Under normal reality-show circumstances, families are supposed to start out intact before the intense basic-cable spotlight tears them asunder.
E! is hoping that the process works in reverse with “The Lamas Life,” a standard celebrity fishbowl show featuring former “Falcon Crest” star Lorenzo Lamas and his three fame-seeking, young-adult children.
The project comes from reality guru Mike Fleiss, who had worked with 23-year-old Shayne Lamas when she was a “winning” contestant on his series “The Bachelor” several years ago.
With her family fractured — Lorenzo had been estranged to 25-year-old aspiring-actor son A.J. Lamas since the younger had an affair with the elder’s fourth wife — Shayne Lamas saw an opportunity for a little togetherness.
“People ask me, reality shows tear families apart, are you worried that it’s going to happen to you?” she said on E!’s Television Critics Association panel for the new show Thursday. “Well, no, because we were already apart.”
Describing his relationship with the New York-based A.J., a regular on “As the World Turns” four years ago, as “strained,” Lorenzo Lamas agreed with the premise: “The fact is, I’ve seen A.J. more in two weeks than I have in three years,” he noted.
For his part, Fleiss seems confident that he’s come up with something on par with E!’s similarly targeted hit “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
“(Shayne Lamas) popped on ‘The Bachelor,’” he noted. “Even though the ratings that season were low, (E! execs Lisa Berger and Beth Greenwald) said she was the kind of personality that would be good for a reality show, so we just started putting it together. It’s like the Bundys on ‘Married… with Children’ or ‘The Simpsons.’ There’s kooky stuff, but there’s an undercurrent that brings it all together.”
