Inside the Puzzling History of Bravo’s Iconic Short-Lived Series ‘NYC Prep’

After “The Hills” helped launch the rise of ensemble reality TV, amid the “Gossip Girl” craze but yet still before Sonja Morgan’s interns on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” there was a short-lived blip of Bravo brilliance: “NYC Prep.”

The little-known series is a very much a “you just had to be there” moment in time. It was June 2009, three years after the debut of “The Hills,” and its laidback West Coast attitude had already met its match in the cool collectedness of East Coast-based star, Teen Vogue intern (Emily Weiss, who went on to found Glossier). “NYC Prep” fully leaned into that elite East Coast divide, and brought viewers the kind of preppiness that was defined by, well, being in an actual prep school.

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The series followed six privileged teens who were described by Bravo as being “key players in Manhattan’s elite high school scene,” already at the ripe young age of 15. With the recent rise in reexamining the pitfalls of both the onscreen representation of tweens and teens and exactly how the media also treated those adolescents in the spotlight by comparing their real-life escapades to fictionalized teen erotic thrillers, it’s only fitting to apply that same lens to reality TV. And there was nothing quite like “NYC Prep” in the reality TV world.

Now that the series is finally streaming on Peacock (after briefly being available on Netflix in 2017), just how does “NYC Prep” fit in with the “Quiet on Set” allegations and Max’s “Brandy Hellville” documentary that revisit just how detrimental the early 2000s were to youth?

Despite its still-niche place in the annals of reality TV, the show was a viral and beloved series amongst Gen-Z/Millennial cuspers, many of those who mirrored the ages of the aforementioned “NYC Prep” teens when the series debuted (I myself was just entering freshman year of high school, so, yes, I was a major fan). While it hasn’t been publicly shared just how exactly this outrageous concept for a reality series was cast, the core teens onscreen all were a few degrees away from actual fame, with their parents, grandparents, and more relatives being involved in politics, real estate, fashion, or even Hollywood itself.

“NYC Prep” showcased the anything-but-mundane daily lives of six teens, ranging from ages 15 to 18, as they attended fashion shows and charity events, went on shopping sprees, and hosted adult-scale dinner parties. Filming was not allowed during school hours, and nor were any of the prep school names specifically mentioned on the show, but that still didn’t stop the students of “NYC Prep” from landing in academic hot water just for appearing on the series. (“NYC Prep” was canceled after just one season with producer Andy Cohen only years later alluding to why on “WWHL.” Perhaps the legality of filming teens in compromising positions was part of it…)

What was discussed most at the time of the series airing was just how involved (adult) producers were in directing the underage cast members. The show glorified sex and drugs across underage cast members, leading audiences to wonder just how involved Bravo producers were. With the slew of new Bravo reality TV lawsuits against the network and show-specific producers themselves, would streaming “NYC Prep” shed a new light on past misdeeds? Or was that just the natural progression of a teen-centric culture turning to the rising trend of reality TV stardom, regardless of the age of its participants?

While the series was supposed to be centered around the Upper East Side itself to mirror the “Gossip Girl” craze, the cast’s respective backgrounds seemed to prove that they were in fact strangers and not just high school buddies. The contrived casting was one of the many issues criticized when the series debuted, that also ranged from pressures to party and flaunt wealth. And yet perhaps the creation of “NYC Prep” and its subsequent reception was exactly representative of how teens were treated by the media in 2009.

A 2009 NY Mag episode recap compared “NYC Prep” to being a reality TV take on “Cruel Intentions,” citing cast member PC’s (who was the grandson of Blackstone Group billionaire founder and the “Sesame Street” creator) confessional that all high schoolers did was hook up and betray one another as part of the “long road to Fuckville.” He also called his best female friend a “c**t” and threw a water bottle at her.

PC’s therapy sessions were filmed, and he was also shown shirtlessly canoodling with a much-older (AKA non-teenaged) man as part of a mock photoshoot. Was it too far, or reflective of “reality”? And are we now complicit in perpetuating this voyeurism if we binge the series today? “NYC Prep” is probably best (re)examined as a sociological study of both viewers at the time, the morality of reality TV, and the cultural adult-ifying of teens.

An article published by The Daily Beast cited the alleged manipulation of cast members by producers as an effort to “replicate reality show tropes” including love triangles and “bitchy girl fights.” Cast member Sebastian, son of writer/director/producer Jeff Oppenheim and a future Bravo “Watch What Happens Live!” intern, told the outlet that he and his co-stars “all sort of knew that we were going to be playing a specific character.” He added that producers were “never malicious” but admitted that he was “ignorant” at the time.

Instead of adult audiences and those embedded in the elite world captured by the show stepping in and speaking out, they instead distanced themselves from the cast members in any way they could. “NYC Prep” ignited a regional reckoning amongst parents in the Manhattan school districts. The New York Times cited parents calling the series like “bad ‘Dynasty’ episode” and “absolute garbage.”

Mary Beth Harvey, then-president of private school group NYC-Parents in Action, voiced her specific concerns about the stereotypes “NYC Prep” was perpetuating. “This is a show that represents a group of kids doing a lot of excessive and risky behavior,” Harvey said. “This really isn’t representative of who we are.”

Rather than worry about the kids themselves onscreen, it was the reputation of the institutions the kids represented that adults seemed to care about more.

Cast member Camille’s onscreen behavior, arguably a performance, led to her being essentially exiled from Nightingale-Bamford School ahead of her senior year. An email from the school was reported by The Wall Street Journal, with Head of School Dorothy Hutcheson responding to the backlash from parents and alumnae. Hutcheson assured that “as with most series of this genre, the show is ‘reality’ in name only” and not reflective of the type of students Nightingale-Bamford School enrolls.

Hutcheson added (via NY Mag) that the series itself was “a shallow and stereotypical view” of elite high schools in general. That seemed to be the main concern of supervising “NYC Prep” producer Liz Alderman as well, rather than cameras capturing teens misbehaving or being put in very adult situations. Alderman told The New York Times that the main emphasis of the series was to not anger the schools that the cast members attended, seemingly ignoring the well-being of those budding reality TV stars themselves. “It was our intention from the beginning to keep the schools out of it,” Alderman said. “So it’s a little ironic that they succeeded in doing what we went to great pains to avoid.”

But that irony also came with a darker underbelly, one that exposed just how far reality TV producers would go with underage cast members to get onscreen drama. More than 10 years after the series aired, a viewer asked producer Andy Cohen on “WWHL” in 2021 if Bravo would ever consider rebooting “NYC Prep” with “a new generation, like Gen Z, TikTok [at an] NYC prep school?”

Cohen simply replied, “It was incredibly difficult to shoot that show. I’m surprised we even got one season out of it. It was very challenging,” citing the backlash and legal issues of filming underage students.

Was “NYC Prep” a one-off anomaly, or a temperature check of problematic teen-centric culture? Perhaps “NYC Prep” was the dog-whistle that no one could hear at the time, but boy, are we listening now.

“NYC Prep” is now streaming on Peacock.

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