ROME – On the sunny balcony of the Foro Italico, Daria Kasatkina takes part in a televised interview about her prospects at this week’s Internazionali BNL d’Italia. His girlfriend, Natalia Zabiaco, captures the moment with a compact camera, while a roaming cameraman captures Zabiaco with a larger lens. In the background, the reporter struggles to get all four people into the frame of the damaged Android device.
The moment marks the snowballing success of Zabiako and Kasatkina’s YouTube channel, rebranded this year as “What The Vlog.” Launched just 18 months ago, it now has nearly 50,000 subscribers. His most popular episode so far — a 1 hour and 25 minute behind-the-scenes look at the 2023 US Open — has garnered 218,000 views and counting. Last June, tennis.com reported that the vlog put Netflix’s much-hyped “Break Point” to shame.
What is an appeal? Why does everyone want to be part of Zabiako and Kasatkina’s show instead? In short, it’s because they keep it real.
“What we’re trying to show is everything exactly as it is,” Kasatkina said after the telecast. “”We’re not trying to glamorize everything or break ass to make it look super exciting if it’s not. What we do is just to show how we live. Showing people in the tennis kitchen.”
Thus, we get sardonic, often untranslatable jokes from Aryna Sabalenka, while Kasatkina and Jelena Ostapenko row over their former belligerences. The vlog plagues viewers with endless rain delays, with headlines like “dumbest match of career.”
If the player’s dog is around, it will be accordingly agitated. On the way to Friday’s interview, in fact, Kasatkina almost gets run over by Martina Trevisan’s little poodle.
Zabiaco intersperses memes with his shots, giving a dry outsider’s view of the tennis bubble, which he still calls “weird.” Every conversation somehow comes back to food. Kasatkina reckons her own restaurant tips are best on tour, singling out Daria Saville’s choice as “a fluke” but admitting she might have met the Italy team in Rome.
“It’s not fun talking to Italians about food,” he said wryly. “I must have been very serious.”
The vlog was sometimes serious. One of his most painful moments came at the 2023 US Open. A visit to Carl Schurz’s Little Dog Park in New York for a meeting of the French Bulldogs led by Kasatkina, who has not returned to her native Russia since coming out as a lesbian and opposing the war in Ukraine, thought, “So. There are many dogs, different breeds, different nations, and no offense to all of them. We have a lot to learn from dogs.
Dedicated to casual authenticity, it’s a stark contrast to the polished, glossy image that tends to dominate promotions in both tennis and Zabiaco’s previous sport, ice skating. It captures the essence of What The Vlog’s own approach. The project’s genesis story was a technical glitch — Zabiaco accidentally deleted his old YouTube channel and had to start over — and with no formal media training, the self-taught pair are enjoying it.
“We learn by doing,” Kasatkina said. “Platforms like YouTube give you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want and just see how it goes. You can experiment, you are independent.”
A self-confessed cinephile whose favorite movies are novels like “Carol” and “Portrait Of A Lady On Fire,” Zabiaco does most of the work on the vlog: filming, editing, music, subtitling.
At first, he just used his phone to take pictures. Even when he switched to the DJI Pocket, he still felt “weird” when comparing it to a furniture-sized camera and professional media lighting equipment. But the tiny, hand-held device allows both a real-life feel and a spontaneous shot of the couple. Zabiako and Kasatkina never went to tournaments with a pre-planned vlog.
“We are not going to call anyone in particular and arrange an interview,” said Kasatkina. “We see someone in the players’ restaurant, we go and sit with them. If he’s well-spoken, then we’ll do it.”
Players are coming to them these days. “What The Vlog’s” growth has been rapid but organic and has earned him the respect of both the locker room and the fans.
Coco Goff made her Indian Wells vlog debut two months ago, a decision made by the US Open champion herself. Ostapenko, who vlogs regularly, says the project makes life on tour easier.
“Sometimes they come out of nowhere!” Ostapenko said after winning the second round in Rome. “When I don’t expect them, they’re there. That’s the fun part, because you don’t expect an interview, you can be yourself. Sometimes they have serious questions, but sometimes they’re just like … opening. Water in Madrid and Dasha says: “Oh “Cheer up, we’re getting beer.”
“You have to joke because it’s not easy being on tour and always very serious. Sometimes it can be too serious. They make it a more relaxed atmosphere.”
The feeling goes both ways. Zabiiako says the project helps Kasatkina relax: “During the competition, she thinks a lot and it’s really difficult,” she said. “It helps take his mind off tennis.”
It also brought him closer to the rest of the tour. ‘What The Vlog’ initially featured Kasatkina’s closest friends, such as Saville and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, but her popularity means she is befriending more and more players. Some old rifts were even healed. One of the players that Zabiako wanted most at the start was Ostapenko.
“Dasha and her were not on good terms,” ​​Zabiako said. “I was like, ‘No, we have to do this.’ I had to go to him to ask questions and for the first time I was scared.”
A few appearances later and the old junior feud was forgotten. Kasatkina and Ostapenko have a natural rapport on camera, made all the sweeter by the references to the past.
“They were young and stupid,” Zabiaco said. “Now they are mature.”
Kasatkina, on the other hand, reduces the skills of the interviewer. “Basically, I say some rubbish on camera and Natasha does the rest,” he said. But lightness is often the gateway to more — and shows the tennis lifestyle and players living it most authentically.
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