EXCLUSIVE: “This is too much for me, I just want to eat shrimp and die alone,” says Summer House newcomer Bailey Taylor as she watches Kyle Cooke and Carl Radke brawl in the driveway in season ten of the Bravo reality series.
Taylor is one of six new faces as the Hamptons-set series moves into double digits, while wannabe DJ Cooke and marathon-running Radke have been on the show since the start in 2017.
It’s a scene that perfectly sums up where the show is in its life; it’s in a transitional stage with many of its star cast, such as Paige DeSorbo, having left, but remains one of NBCUniversal’s most popular franchises with Season 10 opening with its strongest debut in its history.
Summer House is quietly becoming a franchise to rival Bravo hits such as The Real Housewives and Below Deck and Truly Original, the Banijay-backed production company behind the series and its multiple spinoffs, knows it’s time to take advantage of that fact.
The show spawned Winter House, which ran for three seasons, and Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard, which ran for two seasons, and is now gearing up for In The City, which will premiere later this year and follow Summer House stars such as Cooke, his ex-wife Amanda Batula and Lindsay Hubbard through the fall as they settle down in New York.
“In The City is the evolution of their lives,” Truly Original co-founder Steven Weinstock told Deadline. “These characters are beloved but they’re at the point which going out to the Hamptons and intoxicating themselves and hooking up is not biologically in their rhythm anymore. It’s the obvious next step in that kind of evolutionary process, and it will have a distinct storytelling style itself that is more reflective.”
The show could become another franchise model for Truly.
“In The City, while it’s a spinoff of Summer House, it might be its own specific new franchise,” Truly Original co-founder Glenda Hersh said. “We could even take it a step further. In success of In The City, you might be able to, and we are looking into the possibility of, having the cast that does not come from a Summer House, but starts as an In The City. Because once that becomes a form in and of itself, it can travel as its own distinct format and style that doesn’t necessarily have to be birthed by a Summer House.”
Truly Original is also currently searching for locations for new iterations of Summer House itself. “The show has a very specific architecture in terms of its narrative. So, finding that is what we’re endeavoring to do. There are actually two potential places that we’re looking at, so once we find a place where the architecture is correct, we’ll begin the casting process,” Weinstock said. “You need a place that people go to on weekends, then come back to their own city life, and it has to extend over a summer in order to make the storytelling compelling. It can’t be a week or 10 days. That won’t work. We tried that with Winter House, and it became clear that the storytelling wasn’t quite as sticky as we needed it, which was related to the fact that we didn’t spend enough time shooting.”
Hersh agreed. “If you just take a bunch of young people, put them in a house for two weeks and they just drink a lot of just, there’s nothing there,” she added. “Summer House is its own franchise. We are exploring, in really advanced ways, a couple of other locations, which would be Summer House: Location, where you are continuing with that specific story style and loose format, but with a change of location and a change of cast. Hopefully we’ll do 10 seasons in each of those [too].”
Speaking of New York, Truly Original also now makes Next Gen NYC, another classic reality series that stars a group of hot, young people in the city. The company wasn’t involved in season one – it was previously produced by 9th Degree Productions, run by Michaline Babich, who has exec produced series including The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City – but is producing season two after it was renewed in October.
The show stars the children of a number of cast members of The Real Housewives franchise including Riley Burruss (daughter of RHOA alum Kandi Burruss), Ariana Biermann (daughter of former RHOA star Kim Zolciak), Brooks Marks (son of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Meredith Marks), and Gia Giudice (daughter of Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice).
Premiering in June 2025, the series was Bravo’s most-watched series premiere and season premiere of all time over its first 35 days.
Truly knows this world well as it produces The Real Housewives of Atlanta, which is gearing up for Season 17.
Hersh said that The Real Housewives was the Gen-X version of reality, Summer House is the millennial version and Next Gen NYC is the Gen-Z version of the genre.
“With each form, we’re evolving. Housewives is one form, with Summer House we changed up the dynamic, added the [security] cameras and squished the storytelling to be more direct and intimate. Then with Next Gen NYC, we’re taking the next step. It’s got a more of a social media feel, younger. We have a bigger cast. We have quicker storytelling. It feels more connected to a Gen-Z sensibility. It’s again adapting the reality form to what the expectations of where the viewership is now,” Hersh said.
The reality genre is still alive and well, despite the fact there are fewer buyers for these types of shows. Bravo is clearly still thriving, E! will be looking to make a name for itself under its new Versant umbrella, Hulu is having success with shows such as The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and Love Thy Nader and even Netflix goes through phases of liking the genre.
But Truly Original understands that in a world dominated by social media influencers and content creators, the genre itself needs to remain fresh.
“What we’re finding is that while the content creators and influencers are really happy to live in their universe, and they make a lot of money, also many of them are realizing that they want more. So, you’re seeing the crossover now,” said Hersh.
She highlights Beast Games, hosted by mega-influencer Jimmy Donaldson, otherwise known as Mr. Beast, and Netflix’s new reality series starring Alix Earle.
“Our world, while it’s evolving, it’s not going away, and I think that there will always be a back and forth between what exists in the social media world and what exists among traditional broadcasters and streamers,” she added.
The other genre that Truly is in, is the competition space.
The company started producing Ink Master when it moved from Paramount Network to Paramount+ after it had been canceled for less than six months. The series, hosted by Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madden, premiered its Season 17 in October.
Hersh said, “We’re figuring out what [Season] 18 is going to look like right now. It’s a work in progress.”
It also makes The Last Cowboy, which comes from Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan. The series, which follows elite riders preparing for the Run for a Million, where there is a $1M prize purse, aired its sixth season on CMT at the end of last year.
Truly is focusing its efforts in this area on sports and dating as well as IP. “In this very noisy marketplace, having built-in, packaged IP that people know, recognize, have a sentimental attachment to, has real value. Whether that be a board game, a card game, a video game, those are the spaces we’ve been looking in, but it could also be a movie,” said Hersh.
Having successful shows in both the reality world and the competition space, the next logical step is for the company to figure out how to meld the two.
Hersh and Weinstock said that this is a particular focus.
“We want to bring the sensibility and storytelling of docuseries to the competition format. It becomes stickier, more cast-driven, more drama-driven. I think it’s been really successful with The Traitors and we’ve been doing it increasingly on Ink Master and with The Last Cowboy, creating these characters. [We’re] doubling down on that and saying ‘How can we take something that has the stickiness and the world of Summer House, and then making that into arced competition?’,” Hersh said.
It’s all in the casting, it seems, trying to take deeper, intertwined relationships and stories into the competition format world to further engage an audience that might be distracted by social media.
Weinstock said, “The networks use this term ‘Undeniability’. The competition series alone or the docuseries along do not provide the comfort that they that they are seeking in terms of hoping to engage an audience. We come back to Traitors, it’s just an example of a new form that provides for both.”
It’s all part of a strategy of appealing to youth and making shows that aren’t rote.
“Top of the to-do list is to keep selling great shows, keep pushing the boundaries of our genre,” said Hersh. “And refreshing the old shows, or the ones that have been on for multiple years,” added Weinstock.
English (US) ·