Sports great Deion Sanders and wife Pilar bask poolside at their mansion in the Oxygen reality series 'Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love.'
Deion and Pillar Biggers Sanders, rear center, are pictured with their children, from left: Shedeur, Deiondra, Shilo, Deion Jr. and Shelomi. Deiondra and Deion Jr. (nicknamed "Bucky") are from Deion's first marriage.
Elmira native Pilar Sanders describes herself as a "very, very private person." But as an actress and model and the wife of a retired sports superstar, privacy is hard to come by.
"And whether I want it or not, a lot of our stuff is exposed anyway," she says. "So why not go for the full gamut?"
In her case, the full gamut is inviting a television crew to share her family life for 15 weeks for a new reality television show. Pilar, whose name was Pilar Biggers when she was growing up in Elmira, and her husband, former pro football and baseball player Deion Sanders, are the subjects of "Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love," which debuts tonight on the Oxygen network.
We've been down this road before with other celebrity couples, seeing the day-to-day lives of everybody from metal icon Ozzy Osbourne to pro wrestler Terry "Hulk" Hogan. But Pilar says "Prime Time Love" offers something very different: a family that, for the most part, really gets along.
"I think what you're going to see and find in viewing our show is that our home and our family is based on love, and we're committed to making things work," she says.
She said the show is also different because it provides a positive image of a black family.
"We don't really see that many shows that really depict African-American families ... you know, in a bright light or in a great manner," she says. "Many of the shows that are on now bring much dissatisfaction to the African-American community."
Not that it's always all smiles at the Sanders' 40,000-square foot mansion in Prosper, Texas. The Sanders have their disputes, just like any other couple.
"(But) there's always a bounce back, and there's always a foundation of love, whether it be tackling conflict within the marriage or with the disciplining our children, or in anything that we do," she says. "The base of all that is love and commitment."
It might surprise sports fans just how laid-back and unpretentious Deion is off the field. As a football player, he garnered lots of attention with the high-stepping, self-aggrandizing behavior that gained him the "Prime Time" nickname. He says the reputation he developed as a partier was never true, just part of the "Prime Time" persona.
"You know, I've never drank or smoked, or never been high, a day in my life," he says. "So a lot of things that people never knew about me will probably be exposed on this show. They're seeing that I'm a homebody. I love home ... A lot of stereotypes will be broken when you see this show."
When not working for the NFL, Deion coaches his children's sports teams and plays in recreational basketball leagues. He says he's been approached to appear on "Dancing With the Stars," but declined because of old sports injuries.
Both say they are big fans of reality television, and it was while watching TV that they hatched the idea for "Prime Time Love." Deion, an analyst for NFL Network, pitched the idea to Oxygen. It was no trouble at all to convince their five children, including two from Deion's first marriage, to let cameras invade their privacy.
"They're definitely made for the camera," Pilar says. "I mean, the smaller ones at first, they had to get used to it a little bit. It took maybe a day.
"But our older children just absolutely love the camera. So it wasn't anything that they really had to question or we had to consult them with. Deion, he's a superstar, so they're pretty much used to being around cameras and being around people."
They say they're not inviting the kind of trouble other reality-show families have run into by exposing their children to a little bit of the spotlight.
"I don't think any of these (families) that have been on there, that suffered, really has Christian values and have their faith as the first and foremost thing," Deion said. "We're doing this, really, to substantiate the claim that there are many African-American families that live properly and (are) not necessarily argumentative, in disarray and total chaos."
POST COMMENTS BELOW:
Star-Gazette.com
http://www.star-gazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080415/LIFE/804150302/1035
