Anthony Anderson is teaming up with his mother, Doris Bowman, otherwise known as Mama Doris, in Fox’s latest competition series We Are Family and he’s excited (and possibly nervous) to hear what she’s got to say.
Anderson and Bowman replaced Jamie Foxx and his daughter Corinne in the series, which launches on Wednesday January 3 and comes from Fox Alternative Entertainment and Apploff Entertainment.
The series showcases non-famous relatives of celebrities performing duets with their hidden famous family member. It features a studio audience entirely comprised of 100 contestants playing through multiple rounds of clues and gameplay to win up to $150,000 each by correctly guessing which celebrity the performer is related to before they are revealed.
We Are Family is not the first time that Anderson and his mother have worked together. Doris went viral after an appearance on Celebrity Family Feud, where her risqué answer stopped Steve Harvey in his tracks, and she has appeared with him on his long-running sitcom Black-ish as well as game show To Tell The Truth and on last year’s E! travel series Trippin’ with Anthony Anderson and Mama Doris.
As you can see from the clip above, Doris doesn’t mince her words or care for proper names as she calls Mariska Hargitay, star of Law & Order: SVU, “Mariska Heart Attack”.
Anderson admits his mother has “no filter”. “In television, you must walk a very tight line, but my mother speaks from the heart and tells it how it is and how she sees it. She gets to cuss a lot more in real life when it comes to me, but our chemistry is the same that you see on television, and I think that’s what’s so endearing about it. What you see is what our real lives are like, and it’s our true relationship,” he told Deadline.
In spite of her on screen foibles, Anderson, who is hosting this month’s delayed Emmys for Fox, evidently enjoys putting his mama on telly. “We Are Family is about non-celebrated family members who have talent, which is kind of what and my mother and I are all about, except she has no talent, and I’m the celebrity in the family. On the show, these non-famous family members actually have talent, and to be a part of that and witness firsthand this incredible showcase of hidden talent is an experience I didn’t want to miss,” he added.
The series was created in-house by Fox Alternative Entertainment before bringing in Apploff Entertainment and Alter Ego exec producer Matilda Zoltowski to develop it. Jeff Apploff is behind a large portion of Fox’s unscripted slate including Beat Shazam, Mental Samurai and Don’t Forget The Lyrics. He exec produces the show alongside Joni Day, the former Fremantle exec that joined the company last year, as well as Jamie Foxx and Zoltowski, who serves as showrunner.
Apploff said that the chemistry between Anderson and Mama Doris is “one of the best 1-2 dynamics on television” and joked that Anderson is the “consummate conspiracy theorist” so he enjoys trying to crack the clues himself.
He said that he believes We Are Family is the “perfect mix” of performance, comedy and game.
“We Are Family is unlike any other game show because the audience won’t recognize the unsung heroes who are certain to amaze everyone with their incredible talent, but we likely do know their hidden celebrity relatives shrouded in our super sphere. The premise is incredibly fresh and fun because anything can be a clue,” said Apploff.
He calls it a “completely different kind of guessing game” because three celebrities are revealed each night, compared to shows like The Masked Singer, where the audience has to wait an entire season to discover the identities of some of the celebrities.
Zoltowski added that music and celebrities are “central” to great entertainment shows. “We all can relate to the family aspect, so why not weave that in, too,” she said.
“We workshopped several different ways of playing this game, from a single player game show to a celebrity-panel show. We soon learned that multiple guesses from very different people gives us the broadest range of fun guesses, representing all sorts of viewpoints. Because there’s no predicting how someone might put the clues together, there are fun surprises at every turn,” she added.