Keeping It Real: Matt Anderson ’84

Matt Anderson has a gift for drawing audiences into engrossing stories and revealing the humanity in characters who might at first seem hard to relate to–or even downright unlikable! With more than two decades of experience producing reality television, Matt has shaped some of the genre’s most iconic franchises, including The Real Housewives of New York City,  Atlanta, and Miami, as well as Married to Medicine. Over the years, he has learned that the keys to riveting unscripted television are strong storytelling and creating emotional entry points for the audience. “Real life is just more compelling–if you have the patience to wait for it to happen,” explains Matt. “I think audiences are smart. When they see something real, they connect with it.”

 

Matt spent nine years at Fay, following in the footsteps of his siblings Beth ’78 and Mike ’81, and paving the way for his younger brother Brad ’92. In high school, Matt developed a passion for pop culture, television, and music videos, choosing Fordham University with the goal of securing an internship at MTV in New York. Surprisingly, Matt’s time at Fay proved to be excellent preparation for a job at MTV. He credits music teacher Rich Gamble with introducing him to singing and fundamental musicianship. Those lessons would pay dividends down the road when Matt interviewed legendary vocalists like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and could speak knowledgeably about voice, expression, and the skills of their craft. Fay was also where Matt began developing the essential social and emotional skills of a great storyteller. “At Fay, I learned that listening is a form of intelligence, and it’s a huge part of what I do in my job,” he explains. “It’s about picking up on cues, reading signals, and paying close attention to what people are saying, feeling, and are interested in.”

 

The ’90s were a heady time to be at MTV News. The network still had a start-up energy, which gave Matt the chance to turn his internship into a production assistant role and quickly gain hands-on experience. “Being in that environment was incredibly educational,” Matt recalls. “I just watched and listened. There were all these jobs in TV I never knew existed, and I was seeing firsthand how news stories made it to air, and how pop culture was being shaped in real time.” MTV was at the epicenter of it all, and so was Matt, accompanying Art Alexakis, the lead singer of Everclear, around the 1992 Republican National Convention, grabbing Bono on the fly for an impromptu interview, and producing Tabitha Soren’s now infamous sit-down interview with Mariah Carey before the MTV Video Music Awards. “Storytelling was at the heart of everything I did at MTV News, and I was really in training for moving into long-form reality programming, which is all about going out into the field and finding the most interesting story.”

 

In 2000, Matt moved out to California, where he still lives with his husband Sebastian, and joined MTV’s West Coast development team, which was looking to build on the success of early reality hits like The Real World with new formats, like The Osbournes and Newlyweds with Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. After producing several episodes of Making The Video, MTV’s behind-the-scenes series, Matt was offered a major break: to develop his own show starring Jessica Simpson’s younger sister, Ashlee. “It was a big opportunity to figure out how to shape an idea and tell a story that young people could see themselves in,” says Matt. On the surface, a teenage pop star might not seem relatable, but Matt recognized the deeper themes that would resonate: living in the shadow of a more glamorous and accomplished older sibling and feeling overlooked by parents. It was exactly the kind of nuanced human story he was prepared to tell. The series was a hit, and Ashlee’s new album debuted at #1.

 

Balancing sparkle with authenticity has become a trademark of Matt’s work, but it’s always grounded in something real, which explains the longevity of shows like Real Housewives of Miami, which is in its seventh season, and Married to Medicine, which is embarking on its twelfth. “The best shows can toggle between providing an escape and some level of truth that people relate to,” says Matt. Never has that balance been more precarious than in the current moment, when audiences are even more distrustful of what they see on TV and are afraid to have hard conversations about issues related to money, class, and race. “Those are potent themes to build a TV show around–and they all show up in Married to Medicine and Real Housewives. If you can tell those stories, and you’re brave enough to do it through an unfiltered perspective, then it’s powerful,” says Matt.

 

At his production company, Purveyors of Pop, those are the stories that Matt and his co-founder, Nate Green, are still looking to tell. In an industry that is increasingly risk-averse, selling new ideas can be challenging, but Matt attributes his longevity to staying flexible on all fronts. “If you can stay flexible with your ideas, your budgets, and your approach, then you can survive,” says Matt. “And that is the name of the game when you’re in a creative field.”