{"id":12994,"date":"2019-06-26T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2019-06-26T17:15:08","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T21:15:08","slug":"world-of-wonders-fenton-bailey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/world-of-wonders-fenton-bailey\/","title":{"rendered":"World of Wonder\u2019s Fenton Bailey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fenton Bailey, co-founder of World of Wonder Productions, talks to<\/em> TV Real\u00a0about the company\u2019s mission of telling authentic stories of people who \u201clive their lives out loud.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Documenting the search for the next drag superstar, RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race<\/em> recently wrapped its 11th season in the U.S. The show, which began airing in 2009 on Logo TV and moved over to VH1 in season nine, has become something of a phenomenon. Its contestants have gone on to achieve various levels of pop culture stardom, and there are legions of fans the world over hosting viewing parties, engaging on social media and gathering for RuPaul\u2019s DragCon, billed as the first convention celebrating drag, queer culture and self-expression. World of Wonder Productions is behind Drag Race<\/em>, among a slew of other unscripted successes.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV REAL: <\/strong>After more than two decades producing, what\u2019s the unique positioning you\u2019ve tried to establish for World of Wonder in this vast marketplace?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> We\u2019ve only really ever done things that personally interest us. Randy [Barbato, fellow World of Wonder co-founder] and I often talk about the very first time that we saw RuPaul on the streets of Atlanta wheat pasting posters of himself. Ru always recognized that stardom was his trajectory, and it was a question of waiting for the world to catch up. We\u2019ve followed our hearts.<\/p>\n

Randy and I were at film school a long time ago, and we would sneak out of our film editing class and go to The Pyramid Club, which is a hole-in-the-wall [nightclub] in New York\u2019s East Village. We saw some of the most amazing acts on that little stage. Randy and I always felt that drag is true artistry on so many levels: it\u2019s performance, singing, lip-syncing, hair, makeup, fashion, moves, and also, it\u2019s this great celebration and parody of all the insanity of popular culture. It’s this multifaceted art form. Drag has been around a long, long time, but we always felt drag was something that deserved a larger stage or a broader platform.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like Ru says: You\u2019re born naked and the rest is drag. It\u2019s true! Whether you\u2019re gay or straight, a drag queen or not, everything you put on is playing with a sense of identity.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>How have you seen the factual genre evolve\u2014from where it was when WOW first started producing to what’s popular today?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> Whether it gets called documentary or reality\u2014I quite like the word “unscripted” because that explains its appeal as well\u2014audiences love something that feels real. There’s nothing wrong with scripted, but I think viewers like the feel of something that hasn’t been created by a writer or willed into existence by a creative force. It’s just people as they are and as they find themselves. This is a genre that has literally exploded, in many different ways, across all aspects of culture over the last 20 or 25 years. There are certain landmarks, whether it’s O.J. Simpson on the freeway chase or the Rodney King police beating, those were all in different ways landmarks of this ability for people to see [things as they are]. It goes hand in hand with technology too; we’re able to film things so much more easily than we were able to. You can almost do anything now at the touch of a button! One of the great things about that is all of these opportunities for telling stories in a different way. That\u2019s all unscripted is, telling stories in a different way. It\u2019s a golden age of documentaries and unscripted series.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>Let\u2019s talk about the success of Drag Race<\/em>. What do you think took this show from a niche proposition to a global phenomenon?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> I don’t know what it was that made it happen. To Randy and I, it always felt like this art form of drag was potentially mainstream and does \"***Image***\"have appeal to a broad audience. It took many years to find a home for the show. We were knocking on a lot of doors for a long time. Something I’ve noticed more recently, as I spend more time going overseas and talking to production executives in other countries, is that they will say, We\u2019ve never heard of the show, but our kids love it! In many cases, people\u2019s kids have turned them on to the show. It speaks to the fact that drag does appeal to kids; kids don\u2019t bring to it the generational baggage and prejudices that perhaps, unfortunately, people have grown up with. Drag is nothing new. Societally it was seen as some outer limit, beyond the pale, ultra avant-garde thing. That\u2019s not what the nature of drag is. It\u2019s this creative form of expression that hasn\u2019t been recognized. I think to kids, drag queens are like Disney princesses.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about the queens! Ru wanting to do this show is such a generous thing on his part, to give this platform to everyone else and share it with the world.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>Looking at the current production and development slates, what are the types of stories you\u2019re trying to tell as a company?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> Randy and I are always moved and inspired by people who live their lives out loud, people who don\u2019t edit themselves, who don\u2019t try to fit in with everybody else. That\u2019s always inspired us. Drag queens tick that box for sure. We are drawn to stories about people who, in some respects, are under-revealed\u2014even if they may seem overexposed. When we made our film about Monica Lewinsky, she had been the subject of headlines and national interest, but we felt that she had been fundamentally misunderstood. In Monica in Black and White<\/em>, you get to see that she\u2019s a human being with feelings, in her full dimensionality. I often think that the tide of public opinion is unfair to people, and we want to tell stories that try to correct that or tell a different story.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about telling the truth. We\u2019re in such an age of all-out lying about everything, especially in politics. We\u2019re up to our necks in lies! It gets us excited to tell the truth about people and things.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>What led to the creation of the SVOD WOW Presents Plus, and in what other ways are you growing the direct-to-consumer business?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> Ru often talks about \u201cfinding your tribe.\u201d World of Wonder really is a tribe, a family. Everyone who enjoys Drag Race <\/em>may also enjoy other things that we create, that don\u2019t necessarily fit what cable or network TV is looking for. There is a tribe of people out there who get something out of it, and that’s where WOW Presents Plus came along. Thankfully, technology has reached a point where we could do this. It\u2019s $3.99 per month, which is less than the price of a latte, and you get all this content! It\u2019s a way for people who enjoy Drag Race <\/em>and the programs we make to enjoy them all in one place. There\u2019s a sense of membership, of an extended family or a club.<\/p>\n

That was the same sense of thinking behind creating RuPaul\u2019s DragCon. Meeting the audience at the event is inspiring. People talk in TV about the 18-to-34 sweet spot or the LGBTQ+ audience. That\u2019s not who is at RuPaul\u2019s DragCon. Yes, there are gay people there; yes, there are young people there. But what you see is multigenerational; you see kids with their families and teenagers with their parents. They aren’t defined by Nielsen ratings; they are curious people who want to go and have fun.<\/p>\n

TV REAL: <\/strong>World of Wonder\u2019s social channels have skyrocketed in engagement. What\u2019s driving this? What\u2019s the strategy with social?
\nBAILEY:<\/strong> As much as we\u2019d like to take credit and appear to be strategically brilliant, it\u2019s really all because of the queens! They don\u2019t just sing and dance, do hair and makeup\u2014they have really been pioneers in social media, in terms of finding their audience, connecting with their audience and building their audience. When you add up all the queens who have been on Drag Race<\/em>, and add up all their followers on Instagram, you end up with a huge social footprint. It’s unique in the sense that I don’t think other celebrities have necessarily curated their following quite so intensely (aside from maybe the Kardashians). We are following the lead of the queens. For artists and storytellers today, part of their job is to find and engage their audience. You can\u2019t just create something and then sit back and wait for the world to discover it.<\/p>\n

The internet has been a godsend to isolated young gay people because they’ve been able to find their peers, find role models, find relationships, friendships and contacts. Whereas before you were just alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere! It\u2019s impossible to emphasize the extent and profundity of that shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The co-founder of the production company behind RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race on telling authentic stories of people who \u201clive their lives out loud.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":12995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,69],"tags":[3884,3885],"class_list":["post-12994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-fenton-bailey","tag-world-of-wonder-productions","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nWorld of Wonder\u2019s Fenton Bailey - TVREAL<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/world-of-wonders-fenton-bailey\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"World of Wonder\u2019s Fenton Bailey - 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