UnREAL Cast Members on the Lost Pilot Episode, Series Impact, and New Re-Watch Podcast

Kicking off Pride month, UnREAL officially marked its tenth anniversary since first hitting the air, and what better way to celebrate than with reflections on the past from key cast members?

Creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro and cast members Shiri Appleby, Constance Zimmer, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Craig Bierko, and Arielle Kebbel took the stage at the ATX TV Festival to break down all the behind-the-scenes details.

A Scraped Pilot and Brand New Cast

It’s challenging and, frankly, incomprehensible to think about a version of UnREAL without Constance Zimmer in the spotlight as the pivotal character, Quinn King, but that was almost a reality.

In a fit of laughter, while speaking to the crowd of the panel, Shapiro unveiled it wasn’t until she had offered the role to Zimmer countless times that she finally got a yes.

“I tried very hard to cast Constance,” Shapiro said. “I had pretty much written the role for her, but she did not want to do it. She said no a lot, which I totally understand why.”

There’s a particular aesthetic and mentality one has to possess to be able to confidently be a powerful boss woman who stands up for herself and doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit.

A quality that was severely lacking in their quest to find the perfect fit for Quinn.

“We had seen a lot of actresses read for it, and it can play like a Disney Evil Queen. But there was one line she [Constance] delivered on Entourage, and when I saw it, I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s her.'”

“I think it was Ari had just broken up with her or something, and he was like, ‘Are you mad? Are you mad? Are you mad?’ He was taunting her, and she goes, ‘No, I’m sad.’ And I was like, ‘That’s it!’ She’s a fucking bitch, and she has a heart. That’s the whole thing. There was no one else who could have played Quinn,” Shapiro continued.

Before Zimmer or Bierko officially signed on to the project, Bowyer-Chapman and Appleby had already been cast and shot a pilot. One that never saw the light of day and featured an entirely different version of the Jay fans came to know and love.

“He was a straight womanizer who would sleep with all the contestants when they would get kicked off the show, like a very different picture,'” Bowyer-Chapman said. “I was hesitant to play him because I’m a queer person. I wanted to primarily play queer characters in television and film. I wanted to be the representation that I didn’t ever have the opportunity or the privilege to see myself.”

Despite his initial hesitations, though, he took on the challenge of playing a straight character while simultaneously not hiding or being ashamed of his queerness.

It was through his determination to stay true to himself that the series creators decided to overhaul Jay’s entire character.

“I think so often for queer people, when you’re playing straight characters, you’re afraid of the powers that be. You’re fearful that you’re not going to be saleable to the flyover states or appealing to women or whoever. So, you compartmentalize yourself, and I knew that it was an opportunity for me to bring the fullest version of myself.”

“When the show got picked up and ordered to series, I got a call from Sarah and Marty saying, ‘You’re still on the show. We’re rewriting Jay, and we’re writing him after you. We’re making him an openly queer man,'” Bowyer-Chapman said.

A Worthwhile Impact on Reality TV

Like novels, poetry, and classical literature, film is a form of media crafted to showcase vision, inspire, and cause change.

We’ve seen it laboriously throughout the years with series such as I Love Lucy, ER, Pose, and so, so many others. In the same sense, UnREAL opened the eyes of the world to the real conflicts, no matter how dramatized, that happens behind the scenes of reality TV.

“The funny thing for me, not being a reality show person at all, is that I would have people come up on the street saying, ‘I’m a reality show producer. You cannot believe how much you guys are changing the narrative. Contestants are coming into conference rooms as a group, and they are saying, ‘We will not be manipulated like the contestants on UnREAL,”” Zimmer said. “I was like, that’s great. A television show is basically reminding people they can stick up for themselves.”

It wasn’t until UnREAL became popular that Zimmer realized the amount of people who believe what they see on reality TV.

“I had no idea that people thought that reality shows were reality. We were showing how they were produced, unreal, and manipulative. What editing does, and how we were basically creating them into something else,” Zimmer said.

A Re-Visit with Familiar Faces

In the spirit of podcasts becoming increasingly popular and gaining a significant foothold in the entertainment industry, Bowyer-Chapman and Zimmer are joining forces once again.

Similar to what many actors and creatives are doing nowadays, the two revealed during their panel at ATX TV Festival they are creating a re-watch podcast. It will primarily feature Bowyer-Chapman and Zimmer as co-hosts, with all cast members set to make an appearance at some point.

“It’s been 10 years since this show aired, but it’s almost unbelievable or unimaginable because we are all so still ingrained in each other’s lives,” Bowyer-Chapman said. “We have so many stories to tell.”

“It is always so thrilling and exciting to hear the different perspectives of five different people in the same room, technically having the same experience but having completely different perspectives. So, as UnREAL re-launched on Netflix, we decided that we would do a re-watch podcast.”

With a cast as big as UnREAL possessed, there’s always bound to be three or four differing perspectives on the same instance. It’s this facet that was a natural draw for Zimmer.

“I have found when you do festivals, and when you go anywhere, everybody wants to know, like, ‘Oh my god, how was that for you? But how was it for you, and how is it for you?'” Zimmer imitated.

“Even just leading up to coming here [ATX TV Festival], we’ve all been talking about it, re-watching it, and having different memories. So it’s fun, even for us.”

The podcast is expected to be released sometime in Summer 2025.

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