General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

I Became My CEO's Darkest Secret

I Became My CEO's Darkest Secret is a 2025 American vertical micro-drama series in which a young secretary, Iris Little, is hired on the spot by the enigmatic CEO Jared Branson after arriving late to a job interview, and is drawn into a dark romance entangled with corporate intrigue. It was produced by AMO Pictures and MyDrama and released in the United States on May 29, 2025.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Vertical micro-drama (short-form series); 64 episodes²
Release	May 29, 2025 (United States); a new season ran June 6 to June 20, 2025¹^•³
Lead cast	Artem Plonder as Jared Branson; Sasha Anika as Iris Little¹
Production	AMO Pictures and MyDrama; distributed worldwide by Holywater (2025, video)⁴
Genres	Dark romance, erotic thriller, psychological drama, micro-drama¹
Reception	IMDb rating 8.3/10 from about 5.3K users; 36 user reviews¹
Chart performance	First on the DataEye overseas micro-drama heat chart for July 21–27, 2025, with a heat value of 5.404 million⁵

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story opens with Iris Little arriving late to a job interview, where other candidates mock her. Something about her defiance catches the attention of Jared Branson, the cold and dominant CEO, who hires her immediately, though not for professional reasons.⁶ From her first day, Iris is pulled into a game of seduction and control in which Jared dictates her role, her image, and even her clothes, while she refuses to surrender her dignity.⁶

The leads. Iris is written as a 25-year-old woman from a poor background, sweet and idealistic but quietly defiant, and she serves as the emotional anchor of the story. Jared is a CEO with a tragic past and a dangerous charm who does not believe in love, and his obsession with Iris exposes both his strength and his weakness.⁶ Reviews of the series single out the two lead performances: Sasha Anika plays Iris with composed fortitude rather than naivety, and Artem Plonder plays Jared as a man who has decided that feeling is a liability, a decision the series slowly dismantles.⁷

Supporting cast. The antagonists are built as a web of institutional betrayal rather than a simple misunderstanding. Chris Collins, Jared's right-hand man, is a bitter loyalist whose jealousy and hidden pain add tension, and Chuck Branson, Jared's uncle, smiles in boardrooms while plotting to take the corporate empire for himself.⁶ Lee Belinska plays Heather and Oleksandr Rudko plays Chris.⁸

Plot development

As the series moves past its office-romance setup, the plot adds a masked encounter at an exclusive club, a near-fatal office explosion, and a family conspiracy to steal the Branson empire.⁷ The central question the story holds open is whether a relationship that begins as a transaction can develop into trust, and whether Jared's love is real or another game.⁶^•⁷ The finale forces Iris to confront the reality of Jared's dangerous lifestyle after the explosion and the corporate betrayal, and to make a definitive choice about her freedom and her heart.⁹

Production and distribution

The series was produced by AMO Pictures, an international studio with creative hubs in Ukraine and the United States, together with MyDrama, and Holywater handled worldwide video distribution in 2025.⁴^•¹⁰ My Drama is the streaming app of Holywater, a company based in Kyiv, Ukraine.¹¹ The series is listed in English, with official versions in Spanish, French, Japanese, and German, and it is also known by the Spanish title Me convertí en el oscuro secreto de mi jefe.¹ Episodes are also distributed through official channels on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.¹²

Reception and commercial performance

On IMDb the series holds a rating of 8.3 out of 10 from about 5.3K users and has been added to 24.5K watchlists.¹ On the Melolo platform it carries a 9.6/10 user score based on 1,886 verified ratings.¹³

Chart performance. In the week of July 21–27, 2025, the series topped the DataEye overseas micro-drama heat chart with a heat value of 5.404 million, ahead of Cinta Tak Sampaiku (4.338 million) and Spark Me Tenderly (4.088 million).⁵ A SocialPeta and AMO Pictures industry report ranked it second among homegrown micro-dramas by advertising volume in 2025, with 250,000 ads, behind Chained by Her Love at 270,000.¹⁰ The title remained on the My Drama global chart into late 2026, ranking 16th in week 41 with 985K views.¹⁴

Context in the micro-drama market. Chinese-language industry coverage describes the series as an example of the "domineering CEO" formula exported to Western audiences, noting that its opening, in which the heroine nearly arrives late to her interview and is unexpectedly hired by the CEO, closely resembles the setup of Spark Me Tenderly on the same Ukrainian platform.¹⁵ A German trade analysis of the format notes that micro-dramas of this kind run roughly two minutes per episode, allow no subplot, and use their first episodes as advertising material on TikTok, which drives escalating premises and heavy ad spending.¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026