Bravo’s top exec shares why they don’t film ‘Housewives’ while a new season is airing

Bravo, the network that houses franchises like The Real Housewives, Vanderpump Rules, and Top Chef, has become a reality TV juggernaut.

Started as an arts and culture cable channel, unscripted television was always at the network’s heart, but after a little show called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the network leaned into reality, with a focus on surfacing its own talent.

Now it’s a strong asset for NBCUniversal, which is hanging onto the network as parent company Comcast spins off properties like E!, Oxygen True Crime, Syfy, CNBC, and MSNBC into a new company, Versant. Despite a period in 2023 when The Real Housewives of New York City (RHONY) star Bethenny Frankel suggested Bravo talent unionize for better treatment—and two ongoing lawsuits from other cast members about their treatment on set—Bravo is booming.

As NBCUniversal spins out Versant, Bravo will play a big role in the company’s streaming strategy with Peacock, where Bravo fans constitute a low-churn, high-volume audience.

Frances Berwick, chair of Bravo and Peacock Unscripted, appeared on Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about about creating franchises audiences love, keeping them fresh, and why the network waits until a new Housewives season ends before picking up the cameras again.

What led you to identify unscripted reality TV as the key to Bravo’s kind of transformation from a niche arts network to the juggernaut it is today?

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. Unscripted was the way to go. We started doing series with people like Michael Moore who [did a show called] The Awful Truth. It was funny and provocative. From there we segued into other types of documentaries. We did a very intense interview show with Errol Morris. Then from there, the producers of the Errol Morris show pitched us this fabulous concept called 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. [Our programming] in those days still had to appeal to our very educated audience and be culturally grounded and in the zeitgeist. We picked up Project Greenlight when it was canceled by HBO, we picked up Project Runway, we came up with Top Chef. We did a bit of celebrity poker along the way which was really fun, too.

We morphed from there into shows like Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. So we dabbled a bit in celebrity. But more than anything, we found that we actually did better if we found our own personalities, if we found interesting people with interesting stories. Then came The Real Housewives of Orange County and it snowballed. 

I love that you traced a line from Errol Morris to Queer Eye. What were some of the early risks or bets that paid off? 

Project Runway was one of them. When we launched it was a very tiny show. 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.

I think we had a marathon of the three episodes of Project Runway almost incessantly for about 10 days around Christmas and New Year. Viewership doubled the next week. [We succeeded through] word of mouth and sheer grit. Then it just kept growing. We knew we had something that was really good and we believed in it. I will say the same with Queer Eye. We put the entire marketing budget for the year on that one show. We loved the pilot and it tested very well. and We didn’t have much in the way of resources, and so it was go big or go home and it worked. 

How do you approach building franchises, like the Real Housewives series?

It happened by accident. We didn’t launch Real Housewives of Orange County and think “let’s franchise this.” 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. We had a whole internal debate about whether it was going to tarnish Orange County if we named Manhattan Moms Real Housewives of New York instead. We then had to persuade some of the cast that it was okay to be called Real Housewives because they weren’t all married. So that became the Real Housewives of New York. Then we were pitched another ensemble female cast in Atlanta that we really liked. It all started with organic groups of friends. It became franchised in a small period of time because we were doing all this casting around female ensembles.

How do you keep long-running shows fresh?

There are lessons that we’ve learned from the past where [we did] 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.

That’s the beauty of a show like Real Housewives—we can keep refreshing the cast. In some cases we’ll replace the whole cast, but that’s riskier. Then we’re constantly looking at different ways to tell stories. You’ll notice at some point we started doing much more flashbacks and flash forwards.

What makes a good cast member?

They have to be authentic and vulnerable and really be prepared to share their whole lives with people. Our fans are really passionate, and if they don’t feel that authenticity or if they feel that the cast members are holding things back, they’ll be quite vocal about it. 

Usually when we start taping a show, we throw away the first few days anyway, because you can then weed out anyone who’s playing for the camera. You want people’s real personalities to come through or the audience isn’t going to connect with them and buy into them. If we are not seeing that, we tend to minimize that person’s storyline. Andy [Cohen] pointed out recently that often on season two people will get the glow up. They’ll get botox after seeing themselves on screen. 

Social media is almost an extra cast member in these shows. How do you think about bringing it in?

We now know we can’t tape an ongoing show while the current cycle is on the air. 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. Often that can be a very tedious storyline. 

Bravo has a remarkable hit rate when it comes to finding and casting criminals. Why do you think that is? 

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. 

There’s a lot of instances that are controversial but not necessarily criminal. When do you know something is so controversial that a cast member needs to be let go?

It really varies and there’s lots of gray area. If we’ve got a whole cast who won’t film with somebody, right, then you can’t bring them back. I will say people redeem themselves. 

We put people on television who are flawed, as we all are. But those flaws aren’t criminal. We want to give people a bit of grace in terms of getting some forgiveness and being able to move on. 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.

There have been shows where a cast member clearly has an addiction problem. Is it responsible to keep them on air?

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.