The Beautiful Life creator, executive producer discuss show, Mischa Barton

SFUniverse writer Cynthia Boris recently attended a Q&A panel with The Beautiful Life creator Mike Kelly and executive producer Karey Burke and has shared her notes with Mischa News.

The Beautiful Life stars an ensemble cast which includes Mischa Barton, Sara Paxton, Ben Hollingsworth, Ashley Madekwe, Corbin Bleu, Nico Tortorella and Elle MacPherson. The new show will make its debut on Wednesday, Sept. 16 on The CW.

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“What we are trying to do is a realistic portrayal of the fashion world as much as we can and still be a television show. And for us Entourage is the model in a lot of ways where we have a real job in the entertainment business and lots of times they have actors come in and play fictitious characters,” Burke said.

Because of the recent hospitalization stay for Mischa Barton prior to The Beautiful Life’s shooting schedule, the panel fielded questions about her part on the show.

“We love her. She’s great. She’s been around for years. She’s had a rough go of it for a bit there so things are behind her,” Kelley said when asked about Mischa.

Burke agreed. “She’s been nothing but a total pro. The stories were absolutely true. Her situation did not stop production or push production – the sets were not ready,” Burke said.

As far as Mischa’s character Sonja Stone, The Beautiful Life producers don’t plan to stay away from storylines that might hit a little close to home. On the show, Sonja Stone “appears” to be a pill-popping young veteran model who is having to claw her way back to the top.

“What we plan on doing with Mischa’s character – we won’t shy away from it at all. What we are doing is a character who is living their life in the spotlight, who is being pounded by the paparazzi, who is at a massive turning point in her career. Some of these are things that are going on exactly in Mischa’s life,” Burke said.

Mike Kelly added, “We’ve had conversations with Mischa and like I said, the stories were going to be told with or without Mischa.”

The Beautiful Life has already seen interest from designers and others in the field who have showed interest in helping the show or appearing on it in the future, Burke said.

“We’ve had a real outpouring from the fashion world,” Burke said.

When asked if  the storylines on the show will follow executive producer Ashton Kutcher’s experience as a model, Burke said they are using his stories more as a springboard.

“I don’t know if we will directly take stories from him (Ashton Kutcher) – anecdotes for sure. His tales of what it was like to live in the models’ residence really informed Ashley (Ashley Madekwe) on the pilot. And how difficult it is actually for the male model,” Burke said. “Ashton had kind of an instant success in modeling. Chris’ character (played by Ben Hollingsworth) is not really based on him. He will struggle a lot more than Ashton did.”

Corbin Bleu’s character Isaac on the show will show how male models aren’t always “just models.” His character is waiting for his break in the music industry.

“Guy models have to do something else sometimes - a lot of them have other dreams and see this as a finite time in their lives that going to be a springboard to something else and we are going to tell all of those stories,” Burke said.

The producers believe fans will enjoy the romance between Sara Paxton’s character Raina and Ben Hollingworth’s character Chris.

“The core romance wil be Sara and Chris but we will throw as many obstacles at it as possible,” Kelly said.

The producers said there have been a few changes to the pilot episode (read a review here), another fashion shoot and a storyline for Corbin Bleu.

“One of the characters from the pilot isn’t returning,” Kelly said.

That character is a male character featured in one of the first promo photos after the show got picked up. No other details were given.

When asked about the possibility of a crossover between Gossip Girl and The Beautiful Life, Kelley was hopeful. His idea having both casts on subway and telling two different stories but with the other cast in background, having one or two characters cross over. My problem with that? The Gossip Girl characters avoid the subway like the plague. So if a crossover happens, they’ll have to come up with a different idea – maybe a fashion show?