‘UnREAL’ Season 3 Trailer: The Savage ‘Reality Show’ Drama Looks To Course Correct
After a nearly year-long delay, Lifetime’sUnREALis coming back onto our TV screens.
The darkly comic send-up to reality TV was nominated for a few Emmys in its first season and became one of the breakout shows of 2015, but it has been plagued by so many of its own behind-the-scenes conflicts that the drama in front of the cameras seemed demure by comparison. But after a really, really deep sophomore slump,UnREALis revamping itself for its third season, boasting new showrunnerStacy Rukeyserand its first female “suitor.” Let the games begin.
Lifetime getting into the Peak TV game was met with rolled eyes and derision. The channel that housewives left on in the background while they waited for their soaps to air? No thanks. But whenUnREALpremiered in 2015, run byBuffy the Vampire Slayer’sMarti Noxonand formerBachelorproducerSarah Gertrude Shapiro, that skepticism was quickly stopped in its tracks.
Watch the UnREAL Season 3 Trailer
UnREALwas a razor-sharp savagery of reality television, following the women who produce aBachelor-like show and the emotional manipulation they put the contestants through. It featured a fiercely feminist but mentally unstable main character Rachel (Shiri Appleby) who is forced to engineer cat fights and breakdowns all in the name of “good TV.” She’s egged on by her boss Quinn (Constance Zimmer), a callous showrunner who prioritizes the show’s ratings over her underling’s mental well-being.
It was a soul-crushing, biting, and brilliant first season of high drama — nothing less from the network that created a whole subgenre of suburban fear movies. But the polarizing second season, which saw an ill-advised Black Lives Matter storyline and the departure of Noxon over conflicts with Shapiro, became the epitome of the sophomore slump with a sharp dip in quality and ratings. Morebehind-the-scenes conflictstook place for the former Emmy darling — season 2 showrunnerCarol Barbeeleft and writerStacy Rukeyserreplaced her — causinglong delaysfor season 3, which was intended to premiere in summer of 2017. A lot of drama for a show that pokes fun at how TV engineers drama.
“It takes complicated women to make a show about complicated women,” Rukeyser toldThe Hollywood Reporter.
It looks likeUnREALis back on track with its third season trailer. Quinn and Rachel are back in their uneasy and toxic friendship, this time teaming up against their first female suitor onEverlasting, theBachelor-style show within the show. Played byMasters of Sexactress Caitlin FitzGerald, Serena is a “hot, sexy, smart, but single” character who may prove to be a worthy foe against Quinn and Rachel’s machinations. Serena demands that the show will play by her rules, as the 25 male suitors — includingFreddie Stroma’s Adam! — vying for her attention.
“She’s smart, we can’t handle her the same way,” the perpetually frazzled Rachel tells Quinn.
Bitter female competition isUnREAL’s bread and butter, and throwing a female suitor into the mix will certainly “make everything feel really fresh,” likeAppleby promisedearlier this year. But it’s not a Lifetime show without some drama, and bringing back Adam — who Rachel had a brief fling with before humiliating him on live national television — will certainly do the job.
