The Netflix series “Country Ever After” breaks a lot of the rules that fans of reality TV and even the rules many fiction shows usually live by. And it looks and feels like the real, changing and diverse Texas.
It’s the story of Coffey Anderson and his family. He’s a Bangs, Texas, native, and a proudly independent country music artist. Anderson, who is Black, is married to a successful hip-hop dancer named Criscilla Anderson. She’s white, and they’re the parents of three kids. “Country Ever After” is about their family, and about the role their religious faith plays in their lives.
The series also follows Criscilla’s struggle with cancer.
“With our friends, with our family, and with our faith in God, it has really enabled us to navigate this crazy thing called cancer, and to tell the story from our perspective,” Coffey Anderson told Texas Standard.
But the story isn’t a sad one, Anderson said, and he believes that it’s real – not scripted as some so-called reality shows are.
“We really made a point that we weren’t going to do the scripted thing,” Anderson said. “We’re going to be who we are, we’re gonna pray, we’re gonna love our country, we’re gonna love each other. We’re gonna fight for each other, not with each other.”
Anderson expresses a similarly positive outlook about another topic. He says he’s been asked whether he’s experienced racism in country music.
“Country people care about if you’re country or not,” he said. “Are you real, or not? Can you really field-dress a deer? Can you really bait a hook?”
