The new daytime talk show “The Real” may well make “The View” look like a grad school economics seminar by comparison.
The new show features scattered reality show and pop music stars, whose careers have slowed enough for them to participate in such a thing. Specifically they are: Tamar Braxton, Tamera Mowry-Housley, Loni Love, Jeannie Mai and Adrienne Bailon, who have a tendency to talk all at the same time like a Wendy Williams with four clones.
Mostly, though, they strive to keep it real, a word that came up more than 50 times in a press session on the Warner Brothers lot this week.
Executitive producer SallyAnn Salsano, best known as the person who unleashed “Jersey Shore” on the world tried to explain the approach.
“It’s just so real,” she said of the women’s interaction on the show. It’s not the topics they raise, “it’s how they respond to it that’s real.”
“Like, we keep it very real,” Bailon says.
“I’m so comfortable being real,” Mai says.
“We’re all naturally just real genuine people,” says Mowry-Housley. “So for us, it’s not like we’re trying to be real, it’s just — it’s just who we are.”
“They’re giving their real opinion,” Salsano says.
“How you have confidence, speaking your truth. That’s what’s keeping it real, to me,” says Braxton.
“Really, to keep it real is who the individual is,” says Love, who also admitted, “My hair is not real.”
But when they speak their minds, they won’t just sit and state it “for two minutes. Nobody wants to sit around and listen to that,” Braxton says.
“And that’s real,” Bailon says. “That’s real.”
“Some shows aren’t real,” Braxton said. “this show is real. This is real.”
“It take a lot of courage to be real,” Bailon says. “It takes a lot of courage to be yourself, and to just be real.”
For that reason she says, “when you guys ask how did you pick the name of the show, I always hate that when we do interviews,” Bailon says. “Because, you know, I feel like we just keep it real.”
“We’re just ‘The Real’ because that’s just what it is at the end of the day.”
“The Real” begins in syndication Sept. 15, with same day rebroadcasts planned on BET.