When Cyle Zezo left The CW last year after a decade working in unscripted, he knew he didn’t want to leave the world of reality TV behind. (He segued to a new role as executive producer, on such shows as Penn & Teller: Fool Us and Mysteries Decoded.) But he also wanted to serve his original passion for green causes. “My first job out of high school was going door-to-door for the environment,” says Zezo. “This has been important to me for my entire adult life.” So he created a new job, at the crossroads of both fields.
Climate representation — the inclusion of environmental issues in storylines — had until then largely been a focus of scripted entertainment. In 2023, Zezo formed Reality of Change, which aims both to reflect climate concerns in reality shows and to promote sustainability efforts behind the scenes. Within a year of getting up and running, he partnered with environmental nonprofit Rare and its entertainment lab. They’ve since enlisted 30 production companies in a task force, with the goal of issuing a report after year’s end with findings on how to improve sustainability both immediately and in the long term.
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With the first meeting of the task force behind him, Zezo recently spoke with THR about why he believes the unscripted genre is such a natural fit for sustainability.
What made you want to pursue this formally, as opposed to just in conversations with collaborators and peers?
I have felt that feeling of helplessness as everything seems to be falling apart around us, that nobody else cares. I think that’s a common feeling for anybody — not just those working in our field. But I have learned that it truly is a misconception. A supermajority of people care about climate change. I’ve learned that not only from the data but my own experience. As I’ve talked to more and more people, the concern is pretty ubiquitous. There’s no debate anymore. They believe in climate change, they accept it, they want to do something about it, but they feel kind of stuck.
That idea of feeling stuck, of not being able to have an impact, can be applied to so many societal issues — but perhaps this one most of all.
It’s called a spiral of silence. When we’re not saying anything, other people think we don’t care. Then they don’t say anything, and it just goes around and around. It traps us and it’s fed by other misconceptions. There’s also psychological distance bias. People are less motivated to act if they feel like something’s very far away — either in time or in space. As a result, they don’t feel like it’s a threat to them personally. That persists even though communities in every part of the U.S. are experiencing the effects of climate change already. So what can anyone do? I come from an unscripted television background, so, at least for now, this is something I can do.
What are the goals of the initiative with Rare?
We’re looking for their insights on what the unscripted industry needs to be more sustainable — both on camera and behind the camera. So, we have representatives from a variety of production company sizes. There are major studios and some of the most exciting indies, all of them working on every kind of programming under the unscripted umbrella. With a broad spectrum of opinions, we can figure out what will work, what doesn’t work, what’s missing, what’s needed? And so we’re meeting over the course of 2024 to understand what those needs are.
As a programmer, what genres best lend themselves most to this? I spoke with Drew and Jonathan Scott, of Property Brothers, on this subject, and they’re big proponents for eliminating gas in kitchens. Are lifestyle shows easy entry points?
Food and home improvement are two seamless areas where you can get these types of messages in — and in a way that is entertaining and provide the right takeaways for people. But I truly believe that you can fit it into any show in some way. You always want to lead with entertainment. If you’re selling to a network or a streamer, you have to make sure that it’s right for their brand and for their audience. You’re not going to change that.
What are some shows that are servicing sustainability on camera?
Extreme E [on Fox Sports] is a great example. The A-story is electric off-road racing. I’m a big fan of OMG Fashun on E!, from Scout Productions, which showcases upcycling. Fashion is another area where a lot can be done in this space. Even in RuPaul’s Drag Race, a few years ago we saw the queens compete in a challenge called “The Last Ball on Earth” — where they had to make global warming-friendly looks. Blown Away has featured climate in challenges across multiple seasons. Outside of story, casual integrations is the easiest. If you see people with reusable branded cups, instead of seeing plastic water bottles (see: Love Is Blind), that’s a very natural way that you can weave in sustainability.
A huge part of reality TV is excess and “aspirational lifestyles” — whether it’s $50 million mega McMansions on Selling Sunset or the Kardashians on private jets. Is there any way to reconcile that with your mission?
Because there’s such a variety of shows that exist under the unscripted umbrella, it’s different from any other sector. And there are certain things that are glamorized in unscripted shows that are in conflict with this stuff. We still live in a culture that’s driven by these things — by consumption, by carbon. I don’t think we should be showing people in private jets, and ideally people wouldn’t be really taking them.
Oh, people are definitely taking them.
There was a show that I worked on when I was still at the network. The producers kept trying to fly me out to location and offering a private jet. I had to go back to their agent at a certain point and tell him, “Can you please ask them to stop offering me a private jet? I can’t take it. I won’t be doing it.” But I will say that perfection is wielded as a weapon against action. Whether it’s onscreen behind the camera or in our lives, we cannot be perfect. We could sit at home, do nothing and we’d still be part of the problem. So we really do need to change the culture.
What steps would you like to see unscripted producers taking off camera to combat climate change?
At the recent session with our advisory committee, we brought in Earth Angel [a sustainable production services agency] to talk to everybody about sustainable production practices through an unscripted lens. This is something that most of our participants are really invested in figuring out. According to the data we have, unscripted has a much smaller footprint than scripted does. But the highest impact areas to revolve around traveling people and the fuel that we’re using. Unscripted tends to travel a lot of people to sets. The goal is to mitigate that without reducing anything from a quality perspective. Because if we can reduce the number of people we are traveling to a location, that’s probably one of the biggest impacts to an unscripted production’s footprint.
What else was discussed?
Power. If we offer cleaner fuel sources — whether it’s the transport, the generators that we’re using on set or the lights that we’re using — those are just some areas that we can look at to make things more sustainable. But we’re also looking at things that productions can do more immediately or more directly, even if they’re not necessarily always the most impactful. Top-down is incredibly important, but you want to have buy-in from everybody on the crew. You want to make sure that everybody feels empowered, feels like they understand what’s going on, that they have a say and that policies aren’t just being imposed.
Knowing that change on this front is so incremental, what does success for this initiative look like to you five years down the line?
By one year from now, we’ll ideally have wrapped up this inaugural advisory committee, published some findings and be digging into what these producers say the industry needs to help them accelerate sustainability. So the exact shape that Reality of Change will take is impossible to say yet, specifically because its growth trajectory is going to be in response to what we’re hearing. But whatever form it takes, it’s going to be built on collaboration. My goal is that, as time goes on, there’s less and less of a need for what I’m providing. I want it to be second nature. Because we know that seven in 10 Americans already accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change right now.
This story first appeared in the June 2024 Sustainability issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to see the rest of the issue.
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