QVC is hoping that life really does begin at 40.
Next month marks the home-shopping network’s (the one that isn’t the Home Shopping Network; QVC bought HSN in 2017 for $2.1 billion) Ruby Jubilee, and QVC is celebrating with the debut of documentary series A QVC Story, which premieres this evening. The docuseries covers the entire history of QVC, which stands for “Quality, Value, and Convenience,” founded in November 1986 by Joseph Segel and headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Rick Domeier, a former actor (Evil Dead II, Die Hard 2) who has been a host with QVC for 32 of its 40 years, narrates the documentary, which will show the good, the bad and the ugly — and I’m not just referring to the gaudy grandma jewelry. Domeier retires from QVC in December, so he’s got nothing to lose by having a candid conversation with The Hollywood Reporter — well, his son works there now, so maybe he does — as did Toni Brattin, Shawn Killinger and John Battagliese.
When one thinks of QVC, they likely think of bedazzled clothing, the latest releases in home technology, and/or Chris Moran falling off a Telesteps 12 1/2′ aluminum telescoping ladder while demonstrating its quality and versatility. (Poor caller Renée from California — at least her apartment has vaulted ceilings.) This story is mostly about the final category: QVC’s viral bloopers.
For most of its life, QVC was a 24/7 live basic-cable channel with no ad breaks — the show is the commercial — it’s now a 24/7 live streaming channel. The sheer amount of unedited airtime puts QVC hosts in the perfect position to put their orthotics in their mouths. It’s kind of amazing there aren’t more viral flubs.
The reason behind that is twofold, the hosts told us: 1) For the first half of QVC’s life, there was no YouTube (the screwups would be saved and played at the company Christmas party, Domeier says), and 2) for QVC’s latest decade, The Soup has been off the air.
But no one gets in and out of QVC without at least one embarrassing blunder. Domeier’s most memorable one came while selling the brand new Amazon Echo.
“I’m selling this thing at midnight… and it’s got a new skill. You always have new skills,” Domeier told THR. “One of the new skills was that you could order pizzas from Domino’s (using your voice). Great, awesome. So at midnight, ‘Hey, brand new today! Special value monitoring! Oh my gosh, Amazon Echo! There’s 50,000 of you— QVC customers already have and love the Amazon Echo. We have a new skill for you: Alexa, order five pepperoni pizzas from Domino’s.'”
That night, Domeier was on fire.
“It sells like crazy. It’s amazing. End of the hour, coordinating producer comes out. He says, ‘They’re loving it, but stop ordering the pizzas — stop. We’re getting complaints from customer service,'” Domeier continued.
You can probably see where this is heading. I can. My Echo Dot maybe 12 feet away from our Zoom call picks up and responds to Domeier’s prompt.
“My voice goes through the television speakers and orders pizzas,” he recalled. “And so… ‘ding-dong.'”
Yes, Domino’s was delivering pizzas to QVC viewers who already had an Echo within (digital) earshot of their TVs. You can imagine the confusion — and the overabundance of pepperoni pizza.
Toni Brattin can claim QVC’s latest viral moment. Just this past summer, Brattin was pitching one of her many “Salon Select” wigs. The best way to do that is to wear it, which she also did during our Zoom.
“I love to show the texture and this wave pattern,” Brattin said live on streamer QVC+ while teasing the wig with her hand. “Again, it looks like you went and got a blowjob at your— a blowout at your salon.”
Brattin, who had her back to the camera, just about died.
Her co-host, Terri Conn, tried to ignore the faux pas and play the moment straight, but Brattin instinctively sunk to floor and hid behind the display table.
“Our brains are kind of on autopilot. I can’t tell you how many times we do our spiels, right?” Brattin told THR. “I’m always trying to describe [the wigs] and I’m always thinking, ‘Were we going to go through the colors? Are we doing the the models? When are the models coming up?’ I want to show the before and afters. So your mind’s always thinking. But we’re live, and so that’s when those crazy moments can occur.”
Brattin eventually came to the conclusion that her Freudian Slip was good television.
“It really promoted QVC — the fun we have on the network,” she said. “It promoted brand awareness and also just the [wig industry] as well, but more importantly, the world got a big laugh.”
The world enjoyed an especially big laugh when Jimmy Fallon featured the clip on The Tonight Show. The very next night, Fallon had the unusually good sport on his NBC late-night show.
Killinger’s favorite would-be-outtake (on any other channel) was her own. Well, really it was designer Isaac Mizrahi’s — mostly.
As he and Killinger sold his splashy designs, the topic of the moon came up. Mizrahi insisted the moon is a planet, which it most definitely is not. Killinger countered that the moon is a star: 0-2. The moon is a natural satellite, Google clarified for them live on-air. Neither Killinger nor Mizrahi knew what to make of that.
Killinger calls it her “Chicken of the Sea” moment, a comparison to Jessica Simpson’s most famous remark (and Nick Lachey’s most famous reaction) from MTV reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica. It happens, Killinger said.
“It was like hideously embarrassing and wonderful, but stuff like that happens all the time,” Killinger said. “It sounded so bad and dumb and space-headed and air-headed.”
You go on live TV for four hours straight with no script or teleprompter and see how it goes, she said.
“You say dumb shit,” Killinger said, “or you say stuff that you don’t think is dumb in the moment.”
John Battagliese is the new kid on the block, but the lifelong QVC super fan already has a (minor) viral moment of his own.
Pushing Homeworx by Slaktin + Co. candles, Battagliese struggled to find the words “piña colada.” What came out was “penile.”
At first, Battagliese was worried he’d be fired. It was Brattin’s viral misspeak that gave him the courage to post his own gaffe to Instagram.
“I’d been sitting on that for a year,” he told THR. “But when the ‘blowjob’ video came out, I was like, ‘We’re just gonna see how this goes.'”
“I think in this creator economy and the short-attention-span economy, not [sharing these moments] would be a misstep,” Battagliese said.
Battagliese says his flub has raised his profile online — Trixie Mattel from RuPaul’s Drag Race was in his comments and DMs, he said — as well as at a recent influencer event in London. (Though even there, he admitted, pretty much everyone wanted to talk to him about Brattin’s slip.)
And then there is the Rosalie moment. Each of the hosts that THR (individually) spoke with for this story especially loves this one.
It was time for Leah Williams to sell Denim & Co. leggings, and a kindly old woman named Rosalie was “so anxious to order [her] clothes.”
Rosalie said she doesn’t get out to shop much because the southern-New Jersey island she lives on doesn’t have many stores. As she informs Williams of her hopes for a good fit, a mystery person picks the wrong moment to compete for Rosalie’s attention.
“Do you see I’m on the fucking phone!” Rosalie screams at somebody else in her house.
Never mind that whole “kindly” thing.
“It’s a live television show, and Rosalie didn’t want to be interrupted,” Williams says, laughing, as Rosalie continued to dress down her mystery nuisance in the background.
Each of these moments only “reinforce” the QVC brand, Domeier said, calling them “endearing.”
“It reinforces that we all make mistakes. We all have those moments. We are not perfect,” he said. “There’s a line that ‘People admire you for your positive qualities, but they love you for your flaws.'”
A hell of a lot of people must love Rosalie.
All four episodes of A QVC Story are now available to stream for free on QVC+/HSN+.