TikTok star Big Manny pitches viral video with Sir David Attenborough after working with Prince William

TikTok creator Big Manny—aka Emmanuelle Wallace —went from helping students in a London school to collaborating with Prince William on a homemade strawberry DNA experiment, all thanks to his unique delivery and commendable motivation to engage young people with science.

That’s right. TikTok isn’t just for viral dances. Big Manny, who originally hails from Dagenham in London, has a BSc and a Master's in Biomedical Science, and amassed over two million followers on TikTok and over a million more followers on Instagram, thanks to his quirky experiments in his typical London slang.

Next, he wants to collaborate with the BBC’s own legendary broadcasting educator, Sir David Attenborough.

Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, he explained: “I did a collaboration with Brian Cox, and he's like the king of physics. David Attenborough, he's the king of biology. I really want to collaborate with the biology king."

Big Manny added that he’d want to “look at wildlife and see how different animals behave, and the chemical side of animals.”

The online educator’s success came fast; his first video went viral, and soon, his school students gave him rapturous feedback as his educational TikToks began to appear on their feeds. Within six months, he left his job at the school to become a full-time content creator.

While trying to encapsulate the equation that makes his videos so popular, Big Manny said, “Sometimes I might wear a tracksuit in the video. When young people see that, I think it makes it more relatable and accessible to them because they're going to see that, and they're going to think. ‘Okay, that guy, he dresses like me, he kind of talks like me. He looks a bit like me. So if he can do that and become a scientist, then I'm sure I can do the same thing, as well, because I come from a similar background to him.”

Following a collaboration with Professor Brian Cox for his BBC show Solar System, Big Manny was also approached by Kensington Palace to create a video about strawberry DNA with none other than Prince William.

Reflecting on his time with the Prince, he said: “Yeah, that was brilliant. I had a nice chat with him. He was very down to earth. He was just asking me questions about how the experiment worked.”

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The viral star also considered his unintentional place as a rare, positive online male role model, as he's carved out a niche as a working-class educator.

Big Manny says his audience is fairly balanced between men and women, but he admits his content can lean towards young men, which he attributes to their interest in practical experiments with “lots of explosions and fire.”

Although he's also tried to demonstrate some STEM subjects to encourage young girls to consider pursuing them.

He continued: “When I first started making the content, I didn't do it with the intention of becoming a role model or trying to set an example for young people.

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“But as my following grew and the content became more popular, I was in the public eye, and I realised that content creators who are in the public eye can have an influence on the younger generation.

“People will listen to what they say and take it on board, and in some cases even apply it to their own lives as well. As my profile grew, I started to be more mindful of how I conduct myself both online and offline because I was aware that young people might copy me. So I wouldn't want to set an example that is going to have negative effects on young people.”

But what advice would Big Manny have for aspiring content creators? “Don't focus so much on the numbers and the stats”, he explains.

“Focus on the impact that your content is having because sometimes you may look at the stats and the numbers and you think, ‘Oh, that's quite low.’

“Even if it's just one person who watches your video, and you help them to get their grades and get their degree, so that they can have a career as well. That's a massive impact.

“That's why I would tell people not to focus on the numbers so much, because your content really can have an impact on people.”

His journey began in the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, when Big Manny saw an opportunity to assist students who had fallen behind in studying from home.

He said, “One day, when I was working as a technician, I just decided to film the experiments that I'm doing and show people the work that I do. During lockdown, there were many school closures, and as a result, students missed out on many science lessons.

“Science is a subject where you need to see the experiments in person, and they were having a lot of Google classrooms, Zoom classrooms, and they just weren't getting the full science. So that's when I decided to create the videos to help them catch up with everything that they missed out on during that lockdown period.”

Emmanuelle also lamented the gap in knowledge that developed for students, and was never really filled: “Some year 8 students were being taught topics from year 7, and they just didn't understand them. They didn't know because of that year when they were just having intermittent school.

READ MORE: BBC star Big Manny's life off screen from Prince William link to huge TikTok following

“So I saw the impacts, I saw the knowledge gaps within the students. When schools resumed, the schools, the institutions, the government, they weren't doing anything to help the students catch up.

“Nothing was done to bridge that gap. And as a result of that, they didn't perform as well as they could have in their exams.”

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Big Manny explained his passion for helping young people while promoting the TikTok Summer Skills program. He shared an experiment young people can do at home to test the pH of different drinks to determine whether they’re acidic or alkaline.

Since his breakthrough, Big Manny has also worked with CBBC on Horrible Science and BBC Bitesize to deliver snackable study content to help GCSE students. This seems like a nice full-circle moment, as he used the service himself to study many years ago.

But that’s not all. Big Manny already has his own book - Science is Lit, of course - and is set to launch a science kit this Christmas and appear on stage at New Scientist Live, the magazine event for science enthusiasts.

Beyond the glitzy side of broadcast science, Big Manny considers if there’s a way teachers themselves could learn methods from what he’s done with TikTok, capturing the attention of millions of students outside of school hours.

He gently ponders and explains, “I think one of the reasons people are attentive to my content and engage with it is because of that accessibility and relatability. If teachers could bring some of that into the classroom, then it would make the students more receptive.

“I'm not suggesting that teachers start speaking in slang, but I believe that the relationship between a student and a teacher should be more personal.

“Teachers should be more open with them. Sometimes teachers can be quite closed off and they can be quite authoritative, but I think if you break down that barrier, then the student is going to be more likely to listen.”

Big Manny’s virtual viral classroom is available on TikTok any day of the week for students and lapsed science lovers.