In April 2017, the first episode of The Real Bros of Simi Valley launched on YouTube, hilariously satirizing the lives of young Southern California dudes and the drama they find themselves tangled up in. A parody of both the Real Housewives franchise as well as an embellishment of real-life friends and acquaintances that co-creators Christian A. Pierce and Jimmy Tatro (Modern Family, American Vandal) grew up with, Season 1 of Real Bros consisted of four episodes that debuted in Tatro’s YouTube channel, LifeAccordingToJimmy. To date, Episode 1 has more than 6 million views, and, collectively, all four episodes have roughly 18 million views.
For Season 2, the series transitioned to Facebook Watch, and along with that came a lot of new and exciting prospects .While speaking exclusively to PopCulture.com, Pierce — who also appears in the show as Aldis, Wade Sanders’ (Cody Ko) Moorpark community college roommate — explained that rather than focusing on the differences between working the two streaming services, he more commonly noticed the similarities.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“For so long, producing our own original sketches, Jimmy and I, that we would conceptualize everything and write everything. We would direct, star, and edit, and release everything. Just the two of us primarily, so we got very used to be all hands on deck and taking control of all facets of making our vision come to life,” said Pierce.
He continued: “And I think that’s probably where a lot of creators, when they get to the next level and they have a network like Facebook backing them, they are delegating jobs, we realized that best the way to bringing these jokes and these visions, and these storylines to life the way we wanted them to come to life is to remain all hands on deck, and to have our eyes and name and all facets of the production.”
“And when that happens it feels natural. And you know, everything is bigger, which is awesome,” Pierce added, the going on to say, “You know, having Facebook backing us, our creative vision, we can be a little risky or we don’t have to be as conservative with our concept.”
The major benefit of working with Facebook Watch is that Pierce and Tatro “know they can help with making it come to life.”
“But as far as the work and like the process, it’s pretty much the same,” Pierce said. “It’s just on a bigger scale, which is the best, it’s awesome. I couldn’t have asked for a more beneficial learning curve.”
Expounding on the “freedom” they have by producing the show for Facebook Watch as opposed to just uploading to YouTube, Pierce said it’s given them a lot more reason to be “a little bit more brave.”
“Because before with YouTube, it was like if we wanted to do like a crazier or a more intense sketch or use a stunt, we would lose a lot of money and time trying to make it happen,” he said. “And it was like not always recouped back.”
At their new home for Real Bros, he and Tatro also have the luxury of imploring ideas that have been long-been gestating.
“There’s jokes that we’ve been saving for years that we haven’t been able to produce because we didn’t have the means to do it,” Pierce said. “Facebook have our back now and knowing that we can literally open up our old sketchbooks and bring these jokes to life now is just so much fun and it’s so liberating and it’s feels so good to see people laugh at these jokes we’ve been cooking for years.”
Season 2 of The Real Bros of Simi Valley is now streaming on Facebook Watch, and Season 3 premiers this Friday, Feb. 14.
