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Meet the Zanottos

Burnaby family becomes subject of reality TV show
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Real life: North Burnaby family, the Zanottos, (left to right) Mareno, Tina, Guiliana, Tatiana and Franco, have been featured in a pilot for a new reality TV show called La Famiglia. Vancouver-based Life Studios Inc. has finished editing a pilot for the series which the producer says is close to being picked up by a major North American network.

The Zanottos are not your average family.

Parents Tina and Franco Zanotto live with their adult children, Guiliana, 27, and Mareno, 26, and teenage daughter, Tatiana, in a neatly kept house in North Burnaby where they all eat breakfast and dinner together every single day.

They're very close, yet they couldn't be more different from each other.

So when Life Studios Inc., a Vancouver production company, started looking for a subject for its first reality TV show and was introduced to the family through a mutual friend in the entertainment industry, producer Jacob Wasef felt the Zanottos were a perfect fit.

"Working with their personalities (we found) they're very down-to-earth people, but at the same time they have extra-ordinary lives," he said.

Guiliana, for example, works in a tanning salon and drives an H1 Hummer with 28-inch wheels while her brother Mareno refuses to ride with her, preferring to ride his bicycle because he is an ardent environmentalist studying for his masters at SFU.

Tina is a pop singer, who wrote and performed the Italian version of the Titanic movie theme song, My Heart Will Go On, in the late '90s and is now helping to manage her youngest daughter Tatiana's burgeoning singing career.

Franco, meanwhile, owns his own commercial painting company and is working towards his third degree black belt in karate.

Despite their varied interests and passions, the one thing the whole family can agree on is the value of good food, good conversation and family time.

"Our schedules have always revolved around dinner time at six," said Tina, who loves to cook. "Everybody comes home. I think that's really important because that's the time when you kind of hash out your day; you get to talk about what's been bugging you, what's been great. You laugh, you share, you fight, but it gives you that bonding time when you know what's going on in each others' lives."

The pilot was shot during a two-week period in February, and Wasef said it was easier than expected because of how welcoming the Zanottos were towards the crew.

"They're very, very, very warm," he said. "They're not the kind of family that sort of is looking down on us like, 'You guys are crew.' It was just a very warm environment."

The show will be called La Famiglia and will follow the daily lives of each of the family members, as well as their conversations during mealtimes.

When the idea was brought forward to the Zanottos, they were not all immediately receptive, but soon warmed to it.

"I've never done anything in the film industry and I was kind of nervous to talk on camera," said Franco. "But you know what, I felt comfortable after a couple minutes. The guys that were producing it, they were excellent. They made you feel really comfortable, and you know what, I felt really good. And actually, after that, I was looking forward to it."

Guiliana said her family hopes that what comes across on screen is how close her family is and how important the "family first" element is to the overall theme of the show.

However, what happens during the series of half-hour episodes remains to be seen, since this will be indeed an unscripted series, Guiliana noted.

"It's not going to be staged, and what you see is what you get," she said. "That was really important to us. We don't want to be something we're not. We want you to know who we are for who we are, and you either like us or you don't."

Life Studios has pitched the trailer to various networks and is "very close" to being picked up by a major U.S. and Canadian network, according to Wasef. Once a contract is signed, the show will resume shooting in September and be aired next spring, he said.