British Talent Agency InterTalent Loses Agents & Stars As It Reshuffles TV Division & Eyes TikTok Relationship

EXCLUSIVE: UK talent agency InterTalent, run by Professor Jonathan Shalit OBE, is reshuffling its TV presenting division following the departure of a number of senior agents.

Deadline understands that a number of agents have left the company over the last few months, leading to changes in representation for a handful of its top stars.

Grant Michaels, who previously ran InterTalent Rights, and Rebecca Johnson are among the agents who have left the agency in recent months, with the pair setting up Encanta Talent Management.

Their departure means that stars including Judge Rinder host Robert Rinder and First Dates star Fred Siriex will now be co-represented by Encanta as well as InterTalent.

Separately, rising star Clara Amfo, who hosts a show on BBC Radio One and presented Top of the Pops on BBC One, has moved to YMU Group, the company formerly known as James Grant Group.

Deadline understands that the company’s broadcast division Intertalent Rights had lost money over the last twelve months. Shalit told Deadline that the “the collective total of salary and commissions to staff was out of sync with the revenue to that company derived from the talent those staff represented”. However, he added that profits from other parts of the group covered these losses.

Sources suggest that the group was not helped by high overhead costs, which included pricey London office space; the business has recently moved from its prestigious Charlotte Street address in London to an office in nearby Fitzrovia. However, Shalit rebukes this, claiming that its new office is “more contemporary and fit for purpose than Charlotte Street, which was boxy and not conducive to our team ethos, tending to keep teams and individuals in silos”.

Last year, the business rebranded as InterTalent Rights Group, bringing together its broadcast and branding arm Roar Group, acting agency Cole Kitchenn and comedy division CKP as well as its Roar sport and music arms.

It’s understood that InterTalent will still represent such stars as Kelly Brook, star of NBC comedy One Big Happy, Joan Collins, breakfast TV presenters Susanna Reid and Lorraine Kelly, and Jane Seymour.

Shalit admitted that a number of agents had left the agency but told Deadline, “This is very much in the context of the company’s decision to restructure InterTalent in readiness to expand our foot print for the 2020s. As part of this process, we are also actively recruiting agents with broader and more diverse skill sets appropriate to the changing media and entertainment landscape.”

He added that it was still in the process of the restructure but that it would include an “evolving relationship” with TikTok in the U.S. “TikTok has become in the last year the most downloaded social media app in the world,” he added.