Tammy Faye…Tori Spelling…Chaz Bono…RuPaul…The Fabulous Beekman Boys…and (soon) LaToya Jackson.
These names are not only iconic for what they’ve each brought to the world of entertainment but the one common thread between each of them is they have been brought to our attention in revealing ways in film and television by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato and their World of Wonder Productions.
The Super Producers currently are working on a multitude of projects including RuPaul’s All-Stars Drag Race on Logo, the just-announced LaToya Jackson reality show for OWN, Oxygen’s All The Right Moves and this weekend’s one-hour OWN special, 10 Kids, 2 Dads.
AfterElton miraculously was able to get both Bailey and Barbato on the phone earlier this week to talk about all these projects as well as their philosophy for why when it comes to reality TV, hair flipping is so much better than table flipping.
Randy Barbato: What’s shaking?
AfterElton: I should ask you guys that! You have so many balls in the air, so to speak, so there is a lot to talk about.
RB: Thank you! Part of the reason we have so many balls in the air, and so much great stuff, is because there are so many great people at World of Wonder. [Richard Courtney is Executive Producer of 10 Kids, 2 Dads]
10 Kids, 2 Dads airs Saturday on OWN as a 1-hour special. 
AE: Let’s first talk about 10 Kids, 2 Dads. How did you find Clint and Bryan?
Fenton Bailey: [to Randy] It’s your story.
RB: I think we’re always looking for interesting, dynamic families and characters, and if they’re gay, it’s especially exciting for us, but I don’t think at the time we were specifically looking for gay dads but the way we found them is actually Clint sent us a Facebook message saying that he was a fan of our work and just writing a little bit and then I wrote back saying thank you. Then I learned a little bit about his story, and we were like, wow, this sounds really interesting.
AE: So when you or your team go out to actually meet potential subjects face to face, what is it you’re looking for? Screen presence? The story? What is it?
RB: I think it’s a little bit of everything. I mean, when we go out there and let the camera roll, are there interesting characters who are going to either pop, or who you might be interested in watching? I think, it’s really funny, because the landscape of television right now is there’s almost a level of desperation in terms of are the characters going to pop? I think for us it’s ‘do we like these characters? Are they interesting to us? Do they have an interesting story?’
I think the thing about this show and this family is it’s interesting on many levels. It’s not only gay dads, but it’s gay dads adopting 10 children, not one, not two, not three, but 10, and the story of how they came into their lives is really interesting. Then the fact that the dads are white, and their kids are black, it’s a little bit mind boggling initially, but then when you get there, and you’re in the middle of it, it’s just another crazy, wacky family.
Fenton Bailey (l) and Randy Barbato (r) continue to churn out compelling TV and film.
AE: In the episodes, we see everything from sibling rivalry to one of the kids being teased for having gay dads. Did you know going in that you would probably get a little bit of all that going in?
FB: We knew there would be an element of that. Sadly, it’s controversial, you know? But it’s like Randy says, gay parents face exactly the same challenges as straight parents. We’re not Martians and I think it’s just an added sadness that gay parents have to face and it’s hard enough to be a parent without having to deal with bigotry as well.
AE: Watching the episodes, I kept thinking about [the HBO series] Big Love, because here’s a different kind of family in the middle of a very suburban, conservative area.
RB: Well I think it’s going to be very interesting also just, well, a) hopefully people will watch it, and hopefully people will connect to the family, but also I think it’s going to be interesting, and hopefully, it’s going to be a positive experience for the family. I know, for us, any shows like this, where it’s kind of real people doing real things, we always spend time talking to them about what it’s going to be like, the aftermath of having a camera in your home. How is that going to impact? And I know that these two dads are very protective of their kids and just are excited about doing this, and at the same time, it was a family decision and something that they wanted to be a positive experience. So, hopefully, that will be the case after it airs.
AE: What was the thing that surprised you guys the most once you did get in there and start filming and you’re watching footage?
RB: Kind of how ordinary of a family they are. For a family that’s so extraordinary, they’re so ordinary. For a family with two gay white dads and 10 black children…it’s like The Brady Bunch, minus Alice.
A film crew follows Clint and Bryan around suburbia in 10 Kids, 2 Dads.
LaToya Jackson
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
AE: The show seemed to fit kind of in your guys’ wheelhouse of bringing out people that may exist around us, but we don’t know too much about. With the Becoming Chaz documentary…there are transgender people that we see, and we might not know what they go through, so that movie did that. So I’m curious how does LaToya fit into that?
RB: I think LaToya fits in perfectly to everything that World of Wonder does because I think that she is someone who, most people have an idea of who she is, or an opinion about her, and she’s someone who’s been in the limelight a lot, but I don’t know how understood she is. In other words, she’s sort of like overexposed but under…
FB: Revealed.
RB: Revealed. Thank you, Fenton. Also, for us, I think that there’s something about her that, I mean, we’ve been obsessed with her forever. I mean, she’s been a friend of World of Wonder for a very long time, and we just have always felt that she was someone from American royalty and someone from that kind of family that I feel like it’s her time in a way. She’s sort of been in the shadows of that family in many respects, and now it feels like her time has come to shine
FB: I think that what the common thread is say between LaToya and the series…LaToya’s not gay, so the common thread or link between the two is the fact that these are all people about whom we have one perception, or preconception, or even a prejudice, but in reality TV, but in our case in reality, the truth is different. It’s always interesting that there are all these ideas about who people are out there, that they are scandalous, or that they are decadent, or whatever it might be, but the reality of these individual people’s lives is very different from what gets reported or what gets seen.
So that’s kind of like what we do. I know people have a lot of shit to say about reality TV and how it’s not real, but ironically enough, a lot of what we do with the characters is about showing who they really are and who they really are is very different from what the public thinks they are.
RB: And it’s the same with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, actually, because when you think about a lot of the talent we’re attracted to just are often people who you think of in one way, but they’re actually so different. They’re so many characteristics of LaToya in terms of her warmth and her commitment to turning it out and looking fabulous. LaToya never shows up in sweats, that is not her style. She is fierce, ruling, and turns it out and is committed to putting herself together and for many people that may seem superficial, but that excites us because that’s a commitment to having your inner beauty radiate.
It’s like with Tammy. That came from a place of wanting to make people smile, of putting herself out there in this special way that inspired others. I mean, Ru’s like that, RuPaul, not just when he’s in drag. When he’s out of drag, Ru always is flawless and impeccable because he feels like that’s part of his job…he does three or four outfit changes a day, even when he’s not working.
AE: Let’s talk about All The Right Moves, which is finally back next week. Those guys [Travis Wall, Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance and Kyle Robinson] are so unattractive yet there’s just something about them. [all laugh]
RB: Oh my God, don’t you love that show, and those guys?
(l to r) Teddy Forance, Kyle Robinson, Travis Wall and Nick Lazzarini
photographed by Clinton Gaughran for AfterElton
AE: Yes! Were there any different challenges in doing that show because those guys are all so charismatic and it just seems like it almost writes itself?
FB: I think one of the challenges was to really feel that we could do justice to the dancing, and not The Housewives. In that show, it’s not like another skill set that’s really on display. I think we just wanted to capture the power, and the emotion, and intensity, and the beauty of the dancing, which is sometimes different to follow.
RB: We hope that that series connects and that we can just keep making more and more of them, because, like Fenton was saying, the challenge was to kind of showcase their artistry. I think that, hopefully, in the future this idea of doing reality shows that really are based on artists…there are people that don’t just want table flipping. We’d rather see people flip their hair than flip the table.
10 Kids, 2 Dads airs this Saturday on OWN at 10pm. All The Right Moves airs Tuesdays at 10pm. RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race premieres in October. LaToya Jackson’s reality show will air in 2013 on OWN.
