Jennifer Lawrence’s new Oscar-bait turn as Joy Mangano, creator of the Miracle Mop, in David O. Russell’s Joy, has outlets like Vogue, People and Good Morning America using the film as an opportunity to remind us that Mangano’s story is indeed a real-life manifestation of the American Dream. But there’s a better way to get to know the founder of Ingenious Designs, LLC: through her appearances on the network that made her famous, HSN.
“What [Russell] created, I think, is just a masterpiece,” Mangano told Vogue of the movie (which she executive produced), before going on to describe Lawrence as “a Macbeth actress in the 1800s.” But though the movie purportedly shows Mangano’s struggle to get where she is, in the present day, things are going swimmingly: she hints at a move into baby products, will soon be releasing a 25th anniversary Miracle Mop that does not require twisting, and come 2016, even more of her products will be available in stores, not just via HSN. (That’s a commercial of Mangano promoting the Miracle Mop in 1996 above.)Mangano is a real HSN celebrity—so much so that they recently produced a short series of videos about her success. (She and the network are clearly not letting the marketing opportunity that is this movie release pass them by.) She’s invented much more than just the Miracle Mop: the Rolykit, Huggable Hangers and My Little Steamer are all her work. Mangano actually started out on QVC (comparisons between her and current “QVC Queen” Lori Greiner of Shark Tank seem difficult to avoid), as The New York Times explained in 2007: