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Credit: Nicole Weingart/Bravo
Frances Berwick, the chair of Bravo and Peacock Unscripted, recently opened up about the network’s success and the building of its popular Real Housewives franchise.
As she also spoke of what led Bravo to launch The Real Housewives of Orange County, reacted to their habit of casting criminals, and shared how they handle addiction among their casts, Frances reflected on her early moments with the network and more.
“When I first joined the network, we didn’t have any ads. We had largely acquired movies and arts programming. We realized that the way to get into the commercial environment would be to produce original content,” Frances explained on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast.
After deciding that unscripted was the way to go, Bravo began airing documentaries and an interview show with Errol Morris. From there, the producers of the Errol Morris show pitched Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
“It was food, fashion, beauty, design, and pop culture. We felt like this was the modern representation of the arts. Because of the success of Queer Eye—it really was a hit right out of the gate—it allowed us to then invest in doing more. We rapidly started to grow,” Frances recalled.
Amid the early growth, Bravo picked up Project Runway, which Frances said was one of the network’s early risks.
“We took some really big bets with that. We had aired about three episodes and it was not really hitting. [But] we knew that there was a bigger audience for it because we had seen the explosion that we’d had when Queer Eye was at its height. So we took the holiday period and we just blasted the entire network,” she explained, noting that a marathon was broadcast over Christmas and New Year’s that “doubled” viewership.
As they focused on unscripted programming, Bravo began dabbling in celebrity series with Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List.
“Then came The Real Housewives of Orange County, and it snowballed,” Frances continued.
While RHOC was the first show of the Real Housewives franchise, building a franchise was never Bravo’s plan.
“It happened by accident,” Frances admitted. “We actually were developing a show called Manhattan Moms and that’s what we were pitched, and during production we saw how successful Real Housewives of Orange County was.”
Although there were concerns about tarnishing RHOC if they changed the name of their Big Apple series to The Real Housewives of New York, Bravo went for it and later further expanded the brand with The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Years later, Frances said Bravo has learned that when it comes to keeping things fresh with its long-running franchise, it should avoid doing “too much.”
“Two or three years ago, we had five different Below Deck casts. We’ve scaled that back to three at any one time. That’s the right number. Then we are very careful about curating at what moment we should replace or bring in new cast members,” she explained, adding that replacing entire casts is much “riskier.”
As for what makes a good Housewife, Frances said they “have to be authentic and vulnerable and really be prepared to share their whole lives with people.”
“If we are not seeing that, we tend to minimize that person’s storyline,” she shared.
Then, when asked about social media’s impact, Frances said it prevents production from filming new seasons when current seasons are still airing.
“We have tried that and it gets confusing because the cast members start reacting to things that they see [online] and it becomes very meta,” she stated.
Over the years of casting Housewives, a number of women have been found guilty of crimes, including Jen Shah, 51, and Teresa Giudice, 53. Frances suggests people linked to crime are seemingly drawn to the spotlight.
“It really defies all logic that if you are engaged in criminal activity, you would want to go on television because you’re probably going to get worse ramifications and be made an example of. That is really the furthest thing that we want. It’s always a surprise and a disappointment,” Frances said of the controversial cast members.
While some Housewives have been fired over the years due to their questionable behavior, Frances noted that there’s often room for redemption.
“We want to give people a bit of grace in terms of getting some forgiveness and being able to move on,” she explained. “There is talent that we’ve had on the shows where they’ll have a bad season where they didn’t get on well with their cast members. Then, without changing their personality, they may then redeem themselves by other actions.”
Regarding addiction problems, Frances offered some insight in regard to how the challenge is handled behind the scenes.
“There have been times when we’ve said to cast members we’re not going to film with them. We’re also much more careful on our productions with alcohol consumption than we were a few years ago. But often it will be their [fellow] cast members who will hold them accountable,” she revealed.
