Breaking Amish & the Storytelling of Universal Experiences

Eric Evangelista, founder of Hot Snakes Media, talks to TV Real about creating resonant factual content and the ongoing success of the Breaking Amish franchise.

As the pace of change within the global media market shows no signs of slowing, those who are making and distributing the content are tasked with constantly solving for what’s in demand—whether that be older standbys or brand-new ideas. Eric Evangelista, founder of Hot Snakes Media, believes that it’s an ideal time to be in the business for factual content creators. “If you are an artist or producer who can create your own content and deliver it to the market, this is a wonderful time to be working in the unscripted world,” Evangelista tells TV Real Weekly.

Among the content that Evangelista has brought to the market with Hot Snakes Media are the Breaking Amish and Amish Mafia series. Breaking Amish debuted on TLC back in 2012, giving viewers a rare look at Anabaptist culture while showing young adults experimenting with life outside their communities before deciding whether or not to return. Amish Mafia, meanwhile, centers on a group within the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as they seek to protect it from outsiders.

Breaking Amish has been on the air for nearly ten years and is now streaming on discovery+ along with Amish Mafia and Return to Amish, which follows the Breaking Amish cast as they go back to their hometowns and confront the challenges of reentering the world they had left behind. Evangelista believes that the continued global success of a show like Breaking Amish, which zeroes in on one particular community, comes down to how it can relate to a variety of different cultures.

“Even though we feature young people who grew up in an Amish community sheltered from the outside world, their ‘coming-of-age’ experiences are universal,” he explains. “Most everyone around the world at some point has to leave the security of their home and family, whether it be for college, work, to get married, etc. In doing so, our cast faces many of the same challenges and emotions as our audiences around the globe. It is simply a timeless story and genre.”

Other series from Hot Snakes Media include Deaf U and Pig Royalty, which continue the theme of exploring worlds that might be unfamiliar to most.

“When creating a show, I usually begin by thinking of a scene or a single character and his or her story, and then set out to prove whether that scene and character exists in the real world,” says Evangelista. “After we find that real-life character, we immerse ourselves in the character’s world in order to meet their circle of family and friends.”

Netflix’s Deaf U and Pig Royalty, which joins the Amish franchise on discovery+, both bring audiences into their respective worlds. The former follows a group of deaf and hard-of-hearing college students at Gallaudet University, while the latter centers on two families and their rivalry with one another as they travel around Texas for pig show competitions.

“The authentic storylines, combined with expert camerawork and a carefully selected mix of lyrical cues, makes the viewer quickly forget he or she is watching a documentary series and binge the show’s episodes no differently than a premium multi-million-dollar scripted show,” says Evangelista. “Most importantly, both of these shows are great examples of how we take the audience on a deep dive into a subculture they previously had no access to or did not even know about.”