Before Sweet Magnolias Became Netflix’s #1 Show, We Gave the Cast a Media Homecoming
DESIGN
Before Sweet Magnolias Became Netflix’s #1 Show, We Gave the Cast a Media Homecoming
Inside the 90-day publicity campaign that launched the show’s social channels, introduced its ensemble to the media and kept its stories moving during the first months of COVID.
About 60 days before Sweet Magnolias premiered on Netflix, showrunner and executive producer Sheryl J. Anderson hired Evan White PR through Daniel L. Paulson Productions.
The show already had everything a good entertainment story needed.
It was based on the popular novels by Sherryl Woods. It had a large ensemble cast led by JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Brooke Elliott and Heather Headley. It was built around friendship, family and a fictional Southern town called Serenity.
What it did not have yet was a public identity.
The social media channels needed to be secured and launched. The cast and crew needed opportunities to tell their stories. Media outlets needed to understand why the series mattered. And this all had to happen during the early months of COVID-19, when nobody could rely on a traditional premiere, red carpet or in-person press junket.
My engagement lasted 90 days.
In that short window, we launched the show’s social presence, connected cast and crew members with national and hometown media, helped create podcasts that followed the series, organized virtual interviews and built a publicity campaign around the people who had created Serenity.
Then Sweet Magnolias reached number one on Netflix.
The assignment began before the audience arrived
Daniel L. Paulson Productions formally hired me to support the launch, working closely with Sheryl J. Anderson and the production team.
The first season was scheduled to arrive on Netflix on May 19, 2020. That gave us approximately two months to introduce a completely new series to the world.
This was not simply a matter of sending one announcement and hoping television critics noticed.
Sweet Magnolias had a large cast, a talented production team and stories that could connect with many different audiences. My job was to find as many credible ways into the show as possible.
I immediately began connecting with the stars, producers, writers and other members of the production.
The publicity campaign included national entertainment media, television interviews, publications, podcasts and digital outlets. But I also wanted each person involved with the show to have an individual story.
That became what I thought of as a media homecoming.
Every cast and crew member had a hometown
Entertainment publicity naturally gravitates toward the biggest names on the poster.
Of course, we pursued those opportunities. The campaign included outreach to national publications, entertainment television programs, late-night shows, Extra, Entertainment Tonight and other major media.
But an ensemble production is made by far more people than its three leads.
There were actors landing their first significant television roles. There were writers, directors, hairstylists, makeup artists and crew members whose families and hometowns had watched their careers develop long before Netflix viewers met them.
So we created local stories, too.
We looked at where each cast and crew member had grown up, studied, performed and built relationships. Then we reached out to media in those communities.
Instead of treating every interview as another generic promotion for a Netflix series, we could offer a more personal story:
Someone from your community helped create this new show.
That approach gave local television stations, radio programs, newspapers and digital outlets a reason to care. It also gave cast and crew members opportunities to celebrate the launch with the people who had supported them before the show existed.
Chris Medlin’s hometown story was my favorite
One of the best examples was Chris Medlin, who played Isaac Downey.
Sweet Magnolias was Chris’s first television role. Before booking the series, he had performed on Broadway as an understudy and swing. Isaac began as a member of the kitchen staff at Sullivan’s, but the character would eventually become an important part of the show’s family story.
Chris’s hometown media story was one of my favorite placements from the entire campaign.
It captured exactly what we were trying to accomplish.
This was not just another actor doing another interview about another streaming series. It was a community getting to celebrate someone it knew as he reached a major career milestone.
The story made the enormous machinery of a Netflix launch feel personal.
Chris also became an active participant in the broader publicity effort. He joined the official Sweet Magnolias aftershow to discuss Episode 7, alongside writer Anthony Epling, and later participated in the cast reunion.
That combination mattered.
The hometown story introduced Chris through the place and people who shaped him. The aftershow let fans hear directly from him about his character and the production. One story created local pride. The other built a relationship with the growing audience.
[MEDIA PLACEMENT: Add or embed Chris Medlin’s original hometown news story here, if an archived video or link is available.]
We needed the show’s name on social media
Before we could build a community around Sweet Magnolias, we needed the right accounts.
The obvious Twitter handle, @SweetMagnolias, was already taken by a defunct bakery page.
That could have become one of those small but annoying compromises that follows a brand forever. We could have added “TV,” “Netflix,” underscores or some other variation to the name.
Instead, I called in a relationship.
I had originally met Twitter co-founder Biz Stone before joining Viddy, when I was working with William Morris Endeavor and some of its celebrity clients. We connected again during my time at Viddy, and Biz later participated in the company’s investment round.
Years later, I reached out again.
I asked Biz to help connect me with the right “bird people” inside Twitter who could look at the inactive bakery account and help us secure the name for the television series.
Overnight, it happened.
The abandoned account was no longer in the way, and we had @SweetMagnolias.
We also established the show’s presence on Facebook and Instagram, giving the series the digital foundation it needed before the premiere.
It sounds like a small operational detail, but names matter. A clean, intuitive handle makes a new property easier to recognize, tag, search for and remember. It also signals that the official community has a home.
Then we handed the accounts to the people of Serenity
Launching social accounts was only the beginning.
We wanted those channels to feel connected to the show rather than like corporate feeds issuing reminders to watch Netflix.
The cast took over the accounts. Actors shared stories, answered questions and brought audiences behind the scenes. Fans could meet the people making the series while discovering the characters they played.
That approach made the social channels feel alive.
It also reflected the show itself. Sweet Magnolias was about friendship and community, so the marketing needed to feel warm, conversational and communal.
The cast understood that instinctively. They were kind, appreciative and generous with their time. Even in an uncertain and frightening moment, they kept showing up for interviews, virtual appearances and conversations with fans.
This was a COVID launch
Sweet Magnolias premiered on May 19, 2020.
There was no conventional red carpet. There was no crowded premiere party with a step-and-repeat, cocktails and reporters interviewing actors as they entered a theater.
The country was in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
People were home. Productions had shut down. Families were separated. Entertainment interviews that normally would have happened in studios were taking place over Zoom.
That changed the logistics, but it also created something unexpectedly intimate.
Television hosts and entertainment reporters Zoomed into the homes of the stars. Sometimes family members appeared. Viewers saw people talking from bedrooms, kitchens and makeshift home offices instead of polished studio sets.
The publicity felt less manufactured because everyone was living through the same strange disruption.
And Sweet Magnolias arrived with precisely the kind of story many people needed at that moment.
It was warm. It centered friendship. It offered a close community where people showed up for one another. As Glamour wrote on premiere day, it felt like Sex and the City reimagined as an inviting Southern comfort drama.
The show gave viewers somewhere gentle to go while the outside world felt anything but gentle.
[VIDEO EMBED: Use the original Season 1 trailer from Harlequin Books.]
One interview was not enough
A launch creates an initial spike of attention.
The challenge is giving audiences reasons to continue talking after they have heard the announcement and watched the first episode.
Podcasts helped us build that continuation.
We worked with AfterBuzz TV to create the Sweet Magnolias Official After Show Podcast, presented in partnership with the creators of the series.
It was not a single promotional appearance. It was an episode-by-episode companion to the season.
The show ultimately published 16 episodes featuring people from across the production, including:
Showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson
Co-executive producer Norman Buckley
JoAnna Garcia Swisher
Heather Headley
Chris Klein
Jamie Lynn Spears
Justin Bruening
Chris Medlin
Carson Rowland
Logan Allen
Anneliese Judge
Dion Johnstone
Caroline Lagerfelt
Harlan Drum
Writers, directors and additional cast members
Heather Headley and Sheryl joined the Episode 2 conversation. Justin Bruening and director Kelli Williams discussed Episode 3. Chris Medlin joined for Episode 7. JoAnna Garcia Swisher appeared for the Season 1 finale.
Then we brought much of the ensemble together for a virtual reunion.
The aftershow created more than publicity. It created an ongoing layer of conversation around the series. Each episode offered new names, stories, character discussions and searchable material while viewers were discovering and discussing the show.
Before every marketing team was talking about feeding algorithms, we were giving platforms a continuing supply of real conversations about the people and stories inside Serenity.
The show reached number one
The response came quickly.
Within days of its May 19 premiere, Sweet Magnolias climbed Netflix’s rankings and became the platform’s biggest television show. It remained in the Top 10 for weeks and earned a second-season renewal that July.
The cast was thrilled.
They had worked hard on a show that was finally reaching the audience, and they were remarkably kind and thankful for the launch support. The virtual interviews, hometown coverage, social takeovers and podcast conversations allowed them to experience that success with their families, communities and new fans.
A few weeks later, Glamour explored how Sweet Magnolias had become the surprise hit of the summer. The feature included the show’s stars and Sheryl, digging into the performances, production and questions that had captivated viewers.
That kind of feature was exactly what the campaign was built to make possible. By then, audiences did not only recognize the title. They were invested in the town, the characters and the people who brought them to life.
Publicity did not manufacture the connection
It is important to be honest about what PR can and cannot do.
Publicity did not make millions of people love Sweet Magnolias.
The writers, producers, actors and crew created something that connected with viewers. The friendship among Maddie, Dana Sue and Helen gave the audience an emotional center. The town of Serenity offered comfort and familiarity at a moment when both were badly needed.
The public relations campaign helped people find that work.
It gave journalists different ways to cover it. It helped cast and crew members tell personal stories. It established the show’s social identity. It created conversations that continued beyond premiere day.
PR can open doors, create context and give a story repeated opportunities to travel.
The work itself still has to deliver.
Sweet Magnolias delivered.
The engagement ended after 90 days
I thought the relationship might continue beyond the initial launch.
It did not.
The engagement concluded after approximately 90 days, even though the campaign had gone well and the show had become a hit.
That is part of the honest story.
Not every successful assignment becomes a multiyear retainer. Sometimes you are hired for a specific window, do the work, help create momentum and then watch the project continue without you.
I remain proud of what we accomplished in those three months.
We went from a show preparing to launch without established social channels to a number-one Netflix series with national coverage, hometown stories, active cast participation and a complete official aftershow.
That is a meaningful 90 days.
Five seasons of Serenity
The first season was not the end of the story.
Sweet Magnolias ultimately ran for five seasons between 2020 and 2026. The series accumulated approximately 100 million views and appeared in Netflix’s Global Weekly Top 10 14 times across more than 60 countries, according to Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of the show’s conclusion.
Chris Medlin, whose hometown launch story remains one of my favorite parts of the original campaign, continued playing Isaac Downey throughout the series.
Looking back after the fifth and final season, Chris described what the show had meant to his career. He had been an offstage understudy and swing on Broadway when he booked it. The series gave him five seasons, a number-one show and a community he said had changed his life.
That is why I still think about the hometown story.
Before the rankings, renewals and global audience, there was one performer getting to share an extraordinary new chapter with the community that knew him first.
What the campaign taught me
Treat an ensemble like an ensemble
The three leads deserved major attention, but the larger production offered dozens of additional human stories.
Every actor, writer, director and crew member brought another community and another reason for someone to care.
National and local publicity do different jobs
National entertainment coverage creates scale and cultural credibility.
Hometown coverage creates intimacy. It transforms an entertainment property into a story about someone the audience can claim as its own.
A complete campaign should understand the value of both.
Secure the digital identity early
Do not wait until launch week to discover that the obvious handle belongs to an inactive bakery.
Names, accounts and search visibility are part of launch infrastructure. Resolve them before the audience arrives.
Let the people behind the work participate
Cast takeovers and personal interviews worked because audiences wanted to meet the people creating the show.
A social account becomes more interesting when it sounds like a community rather than a promotional calendar.
Build content that follows the audience
The official aftershow gave viewers somewhere to go after each episode.
Instead of relying on one announcement, it created an ongoing rhythm of conversations, guests and searchable stories.
Match the story to the moment without exploiting it
We did not design Sweet Magnolias for a pandemic.
But we understood why its themes of friendship, comfort and community resonated in May 2020. Good publicity pays attention to what audiences are living through and explains why a story matters now.
Give every person a way into the story
The Sweet Magnolias launch reinforced something I have carried into every kind of communications work since.
A story becomes stronger when more people can find a meaningful way into it.
For one viewer, the entry point was JoAnna Garcia Swisher. For another, it was the books by Sherryl Woods. Someone else discovered the show because a hometown television station interviewed Chris Medlin. Another person found an episode of the aftershow and became invested in the cast.
Those were not competing stories.
Together, they created a larger world for the audience to enter.
The show gave viewers Serenity.
Our job during those 90 days was to make sure they knew how to find it.
Looking for a public relations campaign that combines media outreach, executive or talent storytelling, podcasts, social media and a launch strategy built to keep working after premiere day? Book a call with Evan White PR.