‘Barnes Bunch’ looks to put positive spin on blended families

“The Barnes Bunch”- debuting April 14 on WE tv and ALBLK – is the story of a supermodel and a sportscaster who are bringing up six children. NBA Champion Matt Barnes brought two children to his relationship with model and reality personality, Anansa Sims who had three children of her own. Add the child they have together, and they have become “The Barnes Bunch.”

Each hour-long episode follows the family as they navigate fame, love and parenting alongside their wild inner circle of close family, friends and staff. Cameras follow Barnes and Sims as they plan for an engagement party and the wedding.

The couple had some very strict rules in terms of filming the family.

Barnes says, “We don’t mind opening up our lives and our homes and our children, but if we’re going to do that, we want to be real and authentic. We had a little headbutting at the very beginning of kind of what they thought that looked like, and what it actually looked like in our real life.

“We weren’t necessarily hesitant about opening that dynamic in our household. We just wanted to make sure that it was really us and real-life things were happening and not manufactured things.”

He knows what can happen when it comes to reality television. Barnes was briefly on the reality television series “Basketball Wives” in 2010. That gave him a glimpse at the inner-makings of how reality can be manipulated to create drama.

His hesitation at saying yes to “Barnes Bunch” gave way when he and Sims talked about how the show would focus on what it means to be part of a blended family. He knows blended families are the new norm and they are a clear representation of the highs and lows that can come with this situation.

Another reason the family agreed to have their life exposed was they wanted to show people of color in the most real and positive light possible. Barnes points out that has not always been the case with reality TV.

“I’m a very outspoken person – sometimes to my own detriment – but I’m very protective of my family and having gone through this one time with ‘Basketball Wives’ when the twins were babies,” Barnes says. “At the very beginning, I wanted to make sure that what we were told is going to happen is going to happen because we want to be able to portray a blended family who’s not real, not perfect, but full of love and full of fun and full of ups and downs.

“With the twins in particular, you know, they’ve kind of jumped in this, if you want to call it influencer space or young athlete space and they have their own podcast. I’ve kind of been prepping them for a while just to understand the world and how cold it is at times, and understand that the opinions of strangers should never matter. You can hear them, you can listen to them, but the opinions around your closest peer circle, and family, and friends is what matters the most.”

It is not just the grandmother in her by supermodel Beverly Johnson – Sims’ mother – isn’t worried there will be a need for drama to be created on the reality show. He is confident there will be enough natural drama with the family members.

“I think the really interesting thing about this family is all of the kids have big personalities and they’re all different. They all love each other,” Johnson says. “I don’t know about any other blended family but this one, but I would imagine with different kids, different ages, different personalities that there’s a lot of big, big upsets.

“And of course, there’s upsets, but they genuinely love each other. And you see this kind of authentic love and if it’s like somebody’s playing a basketball game, they all want to go and cheer that person on. It’s just beautiful chaos. You have to get used to the noise decibel.”

Johnson adds that Sims has been documenting the lives of her children since the delivery room. That means they will be comfortable with all of the cameras in their home and following them.

Sims admits to having a passion for documenting every aspect of her family.

“I document Matt and everything we do. I love to do that. I don’t do it for anybody but myself and my family,” Sims says. “I like to do it. It’s my joy. But maybe that helped them or maybe they just came out really kind of outgoing and a little rambunctious. “I think Matt and I are probably the most reserved in the house. And the kids are all super outgoing and a lot of fun. So, for them having the cameras, they loved it. They love the crew. They want to know when they can get back on camera. They’re hams.”

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