business and opened five successful eateries by the time he was twenty-seven years old, including Nighthawk Breakfast Bar, Nighthawk AM, Easy’s, Tinfoil Liquor and Grocery, and Paperboy. By age twenty-nine, he was on Forbes’s “30 Under 30 List” and had sold his successful restaurant group. Currently, Fall is coproducing and costarring in the Facebook Watch show Beats for Breakfast with singer-songwriter Miguel. In addition, Fall is the creator of Probably Nothing, an online NFT education platform that aims to bridge the gap between metaverse-savvy early adopters and the masses. His latest project Photosynthesis includes 8,888 genesis NFTs that give access to the world’s biggest virtual flower shop. Fall's new show Probably Nothing releases on Triller TV in Spring 2022. His popular podcast Dinner Party, which is headed into its second season, tackles complex topics including mental health, culture, and creativity with celebrity guests, influential thought leaders, and tastemakers.

Book preview

Every generation has its celebrity hot spot, a place where the cool kids of the moment gather to pound cocktails and bask in the glow of one another’s notoriety, where paparazzi gather and starstruck fans lurk outside in the hopes of catching a glimpse of their idols.

Andy Warhol and his Factory friends had Studio 54, the Mudd Club, and Area, with a cast of the usual suspects that included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grace Jones, and Keith Haring. As the disco music of the 1980s evolved into rave in the early 2000s, culture makers turned toward the Haçienda in Manchester, England, and Berghain in Berlin, Germany.

The next big shift came in the mid-to-late 2000s, when Hollywood, with its spray-tan and low-rise denim aesthetic, launched a new group of clubs catering to TMZ’s notables of the day. On any given night, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, Paris Hilton, Lauren Conrad and her costars from MTV’s hit reality show The Hills, and other young celebrities would frequent the trifecta of Hollywood nightlife venues — Hyde, Area, and Les Deux. And I was running the door at one of the three clubs, depending on the night.

I was only fucking sixteen — which is hard to believe now — but the nightclub business was very informal and very handshake based back then. Everyone was paid in cash, and I guess the owners must have just forgotten to ask me my age. Why would they? I was already six feet seven with the facial hair to match and looked about thirty-five years old. Plus I had a solid track record of running nights that catered to all ages at Avalon in Hollywood while booking emerging acts like Lady Gaga and electronic music duo Justice. I carried myself with so much confidence that no one would suspect I was still in high school, doing homework assignments in between handling the door at LA’s most exclusive clubs.

I received a crash course in the art and appeal of nightlife when I was very young thanks to my father; he was a New York City club goer in the 1970s who bartended at Mr. Chow, a Chinese restaurant in Midtown that was the place to be if you were in art, music, or fashion. My father shared stories with me about Studio 54, Limelight, and the Palladium and how — thanks to the famous clientele, inventive interior design, and clever PR — empty spaces had been transformed into epic wonderlands and iconic brands, leaving behind memories that would last long after their doors closed.

Studio 54 was the brainchild of two men: Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Together, they built an enigmatic nightlife brand out of nothing, peddling the illusion of cool until it became reality. My father told me how Studio 54 was the place to be seen in New York, mainly because of the mass hypnosis that Rubell and Schrager had instigated. Everyone in the city wanted — and needed — to be on that list, without even knowing why. I’ll tell you why: It was branding, image, manipulation, lies, the embodiment of fake it until you make it.

Rubell and Schrager always made sure there were lines around the block, with people shivering outside in the winter cold for hours, even when the club was empty inside. They weren’t sadists; they were just really good at creating hype. From listening to my father’s stories about Studio 54, I learned how to run a nightclub, how to give people a good time, how

Reviews for Do You Know Who I Am?

[thomas cooney · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Shallow in the guise of deep. Full of pablum and platitudes all while secretly (or not so) trying to get easily-influenced Gen Zs to invest if NFTs. Shameless