USA is bringing a new, over-the-top family to reality television with Todd Chrisley and his family in Chrisley Knows Best. He and his family live in a gigantic 30,000 sq. ft. house right outside of Atlanta, and they brag about spending over $300,000 on clothes. According to early promo videos for the show, Chrisley is a controlling father who asks everyone in the family to strive for perfection. He’s also obsessed with fashion, and is trying to get into that cut-throat industry by launching department stores.
He’s definitely charismatic, and according to him, some of his flamboyant mannerisms lead people to ask him via Twitter when he’s going to come out of the closet. His response? “I don’t live in a closet, but if you’d like me to escort you out of yours, I’m happy to do so,” Todd says in the print edition of People. “I am who I am. Love me or walk away. Or in this case, you can use the remote. That anyone is thinking what I’m doing in my bedroom at 45 is exciting!”
He added to People: “There’s no coming out. What you see is what you get. I am what I am. Other people’s opinions of me are just not my business.”
UPDATE – Radar Online reports that Chrisley has been sued for sexual harassment on two separate occasions by both male and female employees.
UPDATE – Todd Chrisley’s son Kyle Chrisley seemingly outed his father to Life & Style in November of 2014. “All the people he calls his best friends in the world…they’re gay,” Kyle said in an interview. “I used to work with him at Chrisley Asset Management. If one of the asset managers was going to take a piss, he would say, ‘You want me to come hold it for you?’” Kyle later addressed why his mother has remained narried to his father for 18 years. “If the money wasn’t there, she would have been gone a long time ago,” Kyle said.
Todd has been married to his wife Julie, a former Miss Carolina (though it’s unclear which Carolina,) for 18 years, and they have five children. And in a way, he’s modeling himself after Kris Jenner, a former neighbor of his who built a reality show empire around her affluent lifestyle with her brood of kids. But Todd’s quick to note that there are some differences. “Kris has done an amazing job,” he says. “But we have boundaries and a different thought process on raising children. Because I came from very little, I wanted to give my children everything I dreamed of, but I have no problem giving them nothing.” In fact Todd’s style of parenting involves putting GPS systems in their cars to track their every move. As he says on the show “He who has the gold rules. I have the gold. You don’t.”
His gold is in a precarious situation right now though, because he’s in the middle of a $45 million bankruptcy case his lawyer says is because of a bad real estate deal. Things got complicated last month when a trustee filed a complaint alleging that he may have give his wife some of his wealth to hide his assets. His lawyer says that is not true.
On the show Chrisley says he made most of his money in real estate, but now he wants to get into his true passion: fashion. In order to do that, he’s launching Chrisley Department Stores.
Here’s a sneak peak of Chrisley Knows Best, which debuts March 13 on USA:
