Embracing Hanai: Wayne Brady’s Blended Family on “The Family Remix”

“Wayne Brady: The Family Remix” intimately follows the family of Wayne Brady, multi-hyphenated entertainer, as they navigate their day-to-day lives. A production of Fremantle and A Wayne and Mandie Creative, the show intends to showcase how the family works together to solve various hurdles, big and small. While the family has garnered attention from their social media posts (including their dances on TikTok), they aim to demonstrate the true dynamics of their family.

The self-titled “Core Four” (comprised of Wayne Brady, his business partner and ex-wife Mandie Taketa, their daughter Maile Brady, Mandie’s life partner Jason Michael Fordham) describes themselves as a “blended family.” Maile describes being a blended family as inspired by the concept of hanai.

Hanai

“My mom’s family is from Hawaii, and that’s a really big part of our lives (I was raised part-time there as well). And in Hawaii, there’s the concept of Hanai family, which is accepting others as like blood, as if they’re your own. Like [it takes] the village…to take care of each other, raise a child, etc. And I think for me growing up in that environment with cousins that weren’t blood, aunties, uncles that weren’t blood… that’s what blended family means to me. It’s like blood doesn’t quantify how close you are to someone, how much you love someone. Every day you wake up and decide to continue to be family… I don’t think we could have done that without that foundation.”

Mandie Taketa expands that to her, “blended family” means to be “a group of people that accept you. Wholeheartedly accept you and love you and want the best for you. It’s those people. It has nothing to do with being related.”

Family Dynamics

The family stated that they decided to create the show after garnering attention online about their unique family dynamics. “We were offered a few times to have a sitcom, and scripts were written by a couple different studios,” Wayne explained. “At the end of the day, none of them truly captured this multi generational, multicultural family, really. And it was always through the lens of somebody who didn’t look like us or talk like us, or really “got” us…after getting a lot of attention because of our videos, and people asking about our dynamics, we said let’s do this thing, and boom! Now we have this show where we’re showing what this family looks like. Good, bad, warts, and all.”

The family also believes that audience members will come away from the show inspired. “We shot this over maybe nine months or so,” Mandie started, ”We talked about some topics and faced some things that I honestly didn’t know how things were going to work out. There was a part of me that was like, this might not be OK. But by the end of it, I was like, holy smokes, time does heal. You can do hard things and you can still be OK like tomorrow’s a new day.”

Learning Experience

The family then reflected on what a learning experience doing the show was for them. Maile said, “When we all come together and put our minds to something, no matter how hard it is, we can get to a finished product that we’re all proud of and that we all really have each other’s backs in any environment.”

Wayne seemed more self-reflective. “I learned that I still have a lot of work to do. I have a lot of self work to do.” Mandie mused, “We’re really special complex. The thing is, we had to work on the show with other producers and they thought they knew us – turns out they didn’t know us. You know…it took them a while to really go ‘ohh, you guys really hang out together. You really do confide in each other… You’re not what I expected.’ That’s what we hear all the time. Yeah, we’re the Core Four.”

Jason’s answer felt more philosophical: “I learned that a lot of relationship building is letting go. More so, not holding tight, but how much can you let go? And how much can you trust? That was the biggest take away for me.”

What’s next?

Regarding what’s next for each person in the family, they gave surprisingly normal answers. “I start school…Normal real life is honestly next,” Maile states. “I’m going to make an effort to really potty train my son Sundance,” Mandie commented. Wayne said “I’m in the middle of shooting this season of ‘Let’s make a deal’ and I’ve got a bunch of touring stuff to do. Mandy and I – our production company – we have a couple of shows in development, and working with Jason. Next is trying to create more entertainment like this, which may move the needle.” Jason joked, “I’m on the squad to do the potty training, so that’s that’s first and foremost priority.” He then continued that he aims to work more ”behind the camera…Just seeing what that looks like moving forward.”

The first episode aired on July 24th, 2024. Catch “Wayne Brady: The Family Remix” on Freeform and/or Hulu!

Interview by Rachel Bui