HBO Max’s new reality TV show “Full Bloom” is a florist’s dream come true. Each week the contestants have an unlimited arsenal to create beautiful flower arrangements and compete in epic team challenges. The program enters the 2021 Emmys season already an award winner, claiming the Directors Guild Award for Joseph Guidry in April. Since the DGA Awards weren’t televised, what did Guidry say in his acceptance speech? “I thanked my crew and my family … and everyone else that basically helped me to get to this point in my career,” the director reveals during Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Reality TV panel (watch the exclusive video interview above).
What originally drew Guidry to the project? “I’m not a florist by day,” he notes. “But when I was presented with this project, I had to jump at the chance. It’s a very big task, believe it or not, to figure out how to shoot a reality show about flowers and make it super interesting. Because you just think, ‘It’s just flowers.’ With any reality competition, it’s not just about what it is that they’re doing. It’s way much more.”
SEE Watch our Meet the Experts panels
Guidry is proud of the fact that “Full Bloom” donates its flowers every episode to worthy people in the community or front-line workers. “We never waste anything,” he says. “At the end of every episode of our show we would always give our flowers away … to Boys and Girls clubs, old folks homes, what have you.” Since they worked with “thousands of flowers” throughout the season, did they have to deal with any obnoxious critters? “There was a bee problem, but the bee problem was not on camera,” recalls Guidry. “The bee problem was when we were eating lunch behind the scenes. There would be bees everywhere.”
Working on “Full Bloom” was “just such a great experience,” the director explains. “We work on hundreds of shows throughout our careers, but this one seemed really magical. It’s like the flowers were like fairy dust. This crew that we assembled and we put together from the top-down, from the network to the production company to myself to the PAs to everybody … it just felt right.” Guidry recently signed an overall deal with HBO Max, which includes a second season of “Full Bloom” to air in the near future.
Also in our exclusive video interview, Guidry talks about being in a DGA category against Jon Favreau, the fun chemistry of the three judges (Simon Lycett, Elizabeth Cronin and Maurice Harris), and the emotional moment when contestant Connor Nesbit nearly quit the show because he didn’t think his teammate deserved to go home.
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
