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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
We sit in as reality TV pros pick the contestants on Fox's "The Rebel Billionaire," making sure they're angry, ill-informed, hyperbolic and have beautiful skin.
Nov 9, 2004 | In a low-slung, brick-and-glass building in Van Nuys, Calif., a small group of executives is screening candidates for one of the world's top jobs. With millions of dollars on the line and no margin for error, the interviewing steers clear of standard "Where do you see yourself in five years?" lines of inquiry and goes directly to more rigorous questioning. "So," one asks candidate Rob Cieslinski, "are you more the ass man or the breast guy?"
Rob and the four others who will be interviewed today are among 35 finalists who have been invited to the Los Angeles headquarters of Bunim/Murray Productions for a make-or-break shot at joining the cast of "The Rebel Billionaire," which is scheduled to premiere Tuesday at 8 p.m. The show, Fox's let's-take-it-outside challenge to NBC's reality blockbuster "The Apprentice," features Sir Richard Branson in the role of Donald Trump's would-be pummeler, and will shrewdly play to the British tycoon's free-spirited personality. Branson had dinner, once, with Trump, and came away struck by how full of spite the Donald is. "That's an approach," Sir Richard told us. "It's not our approach. I think that business is life. In life you treat people well. You learn basic forgiveness."
Despite Fox's wager that Branson's magnetism will win the show hefty ratings, ultimately its success is being staked on something more deliberate and far less public: the interviews unfolding inside this no-frills casting room just north of the Hollywood Hills. Reality TV has always been a casting director's medium, but in recent years it has evolved into a near-science, the most telling innovation being the use of psychologists to pinpoint character types and predict how they'll behave. "Billionaire" is hewing to a model, pioneered by "Apprentice," that takes casting to yet another level. With these shows, the object is not simply to generate compelling TV. It's to yield someone who, when the cameras stop rolling at the end of 13 episodes, can assume a well-compensated role in Trump's organization or Branson's. (Where the prize on "Apprentice" was a $250,000 salary working for Trump, "Billionaire" will lavish $1 million and Branson's job as president of his conglomerate on the winner.) No longer is it enough to throw a bunch of outgoing, narcissistic bartenders and personal trainers together, stir, and wait for the explosion. At Bunim/Murray, which produced the seminal reality shows "The Real World" and "Road Rules," the casting team knows precisely how to bore into psychological bedrock -- by poking, prodding and picking fights.
Thus, the existential question Rob Cieslinski now faces: breasts vs. buttocks. T or A? Rob, first spotted at an open casting event in Denver, possesses what real estate agents might call curb appeal. At 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds, with a Marvel Comics physique, the 28-year-old quickly stood out among the 10,000 people applying for the show's 16 slots. He's decent, reasonable. There's no doubt Rob is psychologically healthy. The question is: Is he too healthy?
"Can you give him a couple shots of espresso?" Sasha Alpert asks, leaning into a microphone connected to the interviewer's earpiece. "Rev it up a little."
Alpert, the chief casting pro at Bunim/Murray, bears a favorable resemblance to the actress Carrie Fisher; girlish and intuitive, she pioneered the casting methods now standard to the industry, and many of her protégés now occupy casting director chairs at rival shows. In an arctically air-conditioned room, she and the rest of casting team sit around a conference table, shivering and watching Rob on a closed-circuit TV. The table is cluttered with bowls of dried fruit and candy and fat dossiers about each applicant. Someone comments that Rob's buzz cut and blocky head make him look like Frankenstein's monster. "He's nicer," says another casting director, "so I called him Frankenberry."
Reality TV people like to enshroud the casting process in mystique, partly to deter applicants from gaming the system, but also to conceal the mercilessly reductive psychoanalyzing at its core. Just minutes into my privileged backstage view, it's clear that the sausage making isn't pretty. Among the "Billionaire" team's internal jottings about Rob so far: "A bit of a meathead (but in a good way)"; "Seems pretty full of himself (could work well in the show)"; and "Don't know if he's unique enough ... he's a little bland."
For a casting director, the elusive sweet spot is someone who walks the border between can-do and mildly psychopathic: "The Apprentice's" wacky Sam Solovey, who fell asleep on the job and tried selling a cup of lemonade for $1,000, and its manipulative, dishonest -- and riveting -- Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. Rob LaPlante, who casts "The Apprentice" (and who got his start working for Alpert), considers Omarosa his greatest casting feat to date. Even rival Mike Darnell, the reality TV czar at Fox, concedes: "Omarosa was one of the best characters in recent memory. I would have kept her on the show longer."
Many of the questions in this vetting process, therefore, are aimed at determining not whether a candidate is too crazy, but whether he's just "crazy" enough. Today, goaded by Alpert, Rob Cieslinski's questioner is needling and provocative, looking for edges -- "Looking at a guy like you, 6-foot-5, I'm surprised you're such a pushover." But Rob is unflappable. "He's a nice guy," Alpert says, "a team player, all-American." Everyone in the room can see the door is closing on Rob's chances. "The passion and energy doesn't come through on the screen," adds Jon Murray, the co-founder of the company. The interview is over: Rob will probably be staying in his job at Hewlett-Packard for some time to come.
