Kris Jenner tapes the first installment of her new talk show, 'Kris.' (Photo: Barry J. Holmes, 20th Century Television)
They proved their TV mettle by making people gawk. Now, they're hoping audiences will tune in to hear them talk.
Reality stars from Bethenny Frankel to Kris Jenner are ditching (or doubling up on) the fly-on-the-wall format that made them famous and trying their tongues at being queens of the confessional couch.
After a six-week test run last summer, Frankel's chatfest, Bethenny, goes into national syndication beginning Sept. 9. Jenner's daytime debut, Kris, starts a six-week tryout on six Fox stations Monday. And then there's The Real, which counts two reality stalwarts - Tamar Braxton and Tamera Mowry-Housley - on its five-woman panel. Its four-week test also premieres Monday in seven markets.
The reality-star-to-talk-show-host route is real, pioneered by the likes of Sharon Osbourne, whose zeitgeist-setting stint on The Osbournes spawned a (doomed) solo talk show in 2003, the springboard to her current role on The Talk. Tyra Banks sashayed from America's Next Top Model into five seasons of Tyra. Elisabeth Hasselbeck is, well, a survivor of the genre switch, segueing from the CBS reality juggernaut to a decade-long run at The View to, starting in September, a hosting gig on Fox & Friends.
And now, with reality having cemented itself as a television staple, the medium is even more of a natural pool from which to pluck talk-show talent, hosts and producers say. After all, the two formulas work best when their stars are at their most unfiltered. Unlike standard sources for scooping up talk-show personalities - the comedy circuit or the news-anchor chair - the reality world traffics in giving viewers an glimpse of a celebrity's (allegedly) unscripted life. Frankel's tagline, not surprisingly: "No limits."
But successful reality stars such as Frankel aren't just frank. They're quick and quippy, they're opinionated and entertaining, and they come with an often-rabid flock of fans (Frankel has 1.2 million Twitter followers, Jenner 3.1 million) - all prime ingredients for cultivating a daytime personality.
"Having revealed myself and my life" - everything from marriage to miscarriage to divorce - "means I already have a relationship with several of these viewers," says Frankel, 42, a former Bravolebrity ( Real Housewives, Bethenny Ever After). "There's a trust. It's a new world, a new regime now, where you can't go on TV and be one person and be another person off-camera."
With Kris, Jenner says she's trying to focus the lens even further. "People will enjoy seeing a side of me that isn't edited" into the 44 minutes per week shown, since 2007, on E!'s Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Shot usually a day before airing, Kris is "something that will be very raw and in the moment."
Having a dozen or so built-in A-list guests - her family members - certainly helps. Chief among them is the ultimate media get these days, Jenner's granddaughter North West, who may or may not emerge from her swaddle on Kris' premiere. The world is "just going to have to tune in and find out," Jenner says coyly. (Well, maybe not the world, but folks in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Dallas and Charlotte can.)
"People see you on a reality show and they get to know you a little bit, and they are either intrigued or inspired or curious about your life and gravitate toward your personality - and maybe it's because they want to hear more," Jenner, 57, explains. From her cooking and gardening hobbies to her spiritual side, "I do have a lot to offer and a lot to say, and I don't get enough time to do that on my reality show."
Kris is "a big, fat extension of me - maybe not fat," she says, laughing, "but chock full of fun things that I would watch on TV."
Stephen Brown, the executive who led Ricki Lake's unsuccessful couch comeback last year and is now overseeing Kris, says that "part of the biggest challenge when launching every show is awareness and marketing. With Kris, her awareness is through the roof. We've learned about Kris and her life over the last number of years," down to her black- and white-tiled foyer, re-created for Kris' set, "so we don't have to go through the arc, if you will, of the getting-to-know-you phase." Even Oprah Winfrey was largely unknown outside of Chicago and Baltimore when she first went national.
The reality phenomenon "adds a freshness and honesty" to the talk-show medium, Brown says. "A lot of times entertainers, comedians, people who have grown up in (the industry) are very, very polished."
Indeed, "what I learned on the first day of shooting my reality show is that you have to be vulnerable," says Mowry-Housley, 35, a teen actor turned Style Network reality fixture. "Being vulnerable makes better reality TV because then you're able to relate to people. So doing a talk show was a very natural transition."
With talk, the expectation now isn't "fake journalists or people who don't want to share," says Hilary Estey McLoughlin, president of Telepictures, the Warner Bros. production company behind The Real and Bethenny. McLoughlin, a talk veteran who shepherded Osbourne's and Banks' early forays into chat, rifles through the realms of reality these days when scoping out potential talent because those stars resonate with viewers "more than anywhere else." No wonder everyone from Snooki to Chanel Omari of Bravo's Princesses: Long Island has made her talk-show-host aspirations clear.
Analyst Bill Carroll of Katz Television Group calls reality shows today's "minor leagues" for talk-show producers scouting big personalities to fill the small screen five days a week, 40-plus weeks a year.
"The audience already is aware of the things they like about you," he says. "You haven't hidden your foibles, so you come with an audience expectation of who you are, or at least who they perceive you are, and as long as you don't try and change that, you probably have an advantage."
Latching onto a reality star is "like following your friend," McLoughlin says. "The audience believes they're connected in a very intimate," visceral way.
Of course, that transparency can be polarizing. But the inevitable backlash, in fact, gives reality stars yet another advantage on the talk stage. "They're definitely more resilient and have a stronger hide," McLoughlin says.
Braxton, 36, is typically blunt. "I'm so used to the haterade," says the R&B singer-cum-WE TV reality star. "It really does make you stronger. What else can you say about me at this point?"
And yet, what about all the competition fostered by this new TV couch club? After all, a gaggle of reality stars is a standard recipe for drama.
Jenner and Frankel seem equally gracious. Jenner sat at the same table as Frankel during last month's Daytime Emmys and "had a ball." Frankel was "so sweet and supportive," she says. Last week, Frankel congratulated Jenner on her show via Twitter: "Have fun, enjoy the ride & take it all in." Jenner retweeted the shoutout.
"I wish her all the best in the world," Frankel says. "Silicon Valley isn't successful because one company was successful. The more the merrier."
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