Nara Smith Signs With CAA as Cookbook, Film Debut and Project Runway Loom
Nara Smith, the TikTok creator with 12.5 million followers, has signed with Creative Artists Agency for representation, according to Variety. The deal puts one of social media's most-watched food and lifestyle personalities inside one of Hollywood's largest talent agencies.
Smith is a South African and German model, content creator and entrepreneur who built her following through cooking videos filmed in her home kitchen. Her TikTok account, @naraazizasmith, has racked up 866.3 million likes; she has a further 4.8 million followers on Instagram under @naraaziza. People named her creator of the year in 2024.
The signing lands at a crowded moment in Smith's career. On 13 October she will release her debut cookbook, Homemade, published by HarperCollins. It collects 85 from-scratch recipes, a style Smith adopted after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and eczema; she manages her symptoms by cutting out most processed foods. A nine-city promotional tour will follow the book's release.
Her move into scripted entertainment is already underway. Smith will make her acting debut in Tyrant, an Amazon MGM culinary thriller written and directed by David Weil, starring Julia Garner, Charlize Theron and Demi Moore. She is also set to appear in the upcoming season of Project Runway, the long-running fashion-design competition series.
Brand partnerships have been part of Smith's profile from early on. She has worked with Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Calvin Klein and Aritzia, and she continues to model — a career she started at 14, according to Harper's Bazaar Australia.
Smith's representation now spans multiple firms. CAA joins Range Media Partners, which signed her across all areas of digital management in April 2025, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, and the law firm Myman Greenspan. Both continue to represent her alongside the new CAA deal.
What makes the arrangement stand out is its breadth. Smith is not arriving at CAA with a single project to sell. She has a cookbook hitting shelves in two months, a film in production with an A-list cast, a slot on an established television franchise, and an audience that runs into eight figures across platforms. The agency will now sit across all of it.
For the people who watch her videos, that could mean seeing Smith in places she has not been before — a scripted film role, a competitive-design television set, and bookstore signing lines across nine cities, all within the same stretch of months.
