Alyssa Milano will be flooding our TVs in the coming months. The actress/designer will be hosting the third season of Project Runway All Stars. The news was confirmed The Wrap by Milano's publicist on Monday, June 3.
After gaining popularity from the TV show
Charmed, the star ventured to designing as well. She now leads her own clothing
and jewelry line, Touch by Alyssa Milano, making her a perfect fit for the
Lifetime show. Notably, her mother is also a fashion designer.
This will be the third time that the show's host will be replaced in three
seasons. Angela Lindvall initially held the position in the first season of the
show before being replaced by Carolyn Murphy in season two.
So far, nothing has been revealed about the
show yet. Names of the past designers who will be joining this season's All Star
show have yet to be announced. The Wrap also reports that production for the
third season of the show will begin this May in New York. The show is produced
by Bunim-Murray and Weinstein Company and is expected to premier on the
Lifestyle channel in the US this fall.
Milano has already had a history with the television network. According to The
Wrap, she has starred on the series Sundays at Tiffany's and Wisegal.
Continuing her acting career, the new mom to a son will also be in the new ABC
drama, Mistresses.
Talking to People.com, Milano says the crew and her co-stars had to be very
patient with her as she regularly had to take trips to her trailer to pump.
"Everyone had to be very patient with me when we filmed the pilot of the show
because I was still breastfeeding," Milano told the entertainment news website.
"Every two hours they shut down production for 20 minutes and allowed me to
pump, which was lovely...and odd."
ALYSSA MILANO PREVIEWS SEASON 3
Alyssa Milano says she wasn't prepared for how
intense her role as Project Runway All Stars host would be.
"You spend a lot of time with these people in a very short amount of time and then all of a sudden it’s over," she told reporters in a recent conference call, adding: "The stakes are so high that the emotion is just really, really raw and just out there. You know, so for me I think that was probably the most surprising thing being an outsider coming into a reality show not knowing what that really meant with how real reality really is."
"There were nights that I went home that I couldn’t sleep because of who went home, which by the way I did not expect at all," she said. "I did not expect that to be part of my experience. When you are sending someone home, you are basically shattering their dreams."
Milano isn't the only new addition to the
series: Marie Claire senior fashion editor Zanna Roberts Rassi is taking over
for former mentor Joanna Coles, who is now editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan.
Meanwhile, in an All Stars first, three past winners will compete for another
shot at the crown, which this season features the largest prize package in
Runway history, worth almost $1 million.
Milano added that the level of competition this season is high and that the
judges are harder on the designers because they are "all stars."
"Because they have such experience they’ve been at this for so much long there
is never a piece that walks down the runway where you are like, 'Oh, we got to
send that guy home, or we got to send that girl home' because the pieces are
just all beautiful," she said. "So the deliberations were very long, very
lengthy and very, very difficult. And you know, sometimes it came down to who
just didn’t get the challenge at all."
She added that of her two fellow judges, she agreed more with more with Chapman
and less so with Mizrahi (yet the two are friends now). Milano, who didn't have
a chance to seek any guidance from Project Runway host Heidi Klum before filming
started, said she was a bit intimidated at first, but "the more comfortable I
became the sort of more loud I became."
Milano, of course, has a background in fashion. Her mom was a fashion designer
who sold her clothing in Bloomingdale's and her own Brooklyn-based store, Me and
We. Her grandmother also was a successful milliner. And Milano also has own
clothing and jewelry line, Touch by Alyssa Milano, featuring pro-sports-themed
apparel for women.
"I don’t really remember a time that I didn’t love fashion," she says,
describing her style as "eclectic." "I really like fashion that is innovative
and yet wearable. I like people that take risks with fashion. I like designers
that take risk. I like clothes that you can put on and tell a story with
depending on how you feel that day."
Meanwhile, Milano also gave a preview of the
season's challenge. The premiere, in which Debbie Harry serves as guest judge,
finds the designers tasked with creating a punk-inspired outfit, with Harry
wearing the winning design on tour. And the unconventional challenge will take
the designers to an elementary school in New York where they have to create
garments using only materials found in the classroom. The series finale will
feature the finalists designing a collection inspired by their country of
origin.
Season three of Project Runway All Stars premieres at 9 p.m. Thursday on
Lifetime.