'XOX Betsey Johnson' Debuts Tonight!

Betsey Johnson's new docu-series, "XOX Betsey Johnson," airs tonight on the Style Network at 8 p.m. The show stars Johnson, 70, and her daughter Lulu, 38, and is a glimsp into Betsey and Lulu's classic mother-daughter relationship that at times is not all cartwheels and roses.

"I'm just going to go crazy until this show hits Sunday night," said Johnson, in a telephone interview to WWD. "Imagine yourself, you haven't seen more than 10 or 15 minutes of footage, and every time an ad comes on, you say, 'Am I doing a reality show?'"

The first episode out of eight gives a brief synopsis of Johnson's meteoric rise in the Seventies, making her the "go-to" designer for party dresses and dressing celebrities such as Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. Then the show fast forwards to her abrupt fall into bankruptcy in 2012, when she was forced to close all her Betsey Johnson stores.

Betsey said she loved having the cameras follow her around. "I'm a life-long cheerleader and like to be bouncing around. I thought it would be a real piece of cake," she said. The cameras followed the ups and downs of her fashion career during a very difficult year, and she was comfortable with that, but it's really the relationship with Lulu that's "the glue that holds the show together," said Betsey.

The show also explores Lulu's desires to create her own clothing line, the stuggles of Betsey and Lulu living together and Betsey's relationship with financial backer Steve Madden.

"I'm feeling a little bit like a queen because of what the reality show has done for me...the press, and the exposure. We really went through a tough year, and had a tough time, and working in a big corporate situation and not being in a little family business. We're doing really well now. We're frozen until we know whether this show is going to work. If it's going to work, I want to make many more products to wear and show off," she said, adding, "It's all about ratings."