Deadline has reported that OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) has renewed Belle Collective for a sixth season, just ahead of season 5's two part reunion special.
Belle Collective is produced by the same team that brought the Love & Marriage franchise to OWN and follows a group of five super glamorous entrepreneurs living in Jackson, Mississippi.
The show follows their lives as they try to balance their family and personal lives with being successful Black female entrepreneurs living in the south. Together, they're trying to use their business sense and success to revitalize a historic neighborhood that was once home to a bustling array of Black-owned businesses.
Belle Collective stars Lateshia Pearson, Sophia O. "Sogucci" Williams, Marie Hamilton-Abston, Aikisha Holly-Colon, Latrice Rogers, Tambra Cherie, and Selena Johnson and is produced by Kingdom Reign Entertainment, a production company that is headed by Carlos King, a former producer on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Carlos King, producer of Belle Collective, previously spoke to Deadline about the importance of having reality TV shows that center around Black people and are also created by Black people.
While there are other reality TV shows that feature a predominantly Black cast, like The Real Housewives of Atlanta or Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard, which Bravo put on pause in 2024 after two seasons, Carlos King says that it's also important that these stories are produced and created by Black people because of the unique cultural understanding of the lives that the people in the shows live.
"White-owned production companies are doing a great job of producing the Black unscripted shows but, for me, how special would it be for a show to represent the owner of the company so that we’re able to really have the ability to not only understand storytelling, but understand the culture in which the storytelling is happening," Carlos King told Deadline.
According to the reality TV producer, putting your real life in an unscripted TV show in such a vulnerable way isn't easy, but he feels like having the same cultural background represented in the production team can help put the cast at ease and make the whole production feel like a family instead of a TV production.
"My secret sauce is the fact that my shows represent me and my family and my background. That makes my talent feel so comfortable with giving their real life to the show because it is difficult to expose your real life in front of the world to judge, it can be uncomfortable at times," he revealed to Deadline and went on to say that this "secret sauce" is exactly why he started Kingdom Reign Entertainment after spending so long working on Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta.
"I wanted to leave my very comfortable position of the showrunner, where I knew where my money was coming every single Friday, to really invest in myself, and invest in my community and invest in my culture," Carlos King shared with the publication about his decision to step away from RHOA and start his own company, saying that he wanted to "be the change" and put a focus on hiring Black professionals in the entertainment industry to help bring his shows to life.
Kingdom Reign Entertainment has been producing Belle Collective since 2021 and although the sixth season doesn't have a set premeire date yet, it will likely be sometime in 2025 since the season 5 reunion special will be airing its second half just after the new year.