Rhonda Shear in Her Own Words: 'Up All Night' Is Back and She Just Launched Her Own Roku ChannelThe 'Up All Night' host on reboots, reinvention, and why the best is absolutely yet to come.Rhonda Shear has always blazed her own trail. When she auditioned for the hosting role that would make her a late-night icon, she walked in with a curling iron and plugged it in mid-audition. Then she started doing her hair in front of the casting directors. She'd been told too many times that she was too pretty to be funny, so she chose to be outrageous.Shear got the job, of course. For eight years, she hosted Up All Night on USA Network. A generation of horror fans and committed night owls never forgot her. I called her on a recent Monday morning to talk about the show's reboot, her intimate apparel empire, and why, at this stage of her life and career, she has never been more herself.Up All Night originally aired on USA Network from 1989 to 1998. Shear hosted the show for all eight seasons, introducing audiences to horror, B-movies, and the kind of sharp, self-aware comedy that, she'll tell you, the industry wasn't entirely ready for at the time."Back then, women in comedy just were not accepted," she explains. "You were very typecast."Shear defied the stereotypes and was unapologetically funny. She went on to film over 430 episodes, working with several different producers over the show's run. She remembers, "I got to work with some iconic people that all went on to do major amazing things, each one had their own style.""When I go back through this footage, I'm wowed by the things that we were doing. We were so ahead of our time on the show. For example, we were putting commercials within the show. That's the kind of stuff that you see on social media now."USA Network apparently destroyed all the original footage of the show. But Shear, as she has proven repeatedly in her career, is not someone who allows herself to be defeated. "I always save my work," she tells me. "I have tons of all my content. If I could get it or tape it or get it from a producer, I always got stuff." In her contract, she had negotiated two VHS copies of every episode, so there would be one for herself and one for her mother in New Orleans. "So I have all the footage of the show. All of the sketches."Sassier, and Somehow Even Funnier" Fans have been asking for a reboot of Up All Night for decades. Shear never stopped loving the show, either. Even with her own brand she had on the Home Shopping Network, she paid homage to the show that made her famous. She used humor to talk about the intimate apparel products she designed and sold.The catalyst came when Shear started attending fan conventions. "I went to one, and the lines were amazing. I was, like, shocked myself, and fans told us we need to reboot Up All Night."She and her husband had already created a fully equipped media studio called Shear Media Studios. It's used for podcasting, influencer shoots, live shopping on TV, film, commercials, and more.
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