With a season three finale of “Project Runway All-Stars” last week, there’s nothing left to do but have a reunion,which is what they do at 8 p.m.
Then, with Heidi Klum taking some time off, the popular mentor Tim Gunn tries his own variation on the show in something new called “Under the Gunn” (Lifetime, 9 and 10:30 p.m.).
“You see a different dimension than you do on ‘Runway,'” Gunn told reporters at the TV Critics Association winter press tour last week. “In fact, several different dimensions. There are more layers to it.”
Former “Runway” stars Mondo Guerra, Anya Ayoung Chee, and Nick Verreos have been hired as coaches and mentors for a new group of hopeful rising designers. Guest judges include Heidi Klum, Neil Patrick Harris and Macklemore.
“I sit with the judges,” Gunn says. “I help facilitate outcomes by just getting them to, OK guys, make a decision now. I help correct the course if the judges aren’t fully understanding what the challenge was, what the designers were instructed to do, and I’m also there because I’m there through the whole Q and A with the designers for the whole thing. I’m there to also probe the designers to give certain information to the judges, tell them about what happened with X, Y, and Z. And also with the mentors, because they are there for the entire thing as well except for the deliberation, they go away for that and also with the mentors to probe and to elicit some things from them.”
I asked about the process of choosing guest judges. Specifically, what Macklemore might bring.
“You know something? I’m going to be perfectly transparent. I thought the same thing,” Gunn says. But he adds, “He was fabulous! He is so knowledgeable about fashion. In fact, he and I even before we started taping were having this incredibly depth filled discussion about the last 50 years of fashion, and I was blown away by what he brought to it.”