Key Points
Brooke Shields admitted she had misgivings about her daughter Rowan Henchy joining the Bravo reality show Next Gen NYC.
“I got very nervous that it might affect her or somehow hinder a career that she wants to have in broadcast news and journalism,” Shields told Entertainment Weekly‘s Gerrad Hall during a live Q&A on Monday.
The 23-year-old daughter of Shields and her husband, Chris Henchy, is set to star on season 2 of the reality series following kids of celebrities.
Brooke Shields is all about her daughter Rowan Henchy exploring new horizons, but she was admittedly uncomfortable about her upcoming venture into reality television.
“This has been a really difficult journey for me because I would say to her, ‘We’re not a reality family. That’s just never been our MO,'” Shields told Entertainment Weekly‘s Gerrad Hall during a live Q&A with AMC’s Acorn TV in New York City on Monday. “And I got very nervous that it might affect her or somehow hinder a career that she wants to have in broadcast news and journalism. That’s what she studied at university.”
The 23-year-old daughter of Shields and her husband, Chris Henchy, is set to star in the upcoming second season of Bravo’s Next Gen NYC, a reality series that follows children of celebrities and their attempts to make their own marks in the world away from their parents’ shadows. Rowan will join the returning regulars from season 1, including Ariana Biermann, Riley Burruss, Emira D’Spain, Brooks Marks, Ava Dash, Gia Giudice, Georgia McCann, Charlie Zakkour, Shai Fruchter, and Hudson McLeroy.
Rowan, along with Liam Obergfoll and Kendall White, will serve as the show’s new additions.
Cast of Bravo’s ‘Next Gen NYC’ season 2
Credit: Bronson Farr/Bravo
Previews for the new season show brief appearances from Shields, who shared how she’s come around to accepting her daughter’s casting during Monday’s conversation.
“I said, ‘Look, I will do one, maybe two episodes for you, but nobody’s putting any words into my mouth and I don’t want them to let you put any words into your mouth and I don’t want you to try to morph into somebody with bad behavior just because it’s going to create ratings,'” she explained. “And I said, ‘Be the girl holding back the hair for the person throwing up. Don’t be the thrower upper.’ And she was very grounded in it and I’m very proud of her because she is using it.”
But Shields gave her daughter some advice that emphasized Rowan think beyond her starring on the latest season of the series. “It’s Bravo and Peacock,” she noted. “So I said, ‘If this is a world you want to be in, parlay that. Find out who those executives are, send them a thank you note, talk to them, make sure you are the professional in the room because you’ll have a better chance having a second shot at something if you are a pro.'”
Considering how Shields has been able to flourish after beginning her career at a young age, it’s more than just wise words from a mother to her daughter.
Said career includes her most recent project, her new Acorn TV series, You’re Killing Me, on which Shields pulls double duty as the star and executive producer.
You’re Killing Me follows bestselling novelist Allison “Allie” Chandler (Shields) as she forms an unlikely partnership with aspiring young writer Andrea “Andi” Walker (Amalia Williamson) to solve murders in their small New England town — all to the chagrin of local police detective Jack Kerrigan (Tom Cavanagh).
Shields revealed that she approached showrunner Robin Bernheim, whom she worked with on projects like Mother of the Bride and When Calls the Heart, and they decided to create something together.
Brooke Shields and Gerrad Hall during a live Q&A with AMC’s Acorn TV on May 18, 2026
Credit: Gregory Pace/Shutterstock
“I love being on a series. I loved Suddenly Susan. I adored Lipstick Jungle. I love that kind of consistency. I’m happiest work-wise when I’m on a set,” Shields added. “And so I went to [Bernheim] and I said, ‘Why don’t we create something that we can pitch?’ And this genre of the mystery world is very popular at the moment so we kind of were jumping on that bandwagon a bit.”
Shields shared that she was interested in exploring the relationship between Allie and Andi, a relation similar to what she experiences with her real-life daughters — Rowan and Grier, 20.
“I was really interested in the dynamic between these two women being generationally very, very different, but then sort of learning from each other,” she said. “I have two daughters that are not dissimilar to the Andi character where they’re always making fun of me. So I thought it would be refreshing to see that on camera.”
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Shields also shared that having the extra leverage as a producer really shaped the way everything came together, inspiring her to use her voice more in her career moving forward.
“I think that, especially within comedic situations, you can’t worry about looking silly, you can’t worry about being safe — something has to electrically happen and there’s got to be an electricity to it. And that was really good for me too after years of people never being interested in my opinion: having an opinion,” Shields told EW. “And doing this show as an executive producer, I’d never been this active as an exec before and everything from casting to editing to graphics to… I mean, it was exhausting, but at one point they said, ‘You know what? You’ve been doing this a long time. We trust your instincts.’ And that was just a revelation to me.”
The premiere episode of You’re Killing Me is now streaming on Acorn TV.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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