'The Client List' Creator Reveals the Origin of Lifetime's Best Bad Show

In its original incarnation, The Client List was one of Lifetime’s specialties: a titillating TV movie about a woman caught in a precarious situation fraught with high stakes and high melodrama. The woman in this case was Samantha Horton (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and her precarious situation involved taking a job at a massage parlor to pay the bills and discovering that the male clients demanded a little something extra from the female employees. Thanks to the risqué subject matter, The Client List pulled in strong numbers following its premiere in 2010, and led the network to consider turning it into a full-fledged series.


When the show debuted two years later, the name and lead actress remained intact, but a lot had changed. Instead of Samantha Horton, Hewitt played Riley Parks, who finds a job at a day spa called The Rub after her husband ditches her and their two kids. And while the Rub’s staff sometimes go above and beyond the call of duty to satisfy their clients, they never venture down the dark roads that Sam did in the movie. In fact, the mood on the episodic version of The Client List was often buoyant, as series creator Jordan Budde turned what had been a cautionary tale into a frothy soap opera. Hewitt attacked her role with gusto as well, bringing lots of attitude to a character that often wore very little clothing. As part of Yahoo TV’s “30 Best Bad Shows of the Last 30 Years” countdown, Budde, who didn’t oversee the show during its full two-season run, spoke with us about how Hewitt filmed those massage sequences and her real-life romance with co-star (now husband) Brian Hallisay. 


Suzanne Martin wrote the TV movie version of The Client List. How did you get involved with the series?

Part of the appeal of the show is the soapy tone; there’s a lot of drama, but it’s done with a light touch.

Did she have any input in casting the guys she’d be massaging?