How To Build A Reality TV Résumé

More than a decade ago — sometime between Bethenny Frankel selling her SkinnyGirl cocktail line for $120 million and Kim Kardashian rolling out her money-minting mobile game — the rap on reality TV changed. Even skeptics could see that it was no longer just a platform for fame-mongers thirsting for the cameras; it had morphed into an engine for all kinds of lucrative, star-legitimizing career opportunities.

Today that’s truer than ever: Look at ex–Summer House star Paige DeSorbo, who launched her own loungewear label and — with fellow Summer House alum and her Giggly Squad podcast cohost, Hannah Berner — will star on a scripted series that’s based on her own life and produced by Amy Poehler. Or how about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Lisa Vanderpump, who used her stint on Bravo to inject new energy into her hospitality empire, launching new restaurants (and inspiring more spin-offs) in the process?

Alongside these success stories, another trail is being blazed: one in which reality TV stardom is recognized by many as not just a springboard but a legitimate, self-sustaining career path in its own right. The Traitors Season 2 winner CT Tamburello has appeared in practically nonstop seasons of MTV’s The Challenge for two decades now. Dancing With the Stars kicked off its 35th season by unveiling two reality TV vets as its first contestants: Love Island U.K.’s Maura Higgins and Summer House’s Ciara Miller (both also Traitors alumni). Project Runway has been casting multiple contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race for its recent seasons. And one of the buzziest debut programs of 2026 — The Real Housewives of Rhode Island — features Ashley Iaconetti, aka “Ashley I.,” whom America already got to know across more than 40 episodes and multiple seasons of The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise, and other Bachelor spin-offs.

“There used to be a stigma around reality TV, like it wasn’t ‘real’ entertainment or something to take seriously. That’s gone,” says Erin Tomasello, a casting director who’s worked on series like The Traitors, Fear Factor, and the most recent Ladies of London reboot (which features two repeat reality stars in its cast: Missé Beqiri, formerly of The Real Housewives of Cheshire, and Mark-Francis Vandelli, formerly of Made in Chelsea). “Now reality stars are building real brands, launching businesses, and becoming major cultural voices. With social media, they have direct relationships with their audiences, which gives them a kind of power that didn’t exist before. I think people also have more respect for how hard it actually is. You’re opening your life up to millions of people, and that takes a certain level of confidence and toughness.”

“The best reality stars don’t try to control how they’re coming across, which ironically is what makes them compelling to watch.”

For the personalities themselves, the appeal of hopping from show to show is obvious. It’s a chance to up your star wattage and extend all the opportunities that come with regularly being on television. But the shows are getting something out of it too — namely, professionals who know how to deliver the goods. “After doing it for so long, you don’t even see the cameras anymore,” says Married to Medicine’s Angel Love Davis, who first got her start on Basketball Wives LA. “It’s just like, You are who you are, and I’m gonna say what I say and how I feel.”

And on ensemble shows where the pressure for the cast to click is high — like the retooled Vanderpump Rules, whose all-new cast features some Netflix dating-show alumni — a known quantity might strike producers as a safer bet than an untested newbie. Experience is definitely an asset: “Honestly, resilience is huge,” Tomasello says. “Filming can be intense, and the people who stand out are the ones who can handle pressure and still show up fully as themselves.”

Yet despite the fact that for many, the new American dream is to get paid to gossip and preen on camera, the art and science behind becoming a serial reality star can still seem opaque. Here, Davis, Southern Charm’s Salley Carson, and Summer House’s Ben Waddell — three stars with eight shows between them — reveal how to make a career out of playing yourself on TV.

Use your existing network

Building a reality TV résumé sounds like the work of endless calls to your agent and behind-the-scenes meetings. But if you ask a current reality star how they stayed on television, most of them will probably credit a friend.

Angel Love Davis first graced screens in 2016 when she appeared in Season 5 of VH1’s Basketball Wives LA as the girlfriend of former NBA player DeJuan Blair. This year, Davis, a registered nurse, returned to reality TV for Season 12 of Bravo’s Married to Medicine, which showcases the lives and careers of medical professionals and their spouses in the Atlanta area. “For a couple years, I was approached by Married to Medicine, and this third time around was the charm,” she says. A big part in saying yes was the steady persuasion from a close friend already on the show: longtime cast member Quad Webb.

“Quad has been on the show since the beginning, and she was just like, ‘Yo, Angel, let’s do it, you gotta be a part of it. You’ll fit so well with the cast,’” Davis recalls. Her friend’s endorsement made joining the cast a much easier decision: “She let me know that this is something that would be great for me to join and take part in.”

“I thought it was going to be, you know, glamour and so much fun. But when I got there, I was like, ‘I feel like I’m in prison.’”

Salley Carson, who first appeared on The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise, ended up on Bravo’s Southern Hospitality after befriending Joe “Joey Bottles” Bradley, who was a member of the cast. “I met Joe at a random bar in Charleston, and I didn’t know who he was when I met him,” says Carson, a South Carolina native who’s worked in medical-device sales. “Obviously I found out pretty shortly after that he was Joey Bottles. He started asking me if I would film with him, and I was just like, Why not?” (“The only thing about that was the people in the cast were terrible,” she jokes now of the messy antics on display in Season 1: “We’re good friends now, though, but yeah — they’re just in that beginning season, having fun being on TV, and I was like: ‘This is scary.’”)

Later, after leaving Southern Hospitality, her friend and Southern Charm star Madison LeCroy recommended her for that cast. She started out as a “friend of” — Bravo-speak for a supporting player — before her chaotic personality and willingness to call out her badly behaving castmates earned her a full-time spot.

She’s not the only Bachelor alum who’s made the jump to Bravo, either: Ben Waddell, a former lead of the Australian version of the dating show, joined Summer House in its most recent season after befriending current cast members. Not only did that help him get cast, he says, it also helped break the ice during his first weeks of filming — useful for a format where platonic chemistry can make or break your future.

“I was already friends with Carl [Radke] and Amanda [Batula], and I figured the people that are in the house — I like them and it shouldn’t be a problem. I should have a really great time and make new friends in the process,” he says.

Be intentional about your pivot…

For Waddell and Carson, the Bachelor universe wasn’t what they thought it would be. “I felt like they rushed it heavily,” Waddell says of his Australian season, which aired in 2023. “We shot the whole thing in six weeks. It felt much more like a job, not really trying to find love. It was definitely more of like a content filler they banged out over, like, Christmas and New Year’s.”

And it certainly wasn’t an opportunity to be himself or let viewers really get to know him. “With The Bachelor, I just had to sit there and go and do these awkward dates all the time,” he says. “There’s no music, there’s no people, and it’s very concentrated. I couldn’t even joke about anything. There’s nothing else to talk about.” Summer House, on the other hand, “was a real chance where I could hang out, and I felt much more comfortable.”

Carson jokes that filming The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise was “traumatizing.” (She briefly appeared on the former in 2022 before joining the latter that year.) “I thought it was going to be, you know, glamour and so much fun. But when I got there, I was like, ‘I feel like I’m in prison.’ You’re in a room by yourself. You have no TV. I mean, you don’t have Netflix or anything like that. You don’t have your phone, you don’t have any connection with the outside world. You have no idea what’s going on. And it’s just like, alone.” she says. “They give you, like, one slot a day to go to the gym if you want. It’s really strict. So it just was a lot on my mentals,” she adds.

“I could easily go into the next season and be buttoned-up and not run my mouth as much and be totally worried about how the outside world is going to perceive me.”

After that experience, Carson didn’t think she’d want to do reality TV again — until Southern Hospitality came along. The show, as with Southern Charm, is shot over several months and doesn’t require the cast to put their entire lives on pause, because filming their entire lives and presenting a full picture is the whole point. “I enjoyed it more, just because you could have your real life,” she says. “You know, nothing was changing around me. I had my phone, I had my family, my friends, and I got to be at home, which was a big thing.”

Showing a different side of herself was also top of mind for Davis. Though she’s a longtime registered nurse, Basketball Wives LA focused primarily on her personal life. So when Bravo producers asked her to appear on Married to Medicine, Davis was intrigued. “They were definitely two different types of shows and places in my life, right?” Davis says. “With Basketball Wives I was a nurse as well, but they didn’t show so much of that side of me. So Married to Medicine made more sense for me and for what I was doing in my life, and what I wanted the people to actually see.”

…but know you can’t force a rebrand.

“Don’t go onto reality TV to be someone else,” Waddell emphasizes. “Go on knowing exactly who you are.”

There’s a limit to how much you can control how viewers see you. “When I’m casting any reality series, I’m always looking for people who feel real the second they open their mouth,” Tomasello says. “You can’t fake authenticity, and audiences are so smart now, they know immediately when something feels forced. I look for strong points of view, people who know who they are and aren’t afraid to express it.”

Believing you know how to work the system — or know better — won’t serve you. “The best reality stars are comfortable in their own skin, even when things get messy,” she continues. “They don’t try to control how they’re coming across, which ironically is what makes them compelling to watch. You also need emotional range. If someone is one-note the entire time, it gets boring. I’m always drawn to people who can be funny, vulnerable, strong, and even a little chaotic. That unpredictability is what keeps people watching.”

Carson, whose most recent season of Southern Charm earned her a ton of ire from viewers, says the backlash won’t change how she operates.

“I could easily go into the next season and be, like, buttoned-up and not run my mouth as much and be totally worried about how the outside world is going to perceive me,” she said. “But you can’t listen to that stuff because then you’re going to let it change you, and you just gotta be yourself.” Spoken like a true veteran.