It’s a family affair.
The hit reality series “sMothered,” which follows mothers and daughters with really close bonds, winds up its third season Monday night at 9 on TLC.
This season, among others, “sMothered,” co-produced by The Post, tracked the mother/daughter duos Cher and Dawn, who often dress alike; Hawaii pair Amy and Carina, who sleep in the same bed and swap panties; and Chicago’s Kathy, 60, and Cristina, 34, “sMothered” veterans (all three seasons) who underwent big changes leading up to Monday’s season finale.
“My life kind of got flipped upside-down,” Cristina told The Post. “Obviously I’ve been a stay-at-home mom, and now getting this pizzeria that we own is a full-time job. I’m working a ton of hours. It’s time away from my kids, it’s time away from my mom. And she’s working at the pizza place as much as she can, to be with me. So definitely opening up our own restaurant has changed our lives.”
In the first two seasons of the show, Cristina and Kathy — who live on the same street — had lots of leisure time to eat meals together, lounge by Kathy’s pool, go on shopping trips, plan out home-improvement projects and meddle in Cristina’s sister Carly’s dating life.
However, Cristina and her husband, Carlo, opened up Chicago’s Pizzaboy Pizzeria in February of this year, which impacted Cristina and Kathy’s mother/daughter time since then.
“It used to be eight-to-10-hours a day that we were together,” said Kathy. “Now I’m lucky if it’s four [hours].”
But Cristina saidt they still make sure to plan a girls’ nights together “once a week to keep us sane.”
An unexpected side effect of their new restaurant is that many “sMothered” fans have been coming in from places as far flung as Texas and Hawaii — and that’s helped with the difficulty of opening a new restaurant during a pandemic, they said.
“Because of the show, there’s an influx of people that are coming here,” said Kathy. “Every night there’s people saying, ‘Oh my God, we came here because of the TV show! Can we get a picture?’ It’s really been something else.”
Carlo’s exasperation with his wife and mother-in-law’s relationship has also been a throughline in every season — and their new business endeavor hasn’t changed that.
“He never really has had to work with me before,” said Kathy, who helps out in the restaurant on Fridays and Saturdays. “So I walk in on Friday nights and he’s like, ‘Oh no, she’s here!’”
“My mom has a certain way of doing things,” said Cristina. “For example, one day she walked in and got mad that we were serving a certain type of pizza slice on a certain type of plate. It was like a big uproar in the kitchen. Here we are arguing in front of all the employees over plates! She’s never going to stop, and I don’t care because I think she has the right idea. And [Carlo] gets aggravated. But he deals with it well, I have to say.”
And, Kathy said, she and Cristina are “still hounding [Carly] about her relationships “We’re still trying to find a guy for her,” she said. “Every day is a new adventure for us. There’s never a dull moment. We love doing this show, we’d do it again [if it gets a Season 4].
“We’ll have to see what crazy thing is going to happen in our lives again.”