Certainly documentaries have inspired TV series before (recently MTV made”Catfish” a television hit). But, with Lauren Greenfield’s critically acclaimed “The Queen of Versailles” slated to make its television debut next Monday on Bravo, the director isn’t interested in expanding the doc to a series.
“No, for me, I spent three years on it. That was really the film,” Greenfield tells TheWrap at NBCU’s summer press day in Pasadena on Monday. “Jackie may consider that at a later point, but I’m working on other things now.”
So, why choose to debut your documentary to TV audiences on Bravo and not, say, HBO? Greenfield says she and her team were hoping the film could reach a broad audience and Bravo was their “dream choice.”
“It’s one of the things that I’ve always been able to do, hit a highbrow audience and hit a wide audience,” the director says. “And Bravo is kind of a mixture of both – it’s a great audience and it’s a wide audience. And, it’s not the typical independent film audience.”
“The Queen of Versailles” follows resort timeshare and new money billionaires, Jackie and David Siegel, who are building the largest home in America (inspired by France’s palace of Versailles) when the economy collapses, their resort business tanks and their elaborate building plans halt.
“I think what’s so special is that Jackie as a subject can be relatable on both sides and I think that people are going to come in thinking this is going to be an entertaining romp and leave with a much deeper sense of what happened to all of us and the kind of morality tale and more serious nature of the film,” she continued. “So, I was really pleased that Bravo wanted to do it.”
So, while Greenfield, who’s also a world-class photographer, is currently focusing on a book and an exhibition that’s going to be a major retrospective of her work in 2015, we asked the film’s star if she would do a Bravo series.
“I think it could be a lot of fun,” Jackie says. “We’ll see what happens. Right now, things are just coming my way.”
“The Queen of Versailles” premieres on Monday, April 29 at 9/8c on Bravo.
