Shep Rose's mom shares 'Southern Charm' reality back home on Hilton Head
Shep Rose was invited last week to walk the red carpet of the stars at NBC's Upfront event in New York City.
His mom asked him what he was going to wear.
"Some girl from Ferragamo called him and said, 'We'd like to suit you up,' " said Fran Rose.
Welcome to the latest episode in the charmed life of Shep Rose, the surprising star of Bravo TV's Charleston reality show, "Southern Charm."
The Rose family has been charmed by Hilton Head Island since Shepard, as his mother calls him, was a 1-year-old and his father, William S. "Rip" Rose Jr., came to practice law.
But how charming is it at home when the son of a man appointed an assistant attorney general by Ronald Reagan goes viral on a show celebrating Charleston as "a playground for men who don't want to grow up"?
"You know," said his perfectly charming mother, "Shepard's always done his own thing. And ... he's 35. That's what I told his siblings -- he's 35."
She imitates Shep's older sister and younger brother, both quite settled in Charlotte -- and married -- saying, "We know. We know."
"I'm not going to sit there and tell him what he needs to do with his life. And he's had some interesting jobs, and he's got a million friends, and he's a happy guy."
And he's got an MBA from Vanderbilt, and has invested in businesses and bought a rental condominium on Hilton Head at the bottom of the recession market. And besides, most people think he's charming.
There was the Spanish teacher who sent home a terse note that still makes Fran laugh.
"Shepard thinks he can get by on charm alone," the note read. "He doesn't have that much."
BOXES OF SUNGLASSES
The family's deal with Shep was that he could knock himself out on reality TV as long as he left them out of the picture.
When we talked last week, Fran declined to be photographed.
But Shep charmed his mother into going on TV. It showed her helping him decorate his new house on a sketchy street in Charleston. "That was Mama work," she said. "He was clueless."
It led to this unlikely scene: Rip and Fran Rose are having drinks and dinner with friends on the rooftop of the new Sea Pines Beach Club when a young lady asks Fran if she's Shep Rose's mom.
"I figured it was someone he had known here from school, but it wasn't," Fran said. "It was a girl from Boston who was here visiting her aunt. She said, 'I knew he grew up in Sea Pines so I was looking for you.'"
The most common question Fran gets is: "Is he dating anyone?"
"Nooooo."
Everyone wants a selfie with Shep.
"He gets boxes of clothes sent to him and boxes of sunglasses, which is just nuts, because really what they want him to do is tweet about them, which I don't even know what tweet is," said Fran.
Neither did Shep until Bravo said he had to join Twitter to be accessible to his fans. This way, 37,700 of his closest friends got to see him walking the red carpet with "Southern Charm" co-star Cameran Eubanks.
"In the beginning he was a little shocked that some people can be rather venomous in a simple tweet," Fran said. "Someone said, 'Your parents must be so embarrassed by you' and all this stuff.
"He said it started to make him mad, but you just can't go there. He said, 'I tweeted back that my mother and father are a lot cooler than you are. Just turn it off if you don't like it.' "
'A DIFFERENT PATH'
The reality at Fran and Rip Rose's empty nest in Sea Pines is that "Southern Charm" has been a lot of fun.
For the second season, they're up at 10 p.m. each Monday taking it in like anyone else.
"I cringe if he has to be beeped out," Fran said. "I said, 'Shepard, no swearing on camera. The beep just does me in, knowing that you could have found different and better vocabulary words.' So he's working on that. He's working on that."
Shep always went full out, she said. His teacher conferences lasted three times longer than his sister's. He was hard on his little brother. He loved sports. "I knew what I could take away if he misbehaved," Fran said.
The reality show at home shows the Roses attending All Saints Episcopal and Rip Rose acting "of counsel" at the McNair Law Firm. He's on the board of Volunteers in Medicine. Both his parents lived their final years at The Cypress on Hilton Head.
"You know, my family is just loaded with lawyers," said Fran of her upbringing in Montgomery, Ala. "That's just not what Shepard wanted. He just hears a different piper and that's great for him."
He knows business, his mama said. He likes to write. He's a fabulous uncle. And he may parlay a reality TV show that won't last forever into something he really enjoys.
"We're not supporting him," Fran said. "I think, particularly after that last recession, that everybody sort of felt, 'You know, my kid may find his way on a different path than we did.' "
- Hilton Head Island native and 'Southern Charm' star Shep Rose talks show's premiere, Feb. 26, 2014
- 'It was a blast': 'Southern Charm' star and Hilton Head Island native Shep Rose reflects on show, April 19, 2014
This story was originally published May 16, 2015 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Shep Rose's mom shares 'Southern Charm' reality back home on Hilton Head."