In 2009 Bravo attempted to tap into the Gossip Girl hype by debuting their own TV show on Upper East Side rich kids. The result was NYC Prep, the type of campy failure that instantly becomes iconic: teenagers pushed through the Bravo’s meat grinder, weird little adults that have social calendars to attend to, but are concerned with philanthropy. There was PC the adolescent metrosexual, whose claim to fame was (checks notes) his step-grandmother created Sesame Street, Sebastian the adolescent lothario who divided his on screen time between flipping his hair and air kissing other tweens. The one-season series is reminiscent of a portrait you might buy from a novelty shop—look at it one way and there’s a young and minorly clueless teenager, shift slightly and it suddenly looks more like a cohort of junior Bethenny Frankels eating chicken salad.
On April 3, comedian Drew Anderson, curators Matt Harkins and Viviana Olen (the creators of think1994, a company known for their zany odes to pop culture), and a cohort of other comics added another layer to the NYC Prep lore with a live reading. Instead of children acting like adults, adults acted like children, acting like adults. The group took over the basement of Union Hall for a two-performance, sold-out run. Highlights included a video message from Camille, one of the notoriously reclusive OG cast members, teasing a possible tell-all; Lauren Servideo’s over-the-brow headband and husky interpretation of Jessie (at a particularly lavish pronunciation I overheard nearby audience members whisper,“She’s so good!!”); George Civeris as PC in a scarf so big Lenny Kravitz might’ve worn it, Peyton Dix constantly swiping a nonexistent bang behind her ear as peppy pop-star hopeful Kelli; SNL alum Molly Kearney as Sebastian dragging out “wells in Africa” in a choked up verging on drunken adolescent boy voice; Natalie Walker gnashing her teeth as Camille; and Drew doing double duty as cast extras and narrator gone off-script. The show was so gripping, bewildering and hilarious even though I’d watched NYC Prep before, it was hard to imagine that it wasn’t created by a team of comedians. Before the show Drew, Viviana, Lauren, and I chatted about the early aughts.
Nicolaia Rips: How did this come to be?
Drew Anderson: Live reads of TV episodes are funny! Vivianna and Matt are so plugged in, I saw their museum of Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding a while ago and thought they’d be perfect for this.
What’s your relationship to NYC Prep?
DA: I’ve always loved Bravo but specifically loved those early aughts Bravo shows that only have one season: Gallery Girls, NYC Prep, Rich Girls. These shows that seem like Bravo was trying to get their sea legs and figure out what would work on their network. That Bravo was even doing a reality TV show about teenagers is just hilarious. It’s funny and strange and all of the teens are trying to act like adults—cool partying, hanging out in the Marriott Hotel Lobby and drinking Smirnoff.
Lauren Servideo: I grew up close enough to the city in Schenectady. There was something so weird about these young rich kids acting like adults that that was always my perception of living in the city. You know, going on the subway by yourself. A certain ju ne sais fucking quoi. I watched it when it came out and I’m just going to say it. To watch the real version, not the Gossip Girl version, they were so much less cool than I thought they were. It was kind of sad! But a lot of Bravo has that tragic element.
DA: Adults that elect to go on a reality show know how to play the game. There’s a certain amount of acting going on but when you’re fourteen years old you don’t really know how to do that. So it does feel strange to watch.
What episode are you reading?
DA: We’re reading the finale. There’s so much there. The Operation Smile event. Sebastian’s potable water charity, Kelli singing, Jessie’s hard work finally coming to fruition, her and PC’s relationship at its highest point.
What was the script writing process?
DA: I just sat down on my computer and watched the entire series again. I narrowed it down to my two fave episodes, which were the fashion week episode and the finale. I ended up choosing the finale because I thought each character would have a nice arc and story line. I put the subtitles on and transcribed the entire episode. Afterwards I went back and rewatched and added narration to flesh things out and my own commentary to punch it up and make it even funnier.
Have you kept up with anyone?
Viviana Olen: I’ve been looking into it now and there’ve been some fun discoveries but they’re definitely not out there making this their thing, which makes sense because they were so young. A lot of them are very private
LS: I’m coming to the table wanting to do this earnestly and not in a cruel way!
DA: If I had a camera following me around when I was 14 in the suburbs…I can’t even imagine.
LS: It feels very small beans compared to now. Everyone has a phone in their hand. You have a whole generation of kids effectively doing the same thing for even more people. Realistically how many eyes could have totally been on NYC Prep in 2009? 20,000 people? You do some shit someone films it and it goes on TikTok and millions of people watch it—and they can speak right to you. This is almost the best case of what something could look like; people thinking that you’re kind of an idiot when you were a teenager. Now, you say or do the wrong thing, which you’re supposed to do when you’re under 18 and people are like, “die.” It’s scary out there!
VO: This is just such an artefact of this wild west of reality TV.
LS: It must have been the first year the iPhone came out. It’s so crazy. It’s like looking at a photo from September 10, 2001.
DA: Yeah, everyone’s on their Blackberry BBM’ing.
Have you guys watched any of the hype house reality TV shows?
LS: No. Now they’re starting to pop up on my FYP, which makes me wonder what my algorithm thinks I want that I don’t even know that I want yet. There’s like Blop House. Remember Chantal from Gallery Girls? She was an anomaly at the time, this kind of weird West Coast yogini. Now that’s a pretty standard archetype for a person you can be in 2025. There’s so much of that time period, the early to mid 2000s, that’s like, “This person is so crazy??” but now, from the future, it’s like, not really.
How was the rewatch?
DA: As a 30-year-old…bizarre, funny, there’s things that are so…like in 2009 metrosexual was a thing. At that time there’s a lot of comments about how people dress and being super stylish, this kind of coded speech for gay, which I thought was so funny and I remember that! It’s amazing how far we’ve come and how things have changed. Being in PR was like the only media job. These other jobs didn’t really exist. There was no social media manager.
LS: We have a whole new economy.
DA: Every girl was wearing a light scarf and a slouchy hat!
LS: I was going to wear a scarf today but then I thought, does this look like slouchy hat behavior? That’s the Y2K they don’t want to talk about!