First things first, the original idea of Botched — where two immensely talented and famous plastic surgeons (from The Real Housewives franchise) join forces to fix plastic surgeries gone horribly bad — came from the brilliant Dr. Paul Nassif. The endearing surgeon, however, was quick to credit his partner, Dr. Terry Dubrow, for their latest venture — Botched By Nature premiering on E! Wednesday, Aug 3 at 9pm ET/PT.
“I got to give credit to Dr. Terry because Botched by Nature was more his inception. He kind of brought up the idea of doing this whole traveling thing,” Nassif tells us, on break from a medical lecture he was giving in Kauai. In the new eight-episode series, the duo is traveling across the country offering their talents to help people who were born with a congenital anomaly or suffered a traumatic accident.
“When you go to someone’s house, you really get the full story and the intensity and the emotions of exactly what transpires when someone is born with something, let’s say, for example, it’s a cleft nasal deformity,” Nassif explains. “When you’re talking with them in their home with their family and friends, it’s completely different than sitting inside your exam room, your consult space, talking to the patient, because you’re on their turf. Besides that — which is so intriguing but also so heartfelt — it’s very emotional. It’s the complete human-interest aspect of how we do things.”
Equally interesting (and entertaining) is watching the doctors outside of their normal confines as their ongoing bromance is playfully fueled as they travel to places like Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Texas, New York and the Midwest. The docs do their initial consults on the road but bring patients to their offices for surgery.
Nassif adds, “When you see a kid grow up with a deformity and whether they were teased, whether they were bullied, whether they were shunned — hearing the stories and how you feel … I mean, I don’t know how many times I wanted to sit there and start crying just from these stories.”
As for the severity of each of the cases, Nassif couldn’t share, but he did tell that one of the patients on the show was struck by lightning and suffered a problem that they tried to help repair. “I don’t want to get into too much specifics because that’s the show … but that story’s incredible.”
The premier episode was fantastic. Bless you both for what you’re doing. I’ll never understand vanity based cosmetic surgery, be satisfied with what God gave you, but your work is both necessary and in some cases life saving.
God Bless you both…you two are absolutely fantastic…