One of the creepiest sessions at the TV Critics summer press tour must have been that for “Sister Wives,” the new reality show coming next month that features a polygamist’s lifestyle: One guy married to three women and contemplating a fourth, which was the recent storyline on HBO’s fictional “Big Love.”
This one, about the Brown family, with its various wives and 13 kids, is along the lines of TLC’s reality shows about super-expanded families — more because of multiple children. Now it’s multiple wives.
TLC President Eileen O’Neill calls it “a raw, honest look at a hidden lifestyle, plural marriage. This is a way of life for approximately 40,000 Americans, but it’s never been explored in this very honest, real, and authentic way.”
One reporter from Utah made it a point to inform them: “This is illegal.”
“We knew there were risks,” said Janelle (wife No. 2), “but we feel like this story, for the sake of our entire family, is an important one to tell.”
Kody, the long haired blonde ad man at the center of the family that began with his first (and legal) wife Meri, and a third wife, Christine, says “The secretiveness of the society has been a little bit dangerous for the society as well as the public. This is part of our reason of essentially ‘coming out’ is it’s a story that needs to be told. And I think, that simply by telling the story and not getting acceptance, necessarily, but lowering the prejudice because we are actually telling the story the way that it is, actually helps to have all of society understand it.”
He was vague on the society as well, opting to call it Mormon fundamentalism, though Mormons have been decrying the practice since the church denounced it in 1890.
The women of the family talked up the practice as something that they did not have to endure, but something that allowed them to flourish as individuals.
“I have actually, I feel like, a lot more freedom than a lot of my peers who are married traditionally,” Janelle says.
But reporters couldn’t really grasp the idea, not seeing such a grouping since, say, Hugh Hefner and “The Girls Next Door.”
“What is so special about Kody?” one asked.
“Kody was the most amazing man I had ever met,” said Janelle. “So I chose to make my life with him.”
Not to mention the first wife who lived in the same house…
“And I wanted to marry a guy who I could be friends with, who could be my best friend,” Christine said. “But I don’t want to be tied down just to one man because that’s demanding.”
Kody tried to help. “Tied down to one man [means] she just didn’t want to be stuck constantly catering to her man. We are kind of needy.”
Says Robyn, who is the prospective wife No. 4: “We have a lot of freedom as wives. We have a lot of freedom to pursue the things we want to, to have, you know, a lot of other activities outside of the marriage that are just, like, fun and friends and stuff like that. So we have a lot of freedom and independence.”
And who sleeps with whom on what night is something to be figured out. “We just have a schedule,” says Kody. “I’m actually still trying to figure it out.”
As far as the TV schedule, “Sister Wives” premieres Sept. 26 at 10 p.m. on TLC.