By ruth young

As a reality TV fan and avid viewer of The Real Housewives franchise, I’m no stranger to the cast of The Real Housewives of Toronto, which aired for one season in 2017. So, when I got the chance to speak to Kara Alloway, self-proclaimed Real Housewives villain protagonist turned reality TV show producer and now author, my inner fan was freaking out. But, I was also really interested to learn about how reality TV comes together. It came at no surprise to me that these shows aren’t really rooted in the truth, but I never realized how scientific the production side of it really is. I chatted with Alloway about her debut novel Most Hated, which is based on her time as a Housewife, what actually goes into making reality TV—and what that means for viewers at home.

First off, I have to say I absolutely loved the book. There were definitely moments while reading where it felt like I was watching an episode of The Real Housewives.

Yay! I'm so glad. I’ve got to tell you, every time I get a NetGalley review, I get a notice on my email [that] says feedback and I go ‘Oh crap, please don't let them hate it, please don’t let them hate it.’ And if it’s like three stars or more I’m like, ‘Phew, they got it.’

What inspired you to start writing this book? Did you think of it while you were working on The Real Housewives of Toronto or was it afterwards while reflecting on your experience?

It was all of that. My big frustration on the show—and I say this in the book—[is that]on so many occasions when we were doing Housewives, I swear I felt like I was Jim Halpert and I wanted to look at the camera and go, ‘Are you seeing this? Is everybody else seeing that?’ It just floored me and felt like I really needed a chance to tell my story, but not in an edited Housewives forum. And not necessarily just tell my story, but tell the story of the whole production. So, I always knew that I would write a book after I did Housewives.

Then, somebody put this book in my hand by Dr. Phyllis Chesler called Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, which is the best book in the world. She is a very, very accomplished psychologist and sociologist, but she spends the first seven pages apologizing to the sisterhood for writing this book—she didn't want to be seen as selling them out. But it is such a great book. It goes into the sociological reasons why women treat other women the way they do, what the sociological implications are and why we act the way we do. (She also touches on how we can fix this.) She says women are very tribal; there's a hierarchy and if you don't walk in step with the hierarchy, if you're a free thinker or a truth teller, you get ostracized. And how are you ostracized? Shunning, gossiping, slandering. It starts at age eight in the playground, and festers and grows as you become an older individual in society, she says, [until] women start to express this internalized female misogyny towards other women. I would even take it a step further, with much respect to Dr. Chesler, and say, I think that this is actually a learned behaviour, because I think women have been told by men for so long, ‘This is the definition of a woman. This is how you should be.’ Even if you say, ‘No, I disagree with that,’ if you are continually being told that, it's going to spill over in how you behave.

And if you don’t fall into that definition, you’re not part of the in-crowd.

It's funny, because I've been doing some book signings at Indigos in Barrie, Burlington and [the GTA]. I love talking to the girls who are like 16 to 18 about this. I wish I sold as many books for as many minutes as we talked, because they are so passionate about it. They go, ‘Oh my gosh, I am so experiencing that right now in my school.’ This is a huge, long answer to your question, but someone put this book in my hand after Housewives and I said, ‘I have to write this book.’ Because I think that reality television is the perfect backdrop to show how women interact with each other and what I had experienced a little.

I've been watching Real Housewives since I was probably 11 or 12. It was almost like a bonding experience for my mom and I to sit down on a Thursday or Friday night and watch the newest episode of whichever franchise we were on at that point. Thinking about that idea of learned behaviour , do you think shows like Real Housewives—or even just reality television in general—continue that process of teaching women how they should react or behave with other women?

Actually, if we look at it that way, then I'd say they actually do a service, because the cringey ‘May have a word with you’ is actually incredibly healthy. I remember when the producers said to me, ‘You have to have a moment with another cast member in order for this show to continue.’ I never wanted to be that person; it's just such a cliché. But you could say these shows actually do [demonstrate what to do] when you do have a conflict and how it should be resolved—don't allow it to fester. So I don't think a show like Housewives does a disservice to women. Actually, I think it could be used as a great educational tool for conflict resolution. Get it resolved quickly. If you have a problem with someone else, own your mistake. You always see those apologies on Housewives. Who really does that? Maybe we need to start doing that as women.

That’s super interesting because it completely reframes how we think about these shows; they’re more than just being a form of entertainment. Do you enjoy watching reality TV, and especially The Real Housewives franchise?

I'm actually a huge fan; I enjoy them. I think they’re art; they elicit an emotional response and that's kind of what art is, right? As long as you can watch them in a healthy way with the understanding that they are created to entertain.

I think we also have to understand that there's all these different production companies doing these shows, and there's a difference between augmenting the reality and manufacturing the reality. I look at someone like an Alex Baskin at 32 Flavors Entertainment; he still does Housewives of Beverly Hills and he did Vanderpump Rules this season, which has been nominated for an Emmy. It was such brilliant TV, especially the way he uses camera angles to sort of turn the viewers head. He did not manufacture the reality, but he did do a brilliant job of taking our chin and redirecting our focus. I think it's brilliant art.

The Real Housewives of Toronto only lasted for one season. Do you think there’s a reason why we haven’t had these behemoth type of reality shows in Canada?

I think as Canadians we tend to be very private people. I think that's why celebrities say they like to come here; you could be riding in an elevator with Tom Cruise and you're not going to go, ‘Oh my god, you're Tom Cruise,’ right? You're going to be very quiet. I think that's our stumbling block for these kinds of reality television shows. And, you know, when you're casting a Real Housewife, you're not casting A-listers. You need people that don't have a lot to lose; they're sort of on the peripheries, they don't own a telecommunications company or a baseball team.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years watching The Real Housewives and other reality shows like it, is there’s always someone you’re rooting for and always someone you’re rooting against. During your time on The Real Housewives of Toronto, you were definitely given the villain edit. What was that like?

Oh my gosh, I hated it. I hated it. I remember having a conversation after the show had wrapped but before it aired, and they said, ‘So, we're going to need you to own this.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ I was like, Okay, how bad is it? And she was like, ‘Well, I'll say this: season two is for redemption.’

I really didn’t even care to watch the season because I was so shell-shocked, but I had a journalist who wanted me to send her an episode and I thought, I should watch one episode of this, so I know exactly what I'm sending her. So, I watched the first episode and I was so turned off by myself. But again, I have to say that's the edit. The monologue that I go into at that first surgery party where I'm like, ‘Oh, we love to ski in Banff. Oh, I went to school at McGill. Oh, we do yoga.’ You have to understand, what you don't see is that the other cast members were peppering me with questions: ‘Where do you guys like to go on vacation? What do you and your husband do for date night? Where'd you go to university?’ So here I am being peppered with these questions, the peppering is cut, the answers are strewn together and [you end up with] she's insufferable, someone shut her up.

Would you ever participate in reality television as a cast member again?

You know, I get asked that question a lot. I can remember when Housewives ended, I was like, ‘Well, it was interesting experience; I'm glad it's over’. A publicist or something told me, ‘Well, you really shouldn't say that. You should just say, I'd never say no to anything.’ I feel like that's so fake, [but] I said it, even though in my heart of hearts, I was like ‘No way, I would never do this again.’ Now, six years later, I've mellowed. Believe it or not, I would, because I feel like I get it now. And I feel like I could be good at it. I mean, look how much I've learned. Would I have learned that much if I came out of Housewives and [the reaction] was, ‘Oh, we absolutely love you, you're great?’ No way, I would have lost if I had been the most loved. It was only in being the most hated that I actually feel like I gained and learned. I'd like the opportunity to go back and give it another go, because I think I could probably be good at it now.

Your book delves into the inner workings of reality television production. Is how you portray it close to how things really work?

Yes, [in the Housewives franchise,] but I would say not generally. I've talked to my girlfriends on the other franchises and they don't [do] the frankenbiting and the cherry picking. An example of frankenbiting would be my famous scene where I go, ‘Come after me and flames will shoot out of my nose.’ Well, what I actually said was, ‘Come after me, I'll stand my own. You come after my kids and flames will shoot out of my nose.’ And then cherry picking, this was the worst example of cherry picking: they had a promo for the show called The Wives Talk About Tequila. Well, in shooting that promo, they sat me down for an interview and said ‘What do you think about wife swapping?’ And I was like, Oh crap, I don't know. So I said, ‘Maybe for other people, not for me.’ And when the promo [aired], they have me saying tequila was maybe for other people but not for me. They went with this whole narrative about how I don’t really drink, but that came from my girlfriend who was on [Real Housewives of] Beverly Hills [who] said ‘Be careful, don’t drink the first night you’re filming—a glass of wine is like a bottle, you’ve got to get the lay of the land.’

I think audiences are becoming more media literate and are able to identify those heavily manipulated moments in reality television, though. Do you think there’s a push in the industry to move away from that type of editing?

1,000% yes. The audiences are so savvy now and they can tell people who are making up fake drama, left, right and centre. They smell it a mile away.

With this in mind, do you think reality television will ever lose its grip on viewers?

You know, I don’t know if it would ever [lose its grip]. But I do think that they’re the new soap operas. I know soap operas are still around, but [they used to be so much more popular]. Everybody loved writing letters to Susan Lucci saying, ‘Erica Kane is awful; she’s such a horrible person.’ Now, reality television is definitely having its moment, not just for the art, not just because it elicits emotions, but also because it elicits community when you talk about it with other people. I mean, my girlfriends and I get together and talk about these shows: Did you see this? What do you think of this? That sort of thing. Will reality TV be around forever? I don’t know. But going anywhere [soon]? No.

When I went to learn how to produce reality television, I sat in with one of the network executives from, I want to say Lifetime maybe. She was talking about how, when you're pitching a reality show, there must be two components: the aspirational component and the relatable component. The perfect example, in my mind, is The Kardashians. Why is that so popular? Because everybody fights with their sister. Everybody fights with their siblings. So, everybody can relate to that, on some level. We don't necessarily fight with our sisters while driving our Lamborghini planning our wedding to Italy. But there is still relatability.

It sounds like these shows are a bit of a science experiment, where someone is just putting chemicals into a beaker trying to get a specific explosion or reaction.

Completely. That's how it works. It's like you put the chemicals in a beaker and you hope you get the right explosion.

Is that what you were hoping readers would take away from your novel—that there’s really is a lot more going on behind the scenes than what we see on TV?

I wasn't looking to expose reality television. It's not meant to be an exposé. It's meant to be pulling back the curtain a little and give a peek. But I'm not looking to kick over any sandcastles, because like I said, I'm still a fan. I'm a viewer. I'm a producer.

How did it feel to lean into your role as the villain on The Real Housewives of Toronto through the title of your novel?

I really liked it. Now, I could not have done it the year after, or two years after, the show wrapped. I had to go through everything that I went through in order to be there. And when I say go through everything, I'll be 100% candid with you: I had some very dark nights. There were mothers at my son's school that were like, ‘We saw you on the show. We saw what you said, and we're not comfortable with you participating in this [school event] anymore.’ Like, you want to talk about the pariah? I was the pariah. It was bad. Not to mention the trolls on social media—the stuff they say, and how they know the buttons to push? That was brutal.

Just one final question: in your opinion who would you say is the most hated in your novel?

That's such a good question. The feedback that I got from readers is it starts out as Dahlia, but then is it Zoey? But maybe it's Sabrina because you know, she's a little bit insufferable? I don't think it's Budgie, ever. And okay, this is me being really artsy. My family would like, roll their eyes and go, ’Please can you not?’ But maybe at the end of the day, it's the edit. That's the most hated. Right? The manipulation. Because that's not what the reality is.

Thank you for reading this week’s Club Friday Q&A! Still looking for intersectional pop culture analysis? Here are a few ways to get more Friday:

💫 Subscribe to the (free) weekly newsletter, or join Club Friday, our paid membership program. Members get early access to Q&As with pop culture experts and Friday merch, as well as other fun perks.

💫 If you’d like to make a one-time donation toward the cost of creating Friday Things, you can donate through Ko-Fi.

💫 Follow Friday on social media. We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and (occasionally) TikTok.