Last year, Hannah Brauer was worried she had made a big mistake. After living in Byron Bay for over a decade, the brand manager had signed on to join the cast of a new Netflix reality show called Byron Baes. But as soon as the show was announced, locals quickly pushed back. There was a protest and a petition calling on the streaming service to abandon its plans. Several Byron businesses announced they would not allow the show to film on their property. The Byron shire mayor asked the council to oppose the production.
“It was scary … I started second-guessing my decision to go on the show,” Brauer says now. “I was literally like, oh my god, what have I done? I’ve only ever felt comfortable living in this town. I’ve only ever felt loved within this town. Have I destroyed my Byron life by going on this show?”
This week, after months of controversy about the reality show and the alleged conduct of some of the cast during New South Wales’s Covid restrictions, Byron Baes is set to start on Netflix – with both cast and crew hoping the final product will ease doubts about its intentions.
Byron Baes follows the lives of a group of the town’s loosely connected social media influencers. Some of them – like Brauer – were approached over Instagram about being part of the series. In classic reality TV style, the cast is young, hot and largely single. There are feuds. There are love triangles. And there is drama over how authentic their social media presences really are.
It’s that final point that sparked the protests: with Byron currently experiencing a very real housing and homelessness crisis, prominent locals and Indigenous leaders expressed concerns that the show would glorify Byron’s wealthier residents at the expense of its most vulnerable.
Brauer understands the concerns that a glitzy reality show could encourage more to flock to the town and exacerbate its gentrification problem. “I totally get that. Even I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want more people moving here when there’s already been ridiculous amounts of people that have moved here,’” she says.
But she believes the protests began because of “the way [the show] was promoted” – sentiments echoed by another cast member, Jade Kevin Foster.
“I feel like as soon as they heard the words ‘influencer’ and ‘baes’, they were off it,” Foster says. “I think they thought it was gonna take the piss out of Byron. And it’s not like that at all.”
Que Minh Luu, the director of local content for Netflix Australia/New Zealand, says Netflix never considered canning Byron Baes, but that the community response did force them to “react, adjust and pivot in certain ways”, including where they would shoot.
“I think we were all very, very surprised by it, in terms of the intensity of [the reaction],” she says. “But we also really understood that there is a real curiosity and scepticism of what it is that we’re trying to do. And I think – what I hope, what I feel and really have a lot of faith in – is that when people see the show, they will understand what it was that we were going in to do.”
Netflix wants the show to explore the tension between how we present ourselves online and who we really are underneath. Luu believes the show has a cast who, despite their enviable social media presence, many Australians will relate to and connect with. Byron Baes is “in on the joke”, she says; having seen the first two episodes, that description feels accurate. As well as being delightfully funny, the show is self-aware and not afraid to laugh gently at Byron-isms like crystal collections and sound healings.
It’s also full of quintessentially Australian moments, lines like “you can’t pay Big W prices and expect David Jones talent”, digs at the nearby Gold Coast for being “all about fake boobs and fake lips”. Those hyperlocal references were something Netflix encouraged, despite the fact that Byron Baes will be available on the streaming service globally (and, given the UK’s appetite for Australian reality television, sure to be devoured by international viewers).
“At Netflix, the idea is make local content that is freakin’ local,” Luu says. “They don’t go, ‘Actually, no one [overseas] is gonna understand that Big W reference.’ They’re like, ‘More, do it more!’”
Those foreign audiences may only see a certain side of Byron Bay when they tune in. But Luu says it’s unfair to expect the show to be everything to everyone, or to make a reality TV show the centre of debate over who gets access to “brand Byron”.
“This show is about a particular group and a particular aspect of Byron,” she says. “I don’t think that people hear Real Housewives of Melbourne and assume that [represents] all of Melbourne.”
After a tumultuous 11 months, the Netflix boss is excited for audiences to get to judge the show for themselves. Brauer hopes the release of Byron Baes will set the record straight – though she’ll be seeing its eight episodes for the first time as the viewers do too.
“I’ve always only been a supporter of my town,” she says. “My friends that are on the show, who have been born and bred in Byron, don’t want people in the town thinking negatively of us, either. I think minds will start to change when they start viewing it.”
Byron Baes starts on Netflix globally on 9 March.
