Disney Reality Boss Rob Mills Interview: The Bachelor, Kardashians

Twelve months ago, Disney’s reality TV chief Rob Mills had just made a major statement. Deep in the Hollywood hills at a sprawling estate with a private lake, he was surrounded by the stars of his hit shows: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, The Kardashians, Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor franchise and even Alex Cooper, the star of the hit podcast Call Her Daddy who exec produced Love Overboard.

It highlighted the breadth of its unscripted slate across ABC and Hulu and threw down the gauntlet for its rivals that also have successful reality universes such as Bravo and Netflix.

Then came 2026. Mormon Wives was forced to pause production on Season 5 as a result of domestic assault allegations against its main star, Taylor Frankie Paul, and these same allegations, coupled with video of her throwing a metal stool at her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen in the presence of her child, blew up what was meant to be a buoyant season of The Bachelorette.

It would not have been a surprise if these controversies forced Mills, who is EVP, Unscripted and Alternative Entertainment at Walt Disney Television, to retreat.

But the longtime Disney executive – he joined the company in 2003 – did not change his strategy and has instead doubled down on dating and the drama of the old school reality show, while looking for new types of formats, particularly for Hulu.

He was also back by the lake for the second iteration of its Get Real event, making an entrance with a snake (joking that they had a two-year deal after DWTS‘ Robert Irwin introduced the reptile last year), before introducing dozens of Disney’s reality stars.

Despite the Mormon Wife-inspired ruckus, Hulu ordered a spinoff set in Orange County, with a new set of religious young women, is bringing former Vanderpump Rules star Stassi Schroeder further into the fold with a new show, is following a group of elite young nannies in Ibiza (when did anything messy happen on the Spanish island?), and has a new dating show featuring single Christian college students on spring break (when did anything messy happen on spring break?).

“We’ve gotten a really great foothold in the docu-soap space and we’re excited to start spinning off things like Mormon Wives and more stuff with the Kardashians,” he said.

Mills is also leaning into his major ABC franchises, confirming Dancing with the Stars spinoff The Next Pro, and adding more top reality stars to the mothership dancing format in the form of former Love Island and Traitors star Maura Higgins, and Ciara Miller, who is at the center of the latest Summer House scandal.

“On ABC, we’re really excited about the continued strength of all of our great [shows]. Obviously, Dancing’s had a resurgence, it’s really exciting with this season of American Idol, we’re now live streaming our live shows on Disney+, plus we’re really excited to lean into the 25th anniversary of Idol next year. The Bachelor franchise is one that is obviously is very important to us and that’s going through its own growing pains right now. Those are our crown jewels to continue to polish,” he added.

He also hopes that Hulu audiences will be dazed and confused, in a good way, by Parker Posey, who had a big 2025 as the Lorazepam-popping Victoria Ratliff in HBO’s The White Lotus.

The indie queen is moving into reality hosting for the first time in ABC’s The Mob. The show will see unscripted stars such as Mormon Wives’ Demi Engemann “shake down, hustle and whack their way to win up to $250,000 in cash prizes”.

The show marks a “concentrated” push into serialized competition on Hulu. Mills admitted that they have tried some shows that didn’t quite work on the streamer but feels like The Mob is “one that could really break through”.

The Mob comes from Studio Lambert, the All3Media-owned company that produces The Traitors for Peacock and the BBC and Mills knows that his show will get compared to the parlor game hit.

He said that imitation is the “sincerest form of flattery”. “We have the mastermind behind Traitors in Stephen Lambert, that was very concentrated. I applaud Peacock for what they’ve done with Traitors and how they have built that into a behemoth. For us, you don’t want to just say that they’re going to corner the market on that space. Hopefully this one feels like its own thing and really special. But of course, we did this thinking this is a way to get into the [genre],” he added. “If Traitors is a Knives Out parlor game, this is more The Godfather.”

On the reality docusoap front, Hulu has a new season of Love Thy Nader, starring tabloid fixture and Baywatch star Brooks Nader, coming in the winter, and a new show exec produced by Khloé Kardashian that stars her inner circle.

The Girls, which comes from Keeping Up With The Kardashians producer Bunim/Murray, stars Kardashian pals including Natalie Halcro, Khadijah and Malika Haqq.

This is on top of another Kardashian-related project, set in Calabasas, that is still in development at the streamer.

But Mills wants to assure fans of the first family of reality television, that The Kardashians is not coming to an end and Season 8, which has not yet been announced, is currently shooting and will premiere early next year.

“I don’t ever want anyone to think that this is about protecting for the future. I don’t see the mothership coming to an end anytime soon, or, if ever, certainly no time in the immediate future. The Kardashians are a 24/7 business enterprise, they are always coming up with ideas and the mothership is great because that is the one that sort of touches everybody. But they all have their own ambitions, and it’s always really exciting, because everybody’s passionate about something different. This is just us having the privilege of being in business with them, we kind of get a first crack at things,” he said.

The Kardashians airs episodes weekly but the vast majority of its reality slate, including Mormon Wives, Vanderpump Villa and Love Overboard, as well as upcoming shows Million Dollar Nannies and House of Stassi, follows the binge drop model.

The argument is that these types of shows pick up steam when they are released weekly on a network like Bravo rather than in a binge, originated by Netflix.

Mills said that each show is looked at independently. “The binge drop is sort of thought of as kind of par for the course for streaming,” he said. “With Bravo, unless they decided to make these Peacock shows, I don’t think they could do a binge drop so to compare us isn’t really fair.  It really feels much more like apples and oranges.”

Does having a reality universe where stars move from one show to another actually help drive numbers? It seems to work having the likes of Whitney Leavitt on Dancing with the Stars.

“When we put two stars from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Dancing with the Stars, we [didn’t think] it was going to bring a massive new audience to Mormon Wives. It was a great storyline for Dancing with the Stars. It has to be done as something that’s viewed as helpful to the show. These ideas have to come organically and feel right, and then when they do, they really work,” he said.

The reality docusoap genre is clearly popping again. “It just feels like the stars in the world are coming from social media, and they seem to lend themselves more to this type of programming,” he said. “Right now, shows around these personalities are really having a moment.”

However, he said that “everything is cyclical” and said that there’s a probably a great format “right around the corner”.

Hulu recently ordered an Erin Lee Carr-directed documentary about The Swan, the controversial Fox plastic surgery format that debuted in 2004.

“It’s been really fun to revisit that time where it felt like every six weeks or so, one idea came on that was crazier than the next,” he said.

A documentary on the heavily criticized show seems a smarter bet than rebooting the Fremantle-produced “ugly ducking” format. “Never say never,” laughed Mills.