• By Nick Patel
  • 05 Oct, 2026
  • Drama Series

Vertical Drama Star Vanessa von Schwarz on 40 Shows in 3 Years, 5-Day Shoots and the Pay Gap

If you’ve scrolled past a vertical drama in the last three years, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen Vanessa von Schwarz. The 25-year-old has acted in about 40 microdramas since booking her first small role in late 2023. In a new interview with PEOPLE published Oct. 3, she gave a rare look at what making them is actually like.

“It’s not just a television [show] that fits vertically onto a screen. It really is its own format,” she told the magazine.

A movie in five to seven days

The pace is the first thing she describes. Von Schwarz says a full series is typically shot in five to seven days, at 20 to 25 script pages a day, out of order, with usually only two or three takes per scene.

“Sometimes in the morning I’ll have my wedding scene, and then before lunch, I’ll be getting revenge,” she said. “Before the end of the day, I’ll be getting kidnapped.”

She also says the industry has grown up quickly. In the early days, she said, productions often had no intimacy coordinators or stunt coordinators, in a genre built around romance and shock moments. She recalled a scene where a car drove at her at 50 miles per hour and braked just before reaching her. Productions have since learned to make these stories “in a safe way,” she said.

The audience, and the pay gap

Von Schwarz says fans are “incredibly invested.” They message her when they’re angry or heartbroken over what her character did. At VertiCon in Los Angeles this August, some fans told her they no longer watch regular TV and movies at all, just “seven to 10 of these verticals a day.”

She was also candid about money. Pay depends on each production’s budget, she said, but “most of their budget goes to the male actors.” That’s even though the women “emotionally carry” the shows, whose core audience she described as women 35 to 55 in the Midwest. “I’ve done just as many titles, if not more than, some of my costars,” she said.

In a separate Sept. 30 profile, Vents Magazine listed play counts for three of her credited titles: The Quarterback Next Door at 110.4 million plays on ReelShort, His Love Was a Lie at 94.2 million on DramaBox, and Your Husband Is Mine at 85 million on ReelShort. Those are platform-displayed play counts, not unique viewers. The same profile says she wants to move into development and producing.

Beyond the villain role

Early on, she said, she was often told she wasn’t “tough” enough for leads, so she was mostly offered villains. She sees that changing as Hollywood pays more attention to the format. “I am inspired to tell stories that have women driving the platform and women with agency,” she said.

Performers like von Schwarz are a big reason the format works, and they’re why we rank actors as well as shows. See this week’s top performers on our Performers page and the biggest titles on the weekly chart.

Sources

  • “Actress Had ‘No Idea What I Was Walking into’ When Booking Her First Vertical Drama. Now She’s Recognized in Public for Her Work (Exclusive),” PEOPLE, Oct. 3, 2026, people.com
  • RJ Frometa, “Vanessa von Schwarz at Vertical Speed,” Vents Magazine, Sept. 30, 2026, ventsmagazine.com
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