Belle Collective: Birmingham is here. OWN’s newest franchise and first-ever Belle Collective spin-off, now airing Fridays at 8 p.m. on OWN. The spinoff is led by Love & Marriage: Huntsville alum Stormi Steele, the powerhouse behind the ever-growing Canvas Beauty brand, and she has some equally boss women in this collective.
Amber Jones is Steele’s trusted CFO and self-described “business soulmate,” helping guide the financial strategy behind the rapidly expanding Canvas brand. With deep roots in Birmingham, Amber is known as a connector to the city’s most elite social and business circles. While Amber prides herself on being fiercely loyal to Stormi and the Canvas mission, her direct communication style and strong opinions can sometimes create friction within the group. With past tensions lingering between Amber and K’la, old wounds resurface as personal and professional lines begin to blur.
Funmi Ford is a Nigerian-American marketing strategist and fashion influencer known for her sharp business instincts, bold style and unapologetically outspoken personality. With a strong background in branding and marketing, Funmi thrives on helping businesses grow while cultivating her own rising influence in fashion and lifestyle. But balancing ambition with family life proves challenging as Funmi navigates tensions within her marriage, including disagreements about finances, priorities and emotional connection. Her candid nature and fearless honesty make her a dynamic presence within the group, though her willingness to speak her mind may ruffle feathers among the more reserved Belles.
Ahead of the premiere, Blavity’s Shadow and Act spoke with Ford and Jones about what to expect from their debut season. And they say there’s a reason the franchise is now in Birmingham.
Were you all fans of the original Belle Collective and the Jackson franchise?
Amber: For me, I’m not a TV watcher in general. So I went and I binge-watched it, and it was great to get to know the ladies when it comes to being business owners, entrepreneurs, just seeing how they navigate life. But just me in general, I’ve never been too much of a TV watcher, so it’s all new for me.
Funmi: It’s the same for me. I just never watched. I don’t watch a lot of reality TV. I did the same thing as Amber. I went and binge-watched the first season so I could kind of know what it was about, and I was like, ‘Oh, I really like these ladies. I like their stories.’
What would you ladies say differentiates the Mississippi belles and the Alabama belles?
Amber: I think that we bring a lot of variety. There’s so many different types of stories, so many different types of personalities, so many different types of careers, so many different types of just background in general. So, I feel like for us, we bring such a mix of culture, a mix of careers, a mix of personal life when it comes to relationships that is very diverse. So I feel like that’s the biggest difference that I see with us in Jackson.
Funmi: And for me, in Jackson, they don’t have a Nigerian on their cast, and that is the biggest difference. But everything Amber said, just the diversity in stories is so important, and I think that’s what differentiates us.
So obviously, you guys are very successful in your respective careers. Why did you decide to do reality TV at this time? Because it could be considered foreign and scary territory.
Funmi: For me, I do it on a smaller scale. I’ve been a content creator for seven-plus years. I’ve been doing it pretty well and enjoying it. I’ve been giving people a little snippet of my life. I call it controlled vulnerability. This was just another step in what I already did. And the funny thing is, my husband’s actually the one that was like, ‘I think you should do it. This would be so great. You’re so personable, you have such a good personality, and it’s a good way to showcase your culture as well as what you do on a bigger platform.’ So he was my biggest motivator.
Amber: I did it because I wanted to do something. I’m a very private person, for the people who know me, and when you’re living life, when we’re called to impact people and just help people see life in a different aspect, I felt like my life would be relatable to a lot of women, especially a lot of single women. So I did the show to open up my world to hopefully inspire women to walk their own path and make their decisions, and whatever time frame they wanna make their personal life or their career, they can do that.
Amber, you work closely with Stormi in building her business. Were you nervous that merging an already existing friendship and working relationship could be tarnished from the potential drama of reality television?
Amber: No, I wasn’t as worried. I try to keep personal separate from business, and so this reality TV is more of our personal life, even though the business is shown on there. But I’m the type of person where everything that happens happens. We went into business for a reason. I joined her company for a reason. I started my company for a reason. We’re friends for a reason, and it’s nothing. I don’t really worry about the future and things that could possibly happen. Every day, I just try to be the best person that I can be, be the best leader and boss that I can be, and be the best person I can be for my clients, so I wasn’t really worried about it.
Funmi, you have lived your life on display, as you mentioned, in a more controlled and carefully curated way. How would you say that filming a reality show has been an extension of that? And what did it take for you to really bear all on reality television? Because it’s once, once you’re out there, it’s out there, and for public consumption.
Funmi: So for me, it was an easier transition because I have been doing lifestyle content creation for a little bit, so just kind of shifting gears into television, it’s a little bit more invasive. You have a lot more bodies inside of your home. You have to dig a little bit deeper and be a little bit more comfortable with the uncomfortability of it. But I tried to focus on the end goal. I wanna be able to have people see themselves in me, Nigerians, Nigerian-Americans, wives, mothers, and people who juggle more than one thing. So, for them to be able to see themselves in me and feel comfortable in seeing themselves in me, knowing that was my end goal, made it easier to be a lot more vulnerable.
As far as potential criticism from viewers, for me, it’s about understanding that it cannot be controlled. Just like you can do a video, you think you’re saying it one way, and then it gets out, and people have different types of meaning to one video or to one thing that you did. So when you understand that you cannot really control it, that makes it easier for you to let go.
So with reality TV, I always told the girls that we don’t really know how we’re gonna come off until the audience gets a hold of us and create their own narrative for us, and that you cannot control that. So, it’s about being okay with not being able to control the narrative and just being your authentic self and knowing that you stood in who you are. It makes it easier to accept whatever they say. I literally just saw a blog, and they were calling my husband bald, and I took a screenshot of it and I sent it to my husband and we laughed about it for like two minutes because at the end of the day, like what can you do? You’re not gonna go fight these people, you don’t know who they are. So just being okay with anybody making a narrative about you and knowing your truth is what’s gonna sustain us this season and in the other seasons to come.
There’s a lot of reality shows that center on life in the South. What makes the South so special that it’s constantly documented on reality television?
Amber: I say Southern hospitality. There’s nothing like a woman that was raised or has been in the South for a long time. I feel like we just have a different type of hospitality about us. I feel like we are a good mix. I always say I’m a small-town country girl with big-city dreams, and even though I was raised up on a farm, I’ve experienced cities. Us in Birmingham, we have a great mix of what it likes to have different cultural experiences, all while mixing with the city. I always say Birmingham is not too fast and it’s not too slow. It’s just the perfect place to be and the perfect place to live.
Funmi: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Also, the narrative around the South is so outdated. When you go places, I travel a lot, I go up north, I do Fashion Week, and then I go back home. And the narrative around Alabama, like the questions I get asked about Alabama is so crazy. I’m just like, ‘Have y’all ever been down South?’ There’s so many misconceptions. We wear shoes, we wear high heels, it’s not some podunk backwoods part of the world. It’s very developed, it has amazing school systems, amazing homes, all these beautiful things. And so I think for Carlos [King] to want to highlight that is so important because Birmingham is really progressive. And I really hope people get to see that when they see the show.
What are you hoping that viewers see from your specific individual storylines?
Funmi: I think for me, it’s that you can do it all. And I’m not saying do it all perfectly. I think when people think to do it all, they think perfection. You can do it all. You can be a mom, you can be a great wife, you can be an entrepreneur, you can be bold and stand your truth and still have your mental sanity at the end of it. So, I think you can do it all at a great level. We’re not saying perfect, but you can have it all.
Amber: For me, it’s about walking to the beat of your own drum, and dealing with whatever life throws at you. And what’s for you is for you. You don’t compare yourself to anyone, and you understand that the path that God has for you is for you, and your timeline is your timeline and you’re not moving too slow and you’re not moving too fast. It’s about knowing that things happen for a reason and it’s a very specific reason. Don’t feel pressured to make certain decisions. You do what’s best for you and not anyone else.
And lastly, can you guys tease any surprising drama that we will see that even surprised you guys?
Funmi: I’m just the only thing I’m gonna say is it’s the mop of the mop, the mop.
Amber: I never knew a mop could be such a star.
