Guest Column: Introducing “Docuality” TV With Lizzo

To authentically amplify the voices in Lizzo's 'Watch Out for the Big Grrrls' on Amazon Prime, the director explains that she needed to create a new genre of reality TV.

Guest Column: Introducing “Docuality” TV With Lizzo

Introducing ‘Docuality’ TV With LizzoCourtesy of JAMES CLARK/AMAZON STUDIOS (4)

Reality TV tends to skew negative. That’s true of the content, but also of the craft. Many shows are shot in a way that makes you feel like you’re outside the experience watching it.

I’m a documentary filmmaker. I’m known for my visual style, for creating an immersive experience that’s bright, energetic and feels like you’re almost inside of somebody’s world. That’s what I wanted to do as the director of Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, which, over the course of eight episodes, tells the story of Lizzo’s search for new dancers to join her crew of Big Grrrls ahead of her next tour. I felt like I could give a voice to the voiceless. That’s something that I do on all of my projects: help amplify authentic voices for a community that is underrepresented.

Having been a dancer myself, and having been plus-size, dance was the way that I expressed myself, that I was able to be accepted in the world of the arts. I felt like I would be a good person to tell this story because I would be able to show not just the hardships, the sad parts, the negative sides to being plus-size, but also show how joyous, how powerful, how strong, how confident these women were. I wanted to do that in a way that felt immersive, that felt like you were in their space, in their heads, in their worlds — which is why I literally renamed the whole genre.

When Lizzo and I first spoke about the show, we discussed this as a “docuality series.” That’s what I called it, because a lot of reality shows are very format-driven, and I knew that this one needed to be story-driven, like when we see the girls work through their vulnerabilities ahead of a nude photo shoot challenge. It needed to center the dancers. It needed to play true to their authenticity. That would help the audience connect and empathize with their experience more than it would through a traditional format.

This was hugely important to Lizzo as well. One of the reasons I wanted to work with Lizzo is because she is so unapologetic about the confidence that she has in herself — and that confidence is not typically portrayed in women who are plus-size, in Black people, in anyone who’s othered by society. We wanted to show the confident side of these women. To do that, we had to keep asking the question: “How can we deliver a format that everybody loves to watch on television, but create more connection, more nuance and be more positive?”

The answer was documentary. Typically, when someone directs a reality show, you only see them calling the shots from the control room. Early on, I said, “That’s not what I’m doing on this project. I’m going to do everything. I’m going to be in the control room, but I’m also going to spend time with the girls personally. I’m going to empathize with them.” That led to me breaking the fourth wall.

In episode three, I directed the music video made for the challenge, and I directed the episode itself, so I got to spend time with the dancers, including Sydney. It just came to me spiritually that Sydney was dealing with an eating disorder, and because of my work with her, she was able to open up with me about that topic before we even got onscreen. And she ended up sharing it in the show — we made sure we had people on site to take care of the girls’ mental and physical health. That was something that touched me. And it was a liberating thing for her.

But there were other ways in which we needed to break the norm to make this show. For dance sequences, you typically have a camera plot. You put cameras in exact positions, get zoom lenses and shoot from afar. But in order to shoot these girls, I felt we needed to be in their energy. I took the camera off sticks completely. I created handheld builds so that the DPs and the camera operators had to move with the girls as they filmed them. The results were beautiful, dynamic shots where you’re up close to the women moving around their environment.

I wanted things to feel up close and intimate. To achieve that, I gave different cameras different purposes. For instance, instead of Lizzo speaking to experts about the girls’ auditions, I put a camera next to her, so that she could give her feedback directly to the audience. That way, the viewer feels like they’re in the audition room with the girls. Also, I had a camera dedicated to romanticizing and celebrating the girls’ curves. In a lot of shows, people avoid what they deem as imperfections. I wanted anything that would stereotypically be seen as a negative on a body to be treated as something beautiful.

Lizzo’s an icon who amplifies plus-size women and puts them in the forefront. I really felt that working with her, making this show was an opportunity to bring brightness, joy and sisterhood to this genre of television. I only take projects that are purpose-driven, and I come to them with an entertaining, freeing approach. I always take communities that are underrepresented and tell their stories authentically and with nuance, and try to figure out how I can get mainstream society to understand the authenticity of something that they’re not used to seeing.

I haven’t seen a show in the reality category that was done like ours. A lot of the reception that we’ve been getting on Twitter has been from people who are like, “What is this series? This is not like your typical formatted show. There’s something that feels different about it.” And that’s what I try to do in my work, to ask the question: “What hasn’t been done?” I took a doc approach to a reality series, and I did it authentically. I love Madonna’s Truth or Dare and other follow docs that have these intimate moments and big, vast performances. That’s what reality TV needed.

This story first appeared in the June 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.