The long way here
Adrian Pruett grew up in South Miami in the 1980s, obsessed with stories and moving images from the start. At twelve he left for the Milton Hershey School, the Pennsylvania boarding school the chocolate magnate built for underprivileged kids — it wouldn't be the last time the universe gave him a helping hand. Film school at UNLV, then west to Los Angeles in 2002 with only a suitcase and an old truck. A friend let him sleep on a dog's bed in a Los Feliz studio apartment.
His first television job was The Real World: Paris in 2003, when reality programming was still an extension of vérité documentary. He went on to film professional tornado chases, undercover DEA agents, North Las Vegas SWAT, bachelors, bakers — and, once, Bigfoot. Over two decades the log grew to a hundred-plus airing television series, a dozen independent features, and hundreds of commercials, music videos, and art films, shot in two dozen countries for Disney+, Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, FOX, NBC, ABC, and CBS.
He was director of photography for seasons 10–12 of MasterChef and four seasons of LEGO Masters, produced by Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment. For Red Bull he supervising-produced Sky Trippers, following paramotor pilots across Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia. His feature work as cinematographer spans twelve films, including Venus as a Boy, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Festival and finished runner-up for the Audience Award.
Pruett co-directed Red Table Talk and directed Disney+'s Turning the Tables with Robin Roberts — both winners of the Daytime Emmy® Award for Outstanding Informative Talk Show. In 2024 he was nominated for the Daytime Emmy® for directing the series' second season. He recently wrapped as EP and director of a twelve-part cooking series, the first show under his new company BTCENT, entertaining a community that believes in hope, abundance, and a better future.
