Lauren Weber wants to share the love of Fairhope in a new TV series
Posted On January 10, 2023
Lauren Weber believes the world needs more feel-good stories, more stories about love. And she believes the perfect place for them is Fairhope.
Weber, our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” is an Emmy-nominated TV producer with two decades of experience who specializes in real-life romantic comedy. She was looking for an idyllic small town for her next project and, when she found what she was looking for in Fairhope, she loved it so much that she relocated her production company, Tremont Road, to the Eastern Shore.
That project, “Love in Fairhope,” tracks the romantic lives and relationships of five women of different generations. It has been picked up by a streaming platform and is expected to air in the fall.
“I thought, what if we could find a town that felt like a Nicholas Sparks movie and cast five generations of women from 20 to 80, not related … who are at very different stages of romance and different stages of life?” Weber said. “We overlap their stories and it’s narrated by a woman who’s wonderful — she’s in her 70s and she’s the town poet. So every episode has a love lesson.
“I created this show because my mom and I didn’t have anything to watch on TV anymore,” she added. “I think love is interesting to everybody, and love encompasses so many emotions.”
Just don’t call it reality TV. These types of shows are different in the use of direction that heightens the drama.
“If we were just following everybody’s real life, as is, it would be very boring, to be honest with you,” she said. “We really try to expedite choices that we make, and make them into moments that feel big and cinematic and dramatic, so it would feel like a scripted show.”
The art of storytelling, and the building blocks that make it successful, vary from medium to medium, Weber said. For TV, it requires not only a good story, but a compelling cast, a beautiful setting and skilled editing.
TV shows produced for streaming platforms also need to be bingeable, she added, which means they have to be able to grab your attention, and your emotions, quickly. “If they don’t stay after three minutes,” she said, “you’re done.”
Weber had never been to Alabama before moving here less than a year ago. Now she wants to become “the Tyler Perry of Alabama” – and to share what she’s grown to love about the place.
“I do feel a responsibility now that I feel so connected to this part of the country to tell a modern story, a real story about the authenticity of here, the heart of the people who live here, the beauty of this land,” she said. “There’s so much that people don’t understand.”