Josh Ackerman on Going From Disney Channel Actor to Reality Show Producer

In just a few short years, former Disney Channel star Josh Ackerman (The All New Mickey Mouse Club) has grown his Los Angeles production company, Bodega Pictures, into a fearsome reality TV player. Together with partners Ben Nurick, Justin Daniels and Zachary Werner, Ackerman is responsible for South Beach Tow, currently in its third season on truTV, and the new Food Network series On the Rocks, which debuted Nov. 17.

Bodega has three other reality TV series in development, none of which Ackerman was at liberty to discuss at the time of his telephone interview with Mediabistro. However, he did share some great stories about his decision to move on from acting and how he was able to break into the extremely competitive world of reality TV production.

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It actually started when I was on the Mickey Mouse Club. I was always definitely more fascinated with behind-the-scenes versus being in front of the camera. When the director was calling cameras, if I wasn’t in a particular scene, I would be in the director’s booth. I was always so intrigued by how a story comes together. Or how a character resonates on screen. Those sorts of things I found extremely stimulating and engaging, and I always wanted to learn about that.

That’s why I decided to go to NYU film school, whereas a lot of the other kids who were on Mickey Mouse Club with me decided to go in different directions. It was always embedded in me that I needed to get an education. I had been in front of the camera, from when I was 11 till 17. That’s all that I really knew, and getting an education was extremely important to me.

What made you want to switch from being an actor to more of a content creator?

When I graduated from NYU and came back home to LA, I wanted to get back into the acting for a minute. I did that successfully. It took me a minute. I worked briefly as a barback at The Sky Bar, which was extremely humbling and fascinating — because you see the most fascinating characters.

As I started to get back into acting and generating money, I was able to just be an actor. But it just wasn’t stimulating enough for me, on many levels. I tell this story a lot, but as an actor in LA, you drive around to auditions. You can be in your car for hours upon hours, and you sit in these rooms and wait to be seen. At this point, I had started working with a producer in the reality space, just kind of assisting him and learning from him. I was really gravitating towards this.

I went in for this commercial audition, where I had to wait for an hour and a half. And in front of me, the advertising agency people and the director in the room were basically calling the agents of people who had auditioned before me and booking them. In my head, I was kind of like, “What the hell am I doing? I just wasted three hours of my time, driving to this place.” I just didn’t see a finish line, and I thought to myself, “You know what? You’ve been doing this since you were 10 years old, just auditioning all the time…” And literally, that was it. They wanted me to audition, and I looked at them and I said: “Thank you so much, but I’m done.” They were like, “What the hell did this guy just say?” They were super shocked. But that was it; that was the end of the road for me for acting.

I called my agent, my manager and said, “Guys, thank you. I’m done.” And that was it. I never auditioned again.

How quickly were you able to get something going on the production side?

That’s the thing. With the producer I was working with, literally a week later, I was fortunate enough to be on a call with him, Logo [TV network] was just forming, and we sold a show to them about lesbian surfers. They gave us money to do a casting tape.

Back then, it was a little bit different, because you could still sell reality shows based on a piece of paper maybe, or an idea. They gave us five grand and said, go find these girls. So I scoured California looking for them. I went of Craigslist. I went everywhere, and I found a group of girls.

I went to Best Buy, bought a camera. And instead of making a five-minute casting tape, which is what most people do nowadays, I embedded myself with this group of women and turned in to Logo a 40-minute documentary. And that became Curl Girls [released in 2007]. They gave us money for one episode, and thought it might just be a doc. The episode garnered huge interest on iTunes, and [the network] ended up picking it up for a season.

How quickly did you go from this to forming Bodega Pictures?

One of my current business partners [Ben Nurick] was working for director David O. Russell [American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook] as his main assistant. When Curl Girls got picked up, I called him up and asked him to help me with it. We were friends since freshman year at NYU and had written some stuff together, but hadn’t really pursued it further. And from there, we decided we wanted to start our own thing.

So, we went on Craigslist and got jobs off there, and started to build a name for ourselves. We took what little money that we made — my wife and I had bought a house in the San Fernando Valley — and we spent a few thousand dollars and turned my garage into our office. Another one of my partners, Justin [Daniels], joined us. He was just out of the University of Oregon. It was the three of us at the time. We did exercise videos, a little thing here, a little thing there.

How did you land the truTV series South Beach Tow?

We were fortunate enough to land a brand marketing campaign for a company called Oribe, which is a hair care line. We did these really high-end, sexy videos for them, and we also filmed these artistic director program events that the main hairdresser put on. They put up those event videos on YouTube.

I remember the call, because I was in a Ralphs supermarket. It was an unknown number, so I didn’t pick up. Lo and behold, it was Jennifer Lopez’s company calling because she worked with that hairdresser and she had seen our videos. Her TV department thought we were extremely talented and wanted to sit down with us, so we [met] with their development team and they told us to bring them whatever we had. Then they thought about us possibly doing a documentary on the road about Jennifer, but we didn’t hear anything.

A little time passes and one of my other good buddies from New York [Zachary Werner] moves out, having worked on A&E shows like The First 48 and Manhunters. He joined us, and said that one of his friends from Miami, where he’s from, had just called him up and said, “There’s this family-run tow truck company in South Beach that would be a great show.” So we put some money together and sent Zach down there with a camera.

We shot this tape. We didn’t know what we were getting into, but the cast was unbelievable. That’s one thing I’ll say: Reality TV is all about character. If somebody pops off the screen, chances are you probably have something. These guys were bigger than we expected. We edited the footage, called up Jennifer’s company and told her about the project. Miami is kind of Latin, the family is Latin… We showed it to them and they decided to partner with us on the project. We went in and met with her agents at Endeavor [Production Group]. They told us they could sell the show in a week, and we’re going now into 60 to 70 episodes. Wednesday nights at 10 o’clock.

Moving on to On the Rocks, how did that come to be?

That came to us because, through our lawyer, we were introduced to John Green, who had an idea for a show. He came into our office and pitched us a good show, and although we didn’t think [it] was quite right for us, we responded to him. We thought he was a fascinating character.

Our agents usually introduce us to the networks… and hear what they’re looking for. And one of the things Food Network was looking for was something in the bar space. So we went and shot a pretty straight two-camera thing — what does this guy do and what is the show. He’s traveled the world opening bars and working for huge companies like The Four Seasons.

You can’t fool networks anymore. You can’t, for example, put a bunch of people together who don’t know each other and say they’ve known each other for 20 years. Same goes for today’s audiences; they can sense whether these people really know each other. When we did the pilot for On the Rocks, we learned that he was also amazing with people, and that’s how the show evolved into not only a makeover show, but also kind of a character repair [show], with qualities of intervention.

Justin Ackerman’s tips for reality TV show aspirants:

1. Trust your instincts: “My grandfather was really influential in my life. And he always said, ‘Know when something is done and move on from it.’ So make sure you recognize in your own pursuits when one particular path is no longer productive. I was 27 when I quit acting, and I knew at the time that if I was going to pursue reality TV, documentaries and hopefully film in the future, I needed to go for it.”

2. Recognize an opportunity: “When I [got involved with Curl Girls], I said to myself, ‘This is my chance. This is my opportunity to not have to necessarily start from the bottom and work my way up.’ It’s a rarity that you get the opportunity to prove yourself, so you have to seize those opportunities when they come along.”

3. Be willing to work hard: “Forming Bodega Pictures was one of those stories, where we just said, ‘We want to do it on our own, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to make it on our own.’ So we just went balls to the wall and sent out reels for anything that was a possibility.”

Richard Horgan is co-editor of FishbowlNY.