Laurent’s search for Mr. Right had her climbing the walls. (Andrei Jackamets/Bravo)
As the anxious young women on Bravo’s appealing new reality series “Miss Advised” discover, it’s one thing to give advice, but it’s quite another to take it. The show’s three reluctant romantics — Amy Laurent, Julia Allison and Emily Morse — have made careers out of helping strangers with their love problems. Laurent runs a professional matchmaking service, with offices in four cities. Morse has a call-in radio show in San Francisco and Allison, based in Los Angeles, has written about love and romance in the media, most currently for Elle.com. With resumes like these, you would think each woman would have found a husband, partner or live-in boyfriend. In the show, they are as in need of advice as their clients.
Amy Laurent, 35, lives in New York and spoke candidly to The Post about her rocky road to love — she describes herself as celibate in the first episode — and her decision to join a televised dating game on “Miss Advised.”
Q. What is the name of your company?
A. The Amy Laurent Dating Service. I started it predominantly as a matchmaking service in LA in 2005, and branched off to New York in 2007. I also have an office in Miami and a small office in London.
Q. What is your clientele like?
A. We have successful professionals to the very top-tier multimillion- dollar clients. We don’t have any income requirements. Membership starts at $12,000 per year.
Q. How does the service work?
A. We do all the screening. We hand-select the dates. Our job is to listen to what the client is looking for. Not only are we locating these women, we’re also meeting them socially. We’re doing so much networking and the appropriate screening. The dates we send them on are pretty accurate from the get-go. It’s likely that some kind of chemistry is going to happen.
Q. What is your success rate?
A. We’re a seven-year company. We have 27 marriages to date. I have to remind people that for the first two years of my company, nobody was getting married.
Q. Which of your dating rules is the easiest to break?
A. For my clients, the biggest rule to break is: Don’t overthink things. That’s where you start to panic. You set the pace. If a guy asks you for a same-day date, you say, “I can’t tonight.” I don’t care if you’re bored to death. When I’m advising someone after a third date, I say, be yourself, but don’t share too much information.
Q. In the first episode, you say some people might describe you as cold and tightly wound. Is this true?
A. I think it’s because I’m so passionate about what I do. I can’t take less than 120 percent from other people. If I take on a client, I am 120 percent invested in them. I tell people things that are hard to hear. I wouldn’t be successful if I didn’t have these personality traits. I am definitely a workaholic. I have to find my own balance.
Q. So what’s the dating life like on “Miss Advised”?
A. I don’t know how much I can tell. I met a few really great guys. I don’t have ring on my finger. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is I’m not going to overthink this. I’m taking things step by step. I’m excited. I did meet this guy named Kevin. He is someone that I went on a few dates with. He’s a great guy. He’s got great hair. That was my first date ever rock-climbing.
MISS ADVISED
Monday, 10 p.m., Bravo