In 2021, TikTok’s algorithm blanketed feeds across the world with videos from sorority rush at the University of Alabama, and nearly overnight, a group of teenage girls in Tuscaloosa gave users a front row seat to sorority pledging in the American South. In 2023, Bama Rush, a documentary from Vice Studios that followed four women through rush, tried to make something more solid out of the Outfit of the Day videos. The initial attraction of #BamaRush has faded from its saturation point, but an online fascination with Southern sorority life has lingered.
Vice Studios decided to return to rush in 2024 with a new perspective. In A Sorority Mom’s Guide to Rush, which began a 10-episode season on Lifetime last month, filmmakers follow 20 mother-daughter pairs at different Southern universities as they get ready for the grueling rush season. The cameras are rolling when Bid Day at the University of Mississippi turns the streets of Oxford into a Lululemon Pamplona, but most of the footage comes from earlier sessions with rush coaches Bill Alverson and Brandis Bradley. With the assistance of their mothers, the coaches help each potential new member as they workshop rush week outfits, film an audition tape, and master the etiquette. Behind all the rigmarole, each coach is really helping the pairs deal with their separation anxiety as the daughters embark on their adult lives.
For Lauren Terp, one of the show’s executive producers, tracking last year’s PNMs—that’s potential new members—led to deeper meditations on the nature of adulthood. “Sometimes we think that it’s isolated to when you’re in your early 20s and you’re venturing out into the world for the first time,” she says. “But I think it’s such a human thing to figure out: How do I represent myself in the world? How do I do that in a way that’s authentically me and what’s the reaction going to be when I put that out there?”
Vanity Fair spoke to Terp, cohead of unscripted at Vice Studios, about casting mother-daughter pairs who were willing to let it all hang out, and why outsiders find the sorority ritual so fascinating.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Vanity Fair: How did the show grow out of Bama Rush? The addition of the mothers really provides a whole new perspective about why sororities have become so important to the culture at Southern schools.
Lauren Terp: After Bama Rush, we really wanted to continue the cultural conversation with a much more intimate look at rush from an on-the-ground perspective. We really wanted to be able to get in there with the young women and kind of follow them through that experience, but also have a broader range of experiences and perspectives. We were trying to understand where these young women were coming from. Is this young person coming from a family that has a history of legacy membership where this is an expectation? With that can come certain pressures, and it gives us insight into whatever they may be facing. They also might be coming from a background where nobody in their family even went to college—that’s a whole other layer that we get to dive into because we get so many different perspectives. Then we added the coaches, which have increasingly become their own cultural phenomena—how do we use resources like coaches in any aspect of our life to help us prepare?
When you were casting the mother-daughter pairs, what qualities attracted you?
It’s so funny because there are certain formulas that people might have, and I don’t know that we necessarily had a formula. We were very familiar with this world, especially the online world, and I was always curious to know more about the girls who gave us their OOTDs [Outfit of the Day]. We thought about how they might present on TikTok, how in-depth we felt we could go with their stories, and we weighed how comfortable they were with sharing.
One of the first casting tapes to come through would be our first episode. It was Carol Anne [an Auburn alum who loved her sorority] and Emily [Carol Anne’s daughter and a rising Auburn freshman who was feeling nervous about rushing]. The pure excitement, the stakes, and a little bit of fear—all of that just came through so loud and clear. The dynamic between Emily and her mom, it was really compelling in a way that extended well beyond sorority rush.
Authenticity was a huge thing for us. I think we all look for authenticity when we’re watching creators online, but for us, we wanted to make sure that we were filming with people who were very comfortable being open and sharing their experience with us and sharing the struggles.
