While the hottest reality shows including Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise and HBO Max’s “FBoy Island” are still a big thing – and hugely popular – there’s also been a bountiful crop of “nice” reality shows creeping into the scene.
And it turns out that the voters of the Television Academy are fans. A look at this year’s Emmys reality categories includes Netflix’s A-for-Effort Baking Contest series “Nailed It!” and VH1’s long-running pride-focused series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and both from the NBC guidebook music series “The Voice” and the goofysweet character show “Making It.” Even the spirit of perennial Emmy Award nominee, Bravo’s “Top Chef,” brings a message of respect to the art of cooking.
“Our brand is doing ambitious programming,” said Joe Sharon, who, with Casey Kriley, is co-CEO of production company Magical Elves and executive producer on Nailed It! and Top Chef. “Across the board, we always make sure our shows aren’t mean. Pretty much any show, you can kind of head in that direction. But it’s really important for us to tell more ambitious 360-degree stories inside of it.”
A lot of this stems from the hosts. On Magical Elves, “Top Chef” features Emmy-nominated host Padma Lakshmi, who can be as slick with humor as she is pragmatic about challenges and contestants. “Nailed It!” The Emmy-nominated presenter is comedian Nicole Byer, who Sharon says offers laughs that are nothing but a mean soul.
“It’s very festive. She really loves being on set,” Sharon adds. “She doesn’t make fun of people.”
This is critical, Sharon and Creeley emphasize, for a program about people who fail to recreate rewards that Pinterest deserves.
“If people were going to come in and become vulnerable and try to do something they weren’t good at, we knew making fun of them wouldn’t be fun to watch or welcome or have anything we wanted be a part of,” Sharon says.
Emmy-nominated hosts Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman have a few things they hate about sending people home—so much so that the third and final season premiere not only sent any artisans packing but also introduced other contestants into the workroom.
Executive Producer Nicole Yaron says Poehler, who is producing the show through the Paper Kite board, showed it to development executives at NBC, “I want you to shoot a show without the bets” and “I literally want to do a show about watching the paint dry.” I bought it in the room. It also has a spin-off series, “Baking It” on Peacock. Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg host the similarly whimsical baking series.
“The spirit of Paper Kite is that we love a serious character, whether written or unwritten,” says Kate Arend, executive producer of Making It and also co-chair of film and television at that production company. Since she and Yaron are executive producers of “Baking It,” the two say they hope to find a way to ring crosshairs.
The pressure for positivity and the desire to help others shine can also influence the choice of actors. The producers of “Making It” apparently have a pre-show scrutiny during which they remove artists before they can even show their work on screen.
This can weigh you down, Yaron says, noting that it’s hard to decide who not to include in the selection process because so many people deserve the spotlight.
“Sometimes stories about real people are better than anything you can write,” she says, adding that she wants to be able to “show that still-at-home mom who is great at balloon sculptures.”
Padma Lakshmi at Top Chef.
David Muir / Bravo
Fun and positive offerings also have the double bonus of highlighting diversity and inclusion in a safe and welcoming environment. The season of “Making It” featured mummified Becca Barnett, who has been open about her history with depression, and several Top Chef alumni, including chef Brother Luck in seasons 15 and 16, have also spoken out about mental health. Yaron was also one of the first employees to be hired on “The Voice”, where producers made a “conscious choice” to name aspiring musicians “artists” rather than “contestants.”
Meanwhile, every member of the Executive Team of Magical Elves is either female, BIPOC or queer and 75% of their show crew are women and/or people of color, while 50% are openly members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“When we start casting, we’re looking for real people who have a lot of layers and have something to share with the world and share with others,” Creely says. “What really drives the narrative in all of our shows is finding these amazing people who are kind enough to be on our shows and are open enough to share their stories and their journey in the show.”
As with a lot of people, the Magical Elves team has been doing some soul-searching during the pandemic and as the Black Lives Matter movement is becoming more visible. For Top Chef in particular, Sharon and Creeley say this means looking at how the stories are told as much as who they hire, the actors, and the challenges they present in each episode. The results mean that “suddenly, we have different types of cuisine and more interesting ones from our guest rulers based on their culture and history,” Creeley says.
“We don’t consider it ‘nice’ TV,” she says. “But everyone in their life faces challenges, in particular, in a competition like this. And the greatest moments in our lives where we feel joy and success are when you go through a challenge, you yourself, and come out on the other end – I still feel like there are moments of tension and conflict on show. But it’s a lot like an Olympic athlete going through the highs and lows at that level and coming out on top.”
It can be hard to find a unifying challenge in shows like “Making It,” where each craftsman comes from a different discipline. Yaron says that the motto in “make it” and “bak it” is “the project is the story and the story is the project.” She says this means that they are “trying to tell the story of who these people are through the decisions they make for what a mentor represents,” such as first love or greatest memory.
The warmth of these shows also brought in a new demographic: children. The producers had stories of younger audiences finding their shows and parents feeling these were the shows they could watch with their kids.
Appropriately, the producers also emphasize that there is plenty of space in the reality TV sandbox where everyone can play.
“I think people want to see the nicer things more,” Arend says, referring to the Netflix documentary series Love on the Spectrum about people with autism. “There are some really great shows right now that make you feel good and make you cry; maybe in a good way.”
But she jokes: “They’d better never stop making Real Housewives.”
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