‘UnREAL’ goes where real reality dares not tread in second season

Reporting from New York —  In a scene from the Season 2 premiere of “UnREAL,” Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), the hard-nosed executive producer of a “Bachelor”-like reality show called “Everlasting,” tries to calm the nerves of a panicked network executive. Quinn and her protegée, Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby), have just made history by casting Darius Hill, a handsome black football star (B.J. Britt), as the show’s “suitor.”

“I promise you 20 million viewers the minute” he touches a white woman, Quinn says, using more piquant language and boasting of the show’s diverse, combustible mix of contestants: “We have a hot racist, an even hotter black-activist person and we have a terrorist. They will be at each other’s throats from Night One. It will be a ratings bonanza.”

When “UnREAL” debuted last year on Lifetime, critics praised the drama for its feminist take on reality television’s retrograde gender politics and for the complicated relationship between its flawed, ambitious female leads. In its sophomore season, the series is confronting the reality genre’s equally problematic relationship with race at a time when “The Bachelor”/”Bachelorette” continues to weather criticism for largely excluding people of color.

The series was created by veteran show-runner Marti Noxon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, a writer and filmmaker who reluctantly toiled for several years as a producer on “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” “UnREAL” wound up on many year-end lists and in May won a Peabody Award “for illustrating how masterfully parody can work when it shines its light fearlessly.“ Both Appleby and Zimmer are viewed as serious Emmy contenders.

The accolades have helped change perceptions about Lifetime, a network that has long been identified with schmaltzy, made-for-TV movies and the kind of guilty-pleasure reality programming that “UnREAL” sends up so mercilessly (e.g. “Dance Moms”).

“It’s kind of a creative North Star for us now,” said Robert Sharenow, executive vice president and general manager of A&E and Lifetime, which has already renewed “UnREAL” for a third season. “We’re embracing that it’s pushing the boundaries of the brand.”

The boundary-pushing continues apace in Season 2 as Rachel, newly promoted to show-runner, ups the dramatic ante by casting “Everlasting’s” first black suitor. She also convinces Ruby, a young Black Lives Matter activist, to become a contestant on the show by promising a platform for her political message but sets her up to be the token Angry Black Woman instead.

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Constance Zimmmer talks about the similarities between reality TV shows and her show, “UnREAL.”

When challenged by a fellow producer, Rachel, an avowed feminist who struggles with the moral implications of her job, offers up a self-serving justification: “My plan is to make a top-rated television program with a black romantic lead. You have a problem with that?”

Shapiro has some insight into Rachel’s situation. Growing up in a family of liberal academics in Santa Barbara, Shapiro “suckled at the teat of liberalism,” she said over a quadruple espresso at a downtown hotel the morning after the series premiere of “The Bachelorette.” (No, she didn’t watch.)

A few years out of Sarah Lawrence College, Shapiro wound up as an associate producer on “The Bachelor.” Despite her feminist reservations about the show, she excelled at the job. “Having been a nerd and a chubby kid my whole life, there was also a sick satisfaction to eviscerating a prom queen,” recalled Shapiro, who has a producer’s ear for a great sound bite.

In one particularly low moment, a contestant told Shapiro that she had ruined her life. The experience inspired Shapiro to write and direct “Sequin Raze,” a short film that screened at SXSW in 2013 and formed the basis for “UnREAL.”

“When I pitched the show it was ‘A feminist gets stuck working on “The Bachelor” and has a nervous breakdown,’” Shapiro explained. “It’s always been a character drama for me and not an exposé. It ends up serving as both.”

Despite some talk of a female suitor in Season 2, Shapiro decided it would be more relevant to cast an African American male on “Everlasting.” The move puts the fictional show ahead of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” neither of which has featured a black lead in 32 combined seasons. Both have been criticized for marginalizing contestants of color, who rarely make it past the first few episodes, and trafficking in negative racial stereotypes.

The long-standing controversy erupted again this past spring when Caila Quinn, who is half Filipino, was passed over as “The Bachelorette” in favor of self-proclaimed “Southern sweetheart” JoJo Fletcher.

But Shapiro was inspired more by headlines about the killing of unarmed black men and the testimony of police officers who described them “as monsters and animals and superheroes,” she said. “To me, filling up time and space with images of black men in different ways felt really important.”

She brought the idea to her writing staff, which includes two women of color, and they spent two weeks having conversations, some of them rather difficult, about race, dating and media portrayals of African Americans.

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Constance Zimmer talks about her character, Quinn King, from “UnReal.”

“I’m a person who’s thought about that stuff to some degree, but my understanding of my own privilege at the end of those two weeks was profoundly different than it had been,” said Shapiro, her voice going wobbly with emotion.

That’s not to say that Season 2 is only — or even mostly — about race. The complicated professional relationship between Quinn and Rachel remains front and center on “UnREAL,” an antihero drama that suggests reality television can be nearly as cutthroat as the meth trade or organized crime.

“The real love story of the show is between the two of us,” said Appleby, sitting for a joint interview with Zimmer. “These aren’t the kind of women who are daydreaming about their wedding dresses. These are women who want to get to the top of their field and kick ass and have power and money.”

As the season opens, Rachel has ditched her scruffy Army jacket and high-tops for sleek Helmut Lang, clearly emulating Quinn, her sharply dressed mentor. The two women even get the same profane motto tattooed on their wrists. But Quinn inevitably feels threatened by Rachel’s newfound authority, and tensions arise.

Said Zimmer: “Seeing Rachel act how I’ve taught her to act is exciting but then also scary. I could have trained her well enough that she’s like, ‘Bye!’ You want to make sure you teach them just enough so they have to still stay to get more lessons.”

The dynamic between Quinn and Rachel has invited comparisons to Walt and Jesse of “Breaking Bad,” and is a major part of what convinced Lifetime to take a risk on the series. “The fact there are two female leads in a non-cop show is fairly groundbreaking,” said Sharenow. “They would eat Cagney and Lacey for breakfast.”

‘UnREAL’

Where: Lifetime

When: 10 p.m. Monday

Rating: TV-MA-LS (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17 with advisories for coarse language and sex)