Thursday, February 1, 2024

‘The Viall Files’ Is The Podcast Of Record For Reality TV

If you were on TikTok or Instagram Reels during Scandoval's peak , you saw Nick Viall a lot. On his podcast, The Viall Files , the former Bachelor dove all the way into Bravo's big, nasty lagoon and came back with pearls: a play-by-play of what happened the night Ariana Madix found evidence of Tom Sandoval's affair, courtesy of Ariana's bestie Bradley Kearns ; what amounted to Charli Burnett's exit interview as she quit VPR ; memories of a one-on-one interaction with Sandoval when the two starred on Special Forces together.

Now Viall has started his own podcast network with VPR 's Katie Maloney launching Disrespectfully as its flagship show. Ahead of Vanderpump 's season-11 premiere, The Viall Files dropped an episode with Toms Schwartz and Sandoval. Here, Viall weighs in on the big reality scandals of the past year and discusses how he gets his guests comfortable enough to spill the tea.

Your show has three different formats. There's reality recap, the advice episodes, and the interview episodes. How did you come up with that hybrid model?
When I started my show, it was really important to be known as more than just a Bachelor recap show. We certainly talked about The Bachelor from time to time, but I wanted it to be more relationship-based and about social interactions.

Almost to my detriment, I think, I would sometimes try to get away from my origins. As I got more comfortable with what I was doing and the show started getting recognition for being more than just a recap show, I felt more comfortable leaning into it. On The Bach , I was involved in some dramatic situations. Knowing what it was like allowed me to empathize and connect with a lot of my guests. Certainly ones who have gotten caught up in — for lack of a better word — scandal. Most scandals aren't a Scandoval type of thing, sometimes they're just silly Bachelor drama, but I think that's allowed me to have certain conversations.

I try to be very adaptable. That's one thing I've learned from the people who make reality TV. I've always been really impressed with how they adapt to different situations and how they've been nimble and willing to change course if something wasn't working.

No comments:

Post a Comment