Kody is a salesman who loves to spend time with his kids and his dog, putter around the house and do yard work on weekends.
Oh yeah, and he’s got three wives and 13 kids — with a fourth wife and her three kids on the way.
Meet the cast of “Sister Wives,” TLC’s new reality show which follows a family of fundamentalist Mormons practicing polygamy somewhere in Utah.
The seven-episode series, a cross between HBO’s polygamy drama “Big Love” and any of TLC’s huge-family shows (“Kate Plus Eight,” “19 Kids and Counting“), tracks gregarious Kody, wives Meri, Janelle and Christine and their kids (of assorted ages), who all live under one roof in a modern, ginormous house. (Each “wife” has her own floor.)
TLC president/GM Eileen O’Neill says the network got involved in “Sister Wives” after it was shown a tape by two independent producers who were shopping the story of Kody and his brood as a TV show.
“This is not something we casted for,” she says. “When watching the family, they were unexpected, unfiltered and engaging in a rather unique way, and that’s what captured our attention.
“It intrigued us and left us with a lot of questions, and I think our audience will have similar questions.”
In the first episode, which airs Sept. 26, Kody, who’s in ad sales, introduces his family: Meri, his first (and only legal) wife, who was raised in the polygamist lifestyle; Janelle, his second wife, who was raised in a typical nuclear family; and third wife Christine, also raised in the polygamist lifestyle.
Kody has kids with each woman (one with Meri, six with Janelle and six with Christine) and wants to bring a fourth wife into the equation: Robyn, who’s divorced and has three kids of her own.
Kody and his wives stress that they’re fundamentalist Mormons, not Mormons or members of the Church of Latter Day Saints — “the distinction is as broad and as far from each other as Catholics and Protestants,” Kody told TV critics last week.
While the practice of polygamy is illegal in Utah, Kody (and TLC, for that matter) isn’t too concerned. Guidelines issued by the Utah attorney general state that bigamy laws “have not frequently been enforced against consenting adult polygamists” — unless child abuse, domestic violence and fraud are alleged.
” ‘Big Love’ kind of broke new ground, and to find a family that is unexpected in its representation of its characters made this an opportunity we thought would be really appealing to our audience,” O’Neill says.
“At the heart of it, this is a loving and caring family . . . with strong, engaging women with a strong relationship to Kody,” she says.