"The LYLAS" airs at 4 p.m. Friday on WE tv
If you never knew that Bruno Mars has sisters, don’t worry. You can get a crash course Friday when WE tv launches "The LYLAS," a reality series about their effort to break into the music business.
For starters, the pop superstar has four sisters, each one a beautiful, opinionated and somewhat mouthy aspiring singer: Jaime Kailani, who lives in Los Angeles, and Tiara, Tahiti and Presley Hernandez, who are living with their mother in Hawaii Kai when the series starts.
They had performed together as an all-girl group called The LYLAS for a few years when they got the idea to create the reality show in 2012. The group’s name is an acronym for "love you like a sister," and that seemed like a natural title for the show.
The premise is simple enough: The sisters come together in Los Angeles with the hopes of launching a career as the cameras follow them. By the time Asylum Entertainment began filming the sisters last spring for We tv, they already had some success to draw from, having released a single in January called "Come Back."
No one ignores the elephant in the room: their Grammy Award-winning brother. The sisters joke about Mars on camera, point out they’re prettier than he is.
"It’s a blessing because you can say you’re Bruno Mars’ sister," Tahiti Hernandez said during a conference call from Los Angeles. "But that takes you only so far. When you watch the show, you get to understand and see that nothing is being handed to us on a silver platter. We’re really going through this as four sisters getting into the industry."
But there’s definitely pressure. Their father, Latin percussionist and doo-wop singer Peter Hernandez Sr., points out to the rolling cameras, "They need to come off strong and not bomb as Bruno’s sisters."
The sisters shot eight episodes, and while they think viewers will enjoy their journey, it’s uncharted territory.
"We honestly don’t know what it takes for a show to succeed or not succeed, because this is our first show," said Tiara Hernandez. "We watched the first three shows. We have drama and there are ups and downs, but all in all we are proud of the show we are going to give."
None of them will reveal their ages except to say they range from their early 20s to their mid-30s. But by their own descriptions, they’re very different and competitive siblings.
As the oldest, Kailani said she’s the responsible sister who watches over everyone when they’re out together. "I am more the nurturer," she said.
Tiara Hernandez said she’s bossy. "I’m always pushing the girls maybe more than what they would like me to," she said.
Tahiti Hernandez calls herself the loud one, although her sisters like to note that she cries a lot. "They say I’m dramatic, and I don’t know what the hell that means," she said. "I’m emotional, but I like to have fun, too."
The youngest sister, Presley Hernandez, said she’s the most unfiltered of the group — and the laziest. "I need a lot of pushing, which is good because there are three of them and it takes three of them to get me to move," she said.
The sisters grew up in Hawaii in a musical family. Their father founded The Love Notes, a Waikiki act in which everyone in the family performed — including their now-famous brother, who performed as Little Elvis when he was 3 years old.
"I think we were all good kids," Tahiti Hernandez said. "We were all surrounded by each other. We took out our happiness on each other, and we took out our anger on each other."
But in recent years they were going in different directions. Singing brought them together again.
Kailani, a Kaiser High School graduate, was raising two sons in L.A. and had founded 4 m.a.m.a. earth, a community organization that raises awareness and funds for various causes through art-, music- and nature-based activities such as concerts, events, classes and retreats.
The LYLAS got their start singing together for the organization, Kailani said.
Tiara Hernandez, who like sisters Tahiti and Presley graduated from Roosevelt High School, had at one point studied nursing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and later taught preschool.
Tahiti Hernandez, a single mom raising two young sons, managed a loan company. And Presley is a former waitress.
But as they worked to create harmony as sisters and singers, nothing could have prepared them for the tragedy that struck halfway through the filming schedule. Their mother, Bernadette Bayot, suffered a brain aneurysm in June and died.
"She was our biggest supporter," Tahiti Hernandez said. "But having each other and being there for each other and dealing with this situation shows how families love each other."
Even as the sisters realized they had precious footage of their mother’s last days, the loss nearly derailed them.
Kailani said she started thinking about how much her own life was geared toward making her mother happy.
"I wanted to make her proud," she said. "I wanted to make her happy. But I did have that moment of, ‘Why are we doing this?’"
Kailani said she could hear her mother’s words.
"She would always say the show must go on," Kailani said. "She would want us to keep going. She wouldn’t want us to quit."
