MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE And CAMPUS LADIES Oxygen´s Most Successful Originals Are Both Renewed For Season Two
Oxygen two most successful original shows have both been renewed for a second round, announced Debby Beece, Oxygen´s President of Programming and Marketing. MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE, the reality beauty competition for plus sized women will return in Summer 2006 to crown the second Ms. F.A.T. (Fabulous and Thick).
A second season CAMPUS LADIES is set to start production this summer and premiere in Fall 2006 with ten new episodes.
MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE was cable´s first full-figured reality competition and Oxygen´s highest rated original program in the network´s history. The special is also a 37th Annual NAACP Image Award nominee for "Outstanding Variety (Series or Special)." Oxygen´s critically acclaimed improv comedy series Campus Ladies launched as Oxygen´s highest-rated original series premiere, and the second season announcement comes after just five of the ten episodes have aired. Oxygen will air the current season´s remaining five episodes beginning Sunday, March 12th at 10 p.m. after it rests CAMPUS LADIES during February.
"These ladies have created quite a stir over the past year by being hilarious, over the top women who don´t apologize for being themselves - whether they are fat or forty plus. They have broken out of the pack and demonstrated what we have long suspected - that our audience wants to see diverse women on television, and they want to laugh at the same time," said Beece.
MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE
MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE is network cable´s full-figured beauty special that takes America´s average beauty competition and repackages it for America´s average-size woman. Plus-size icon Mo´Nique (The Parkers) marks her return to the Oxygen network this summer with a three-hour reality special for women who know that spirit outweighs size. The second season of MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE extends the open casting calls to five-cities from three in its first year, starting March 1st in Los Angeles. The other cites include New York, Miami, Baltimore and Seattle. Following the multi- city casting call, 10 full-figured finalists will be flown to Los Angeles to participate in an enhanced version of the first special´s BEAUTY BOOT CAMP, a series of mind and body training exercises focusing on attainable beauty and confidence building. This go-round, contestants will live together in a Los Angeles house where they will be mentored and supervised by a house "den mother." Upon completion, the finalists will compete for the title of "Ms. F.A.T." in front of a panel of expert and celebrity judges evaluating them on beauty, style, poise, and personality and how those qualities are reflected in each woman´s overall transformation.
Mo´Nique serves as creator, host, and executive producer of MO´NIQUE´S FAT CHANCE. Mo´Nique is the recipient of four NAACP Image Awards® for her work on the hit UPN sitcom The Parkers, she is the first female host of the acclaimed Saturday night series, It´s Showtime at the Apollo and she served as host for the 2004 BET Awards. Her film credits include BABY BOY, SOUL PLANE, HAIR SHOW, and the special THE QUEENS OF COMEDY. She was most recently seen in the 2005 motion picture, DOMINO.
CAMPUS LADIES
CAMPUS LADIES, called "infectious" by the LOS ANGELES TIMES and "very, very laugh-out-loud funny" by THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, is an improv comedy series about two middle-aged housewives (one a widow, the other a divorcee), who decide it´s better to be a freshman at 40 than unhappy housewives forever. The series, returning for a second season with 10 new episodes in Fall 2006, chronicles the wild times of Joan (Carrie Aizley) & Barri (Christen Sussin), as they start their lives over as freshman at the fictional University of the Midwest (UMW). The co-eds experience their first keg stand, their first all-nighter, and an experimental lesbian love tryst and frat party gone wild. Each storyline leaves the ladies gliding through the craziest of situations with cheerful abandon along with their dormmates Abdul and Drew, roommate Paige and RA Guy.
Aizley and Sussin developed Campus Ladies while performing with the famous improv comedy troupe, The Groundlings.
