Move over, Bruno Mars, it's time for your sisters to get the spotlight. Bruno's four singing siblings, who call themselves The Lylas — it stands for "love you like a sister" — debut their very own reality showtonight on WE tv.
Now, before you ask, no, Bruno does not appear in the show, but the project does have his blessing. "Our career paths are are very different. He's more private, and we're opening up completely," says Tiara Hernandez, who with sisters Tahiti, Jamie and Presley make up The Lylas. Presley, the youngest sister, adds, "I think it took him a minute to warm up to the idea, but now he has no choice!" "He's happy with how things turned out," Tahiti adds.
In addition to documenting The Lylas' quest for musical stardom, family is a huge part of the reality show, so why isn't he in it? "When we started filming, he had just dropped his second album. So he was busy doing press stuff," explains Tiara. "It wasn't intentional; that's just the way it turned out." Their other brother Eric, who's Bruno's drummer is a part of the show, as is their late mother, Bernadette. But the girls say they were adamant that it stand on its own two feet, without any celebrity help from their bro.
"We wanted people to know that this is about us," explains Tahiti. "And we wanted people to know we're not getting anything handed to us on a silver platter and we're really working hard."
The siblings are in constant touch, though: Tahiti says she even reached out to Bruno to tell him what she thought about his super-sexy and steamy video for "Gorilla." "It's so hard because you wanna be a supportive sister," she tells ABC News Radio. "When that thing came out, I texted him, 'Hey, that was a good video, but you're disgusting!' Because it's hard to watch as his sisters! But it's a really good song and he did a really good job on the video."
The first episode of the show, which you'll see on Friday night, includes the aftermath of their beloved mom's death. You may recall that over the summer, she suddenly died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 55. She does appear in the debut episode, and in later episodes that were filmed beforehand, though, and the girls say her passing changed the entire focus of the show.
"When we started filming, we originally pitched a singing group show: 'This is about us. This is about our career.' And when that happened everything flipped,'" Tiara says of mentioning their mom's death in the first episode. "The show became about our personal lives and about our family and how we came together and we wanted to show that's what this is about."
During the show, you'll see the girls leave their home in Hawaii and move to Los Angeles, where they work to get a record deal and make music. Tahiti, a single mom, deals with the guilt of leaving her two young children behind in Hawaii, and they all struggle to balance family and business. The group will release music throughout the season, with the hopes of having an album's worth of tracks when it's over.
"We're not the first siblings to come out. There's Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson. There's Ashlee Simpson and Jessica Simpson," says Tiara. "And if you think of their life, they were raised in a musical family," adds Tahiti. Tiara continues, "Yeah, I think that's what mostly it has to do with, is your upbringing. And that's what we see, and not that, 'Well he's famous, well let's try and get famous too!"
As for what it's like to be around your sisters 24/7, living and working together, the girls say it has its pros and cons.
"Because we're family we don't hold back. And when we argue, we argue. We go in for it. But because we're family, we also have to overcome our disagreements," explains Tahiti. "And we go shopping, like, 10 minutes later!
"And that's the pros. We share all our clothes," laughs Tiara. "My closet is three times bigger." "And the con is that we share all our clothes," laughs Jamie. "So you can never find anything!" (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)
Catch the debut episode of The Lylas Friday night at 9 p.m. ET.
