Seeing as we the viewers were left feeling bruised, battered, and maybe even a little bit sexually shamed by the first season of NYC Prep, we of course assumed that the people on the show — from the main characters to the guest stars — would feel brutalized by it also. After all, from where we were sitting, nobody came off looking too great (again, that includes us as viewers). But it turns out, people have a pretty thick skin, and everyone we talked to had a pretty positive outlook on how they came off. Take therapist Audrey Jacobs Brockner, for example, who risked her career as a serious headshrinker by going on reality television to talk to a known narcissist and give him off-the-cuff advice. “They’re lovely people all the producers,” she said. They seemed very attached to the kids.”
Audrey said she would have obviously never done any kind of real session for television, that the red-velvet bordello she operated out of was not actually her office, and that PC was not actually her patient—they only had the one conversation. “It was not therapy, clearly,” she said. But: “I liked him very much. He is a thoughtful sort of young man. He thinks about himself in sort of a deep way. ”
Likewise, Camille’s personal stylist Hitha had no complaints, even after getting painted with the bitch brush by producers. “I’m super nice, for all intents and purposes,” Hitha told us. “It made it seem like we didn’t get along, but we did.” Camille, she said, was “unbelievably smart, and super driven, with the most impeccable manners I have ever seen on a 16 year old … She reminded me of myself,” she said.
And even Social Life editor-in-chief Devorah Rose, who came across like a somewhat rude party-crasher, came away with good feelings. She described the filming process as “organic” and said she didn’t feel manipulated by Bravo at all. “That’s who I am, I live my life out loud. And I love crazy people — I love to have a fun time,” she explained of her zany shoot, which ended up with PC shirtless and nuzzling a male photographer. “I didn’t even know how old he was. I thought he was 23, and I found out he was 18 and I was like, WHAT? That guy has a beard! And I tried to set him up with a model!” (Rose also adds that PC was the one who was forward with stylist Trey, not the other way around.)
It’s the aftermath of the show that Rose says is the bad part. “I think what viewers should understand is that a few hours a week can’t capture every aspect of a human’s life,” she told us. “These characters are actual people, they’re much more well rounded than what you’re seeing.” Rose said she’s been the target of mean commentary on blogs, and has received hundreds of e-mails — “some crazy, some not so crazy, a few nice” — after her appearance on the show.
Still, it seems that most of the negative feedback has rolled off the backs of the cast. “I learned that I have a thicker skin than I thought I did,” Jessie told The Wall Street Journal. “I learned that there are sometimes nice bloggers, sometimes not. It was definitely an interesting experience. Some people said I am cross-eyed. I am obese. I look like a horse.” According to Rose, PC was unfazed as well — even though much of the commentary and speculation was directed his way. “I think PC definitely gets it. In fact, when I was upset, he was the one that was telling me calm down, who cares, people that really know who we are and interact with us and value us aren’t going to be affected by all the negative things people are saying,” she explained, adding that he tries not to read a lot of the press. “He’s so cool and levelheaded and fun, and he doesn’t care. He knew what he was getting into, he did it, he came out of it very unscathed by the whole thing.” Apparently he’s hoping this will boost his acting career.
Jessie even appears to have a sense of humor about the way the show abused her image. “My friend said to me today on the train that there’s some 80-year-old guy who’s going to probably jerk off to you tonight,” she told the Journal. “It’s the funniest thing.”
