Going back to the days of Jon & Kate Plus 8, TLC has repeatedly proven adept at mining reality gold from unconventional TV families. That 2007 hit kicked off what has turned into a nearly two-decade run of successful shows built around unusually large families, including 19 Kids and Counting, Sister Wives, and Outdaughtered. And then there’s The Baldwins.
Like many of the network’s past breakouts, TLC’s newest show follows a big family of telegenic, larger-than-life characters (seven kids! two nannies! multiple pets!) who are Going Through Some Stuff. But in this case, the brood in question is headed not by previously unknown Middle Americans but by half-EGOTer Alec Baldwin and his tabloid-hounded wife, Hilaria. Instead of trying to make stars of its leads, The Baldwins uses star power to create a hit reality show. In that respect, it’s very much a departure from the TLC formula — though not unprecedented for the network.
Back in 2010, for example, TLC tried to capitalize on the right-wing worship of Sarah Palin with the way-too-wholesome Sarah Palin’s Alaska, and in 2013 it briefly (and rather randomly) made shows with rapper T-Boz (of TLC fame) and Pete Rose. Then in 2015, the network made 26 episodes of Leah Remini: It’s All Relative. But none of these shows connected with viewers like the network’s other hits, and so, unsurprisingly, TLC leadership kept its focus in the following decade on creating its own universe of reality stars. Powered by the continued success of the 90 Day franchise as well as newer hits such as Baylen Out Loud, TLC remains a cable force. In 2024, while experiencing the same double-digit audience erosion impacting almost every basic-cable channel, TLC continued to rank as one of cable’s top-five entertainment networks (not counting news channels or ESPN) in key demos and was one of the ten most watched entertainment networks in overall viewership.
So why revisit the celebreality genre at all? Howard Lee, chief creative officer of Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. TV networks, wanted to give the Baldwins the chance to be heard. “It was very surprising that Alec wanted to be involved on a television series, talking candidly about everything that was going on in his life at a very precarious time,” Lee says. “They could see that we have other programs in which there are people who are not understood.”
Tell me about the process for getting this show.
It was spring of last year that I first heard about the project. It had come to the attention of our development team at TLC, and the Baldwins were aligned with producers from Terminal B, a production company funded by Tom Forman and Dave Metzler. They presented it to buyers, and I, of course, was very interested when I heard about it because of all the news and coverage Alec had already been getting. It was very surprising that he wanted to be on a TV series showing off what was happening in his everyday life and was ready for the cameras to come in to capture everything going on with his family. Immediately, I felt we were the right home for it because (a) it was a family show and (b) I really do believe that so much of the programming at TLC, such as Baylen Out Loud, is about people who really feel misunderstood, who haven’t been able to tell their side of the story.
Was it a competitive bidding situation?
There was bidding — other competitors who wanted the program.
Including streaming platforms?
Yes.
Why do you think the Baldwins went with TLC over the other networks and platforms?
We made our case that TLC was the perfect home and fit for it. They wanted fair coverage of everything that was going on, without it feeling like another reality program. And they could see that we have other programs in which there are people who are not understood. The power of TLC is giving people an opportunity to really share that story.
TLC tends to make stars more than it makes shows with stars. I had to go back a dozen years to find your last big celeb reality project. And in this case, Alec and Hilaria are also producers. You obviously knew there was going to be a filter because of that. How concerned were you about getting something that felt authentic and real?
I hopped on a Zoom with the producers, Alec, Hilaria, and my team, and we had a back-and-forth discussion about how far they would go in terms of the candor, their honesty, their humor, and showing their heart, and what they were really allowing us to expose. To their credit, they wanted warts and all, to show it like it is. They didn’t want to hold back, and we held them to that. We have been so surprised by how unguarded they’ve been, and you will even see in an upcoming episode that there’s nothing, really, that they don’t want to address or talk about. They kept their promise on all of that. That’s what you want when you do a series like this, be it celebrity or noncelebrity. The most successful shows are the ones in which the people wear their hearts on their sleeves and don’t hold back.
Was doing this show about telling Alec Baldwin’s side of what happened in court and with the Rust trial, or was that not part of the thinking in ordering this?
What was happening in the courtroom wasn’t really what it was about for us. It was about what was going on at home: How were they emotionally feeling about this roller-coaster journey they were on, and would they express it to us? I think they needed this show. I think they feel misunderstood. They really wanted a platform on which they can voice what’s on their minds. This was the way to finally go about it for them.
You’ve seen more episodes than we have. What sorts of things do they reveal? What’s the arc of this season?
We see a lot of intimate conversations, particularly between the two of them, on the road to New Mexico before the trial. The concerns about the family, about being away from their kids, what’s going to happen to them during the course of the trial. We also got the aftermath, after the judge dismissed everything. That’s really what matters to us most — everything that was happening within the family unit and how it impacted all of them.
In the first episode, Alec seems super-distracted by the looming trial, for understandable reasons. Is there a vibe shift once the case is dismissed? Will it become a different show?
You see that weight of everything that has happened to him during the first, I would say, four episodes of the season. As they came back from the trial, we got to see how that weight left his shoulders — but just a bit because he still has to manage the household. He has to still manage what’s going on next in his life, what’s happening with Hilaria, the fallout. There’s therapy that has to happen. An emotional toll was taken on everyone, and it’s fascinating to watch how he and Hilaria navigate this to make sure they come out intact.
How important is it, in 2025, to find projects that can work not just on the TLC cable channel but on your streaming partners, Max and Discovery+. Is it part of the calculus when deciding whether to green-light something?
We look for the greatest content we can find — but we are looking for it for TLC. If it’s going to work on TLC and if people find it, they will find it on Max as well. We’re really proud of the fact that anything [that works] on TLC — especially 90 Day Fiancé, especially Baylen Out Loud — also finds an audience over on Max. I’m a true believer that any great content you are commissioning can work on a streaming platform as well. It’s just a different way of watching it.
But it’s also a different, younger audience on streaming than on cable, where the viewers tend to be older, right?
Absolutely. The cable channel may skew toward an older demographic, but cord cutters who don’t have access to a cable subscription still find it on the streaming side.
It’s interesting to me that you don’t seem to have changed your programming mandate to chase after these mythological streaming viewers as so many other legacy companies with streamers seem to have done. Have you not been pushed by your bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery to get shows to bring people to Max?
Corporately, the mandate for me is still to make sure that I’m commissioning and green-lighting shows for our linear channels. Advertisers still matter to us right now. When shows work on Max and Discovery+, we do care about that. And of course we always have conversations with the streaming side. But first and foremost, it is about the channels. We have to make sure we get our audience for the channels.
With The Baldwins, do you hope to have a second season? Have Alec and Hilaria indicated any interest in returning?
It’s completely about the popularity of the show and if people come in to watch it. We don’t know if they’re going to, but we hope so. But we have not had those conversations yet with the Baldwins.