We've all seen an episode or two of at least one reality show, and we all vary in how entertained we are by these shows.
We can all understand that these shows are exaggerated for the sake of entertainment, but we have to wonder, what really goes on behind the curtain?
Curious, Redditor body_by_art asked:
"People who were on shows like 'Supernanny,' 'The World's Strictest Parents,' or 'Scared Straight!,' what was the experience like?"
"And what was the aftermath?"
Perpetuating Stereotypes
"I really dislike this ‘idiot dad’ narrative that a lot of media pushes. It’s sexist not only in that it says that men are stupid, but also in that it assumes women’s ‘place’ is managing the household."
For Health Benefits
"I'd like to contribute from a different show; hopefully someone sees this! My brother was on a show called 'Violent Children: Desperate Parents,' and honestly they were brilliant."
"I wasn't part of this whole experience because I was in University at the time, but my father and my brother both were in this show and the show staff was honestly brilliant."
"Here in the UK, especially Wales where my family lives, mental health is not really a thing the poor have access to and my family is definitely working class. This show gave my brother and my father access to mental healthcare they would have never been able to access themselves and made quite a large difference in both their lives."
"They continued to support my family for almost a year after filming with offers of more mental health help, and both my father and my brother are happier people today because of this."
"One thing I will say is the only reason we were featured on this show was out of pure desperation. There was basically no other way that my father could imagine getting help, given he'd spent almost eight years fighting with the NHS to get my brother psychological help, all to basically no avail."
"My family was made into entertainment for the masses so that we could access something fairly basic. Something about the whole experience doesn't sit right with me at all."
- kn100
Exaggerated to a Fault
"I'm a little bit late to this one, but my younger siblings, mother, and then stepfather were on a program in the UK called 'Mum's On Strike' in the mid-2000s."
"The premise was that the mother would be sick of doing everything around the house, and would be whisked away to a luxury spa for a weekend, leaving the clueless father in charge of trying to take care of the household duties."
"A lot of the conversations and scenarios were faked. I supposedly visited them for the weekend, but I did multiple different shoots across a few hours on the last day of filming, then went back home."
"They'd cause fights between the siblings by purposely creating situations where one was favored over the other, so the others would throw a tantrum."
"There was a shoot on location in our local town center, and they encouraged my little brother to run off into all sorts of different shops, causing hilarity as my stepfather tried chasing after him with two other children in tow."
"Mealtimes were a bit of a farce as well. As it was a weekend, my stepfather had to cook a traditional roast dinner. The production company intentionally supplied incorrect ingredients to make sure my stepfather looked like an idiot. They filmed my reaction to him trying to add beans to the roast a few different times, so they could pick the best one."
"In the end, after they'd got all the footage they wanted, they sent one of the production team out to the chippy to get us some actual edible food."
- Henry1691
No Air Time
"I was on 'Scared Straight,' and my episode never even aired because they only select a very small amount of footage to make it look a lot worse than it actually is. Most prisoners were pretty nice."
- franklinclinton1
Dramatic Transformations
"A classmate was on MTV's 'Made.' They came to my high school too and turned a classmate into prom queen. It wasn’t a stretch, she was naturally pretty but went back to her nerd look right after they left."
"It was crazy how MTV made it look like she had no friends when she actually had a huge group she’d hang out with all the time."
"They also made her love interest look like such a jerk when he was actually the nicest guy you’d ever meet."
"I haven’t believed reality TV since 2005. Still enjoy the ridiculousness of it sometimes."
- TheRealMrsNesbit
So Staged
"A friend of mine worked on 'Nanny 911' in NYC. Nothing on that show happened unless the producers okayed it. They would come up with scenarios and plot points to film."
"You don't just shoot TV shows like that and hope that something magical happens. They created every 'issue.'"
"Reality TV is not real."
"Also, the camera crew who worked on 'Nanny 911' also worked on other shows like 'Real Housewives of New York,' Kitchen Nightmares,' and 'Hell's Kitchen.' The film business is a very small world."
- Jonlife
Nothing Revelatory About It
"My friend was on 'Supernanny,' they don't actually do anything, it's just acting, he and his brother are still exactly the same as they were before."
- screamingXeagle
Breaking the Cycle
"Her techniques on 'Supernanny' (and, honestly, the children themselves) are never really the problem, it's the parents."
"She's not there long enough to break years of bad parenting habits. I imagine that a lot of the parents just revert right back to their old ways as soon as the camera crew packs up their stuff."
- xaviira
Safety Precautions
"One of my friends in grade school was on 'Nanny 911' as a kid (maybe around five years old)."
"There were a lot of kids in her family and one of the biggest problems the nanny had with their household was safety. She baby-proofed the entire house and lectured them on safety precautions they have to take in their lives to ensure that the children wouldn't get hurt."
"She even gave them all helmets to wear whenever they rode bikes or 4-wheelers."
"After she left, a lot of the safety precautions went out of the window, and later my friend told me that they still had the helmets but they were all sitting in a dusty corner."
- -k_d_t-
Scripting Matters
"I worked on 'Teen Mom' and saw how the process works. It’s mostly just the crew following the people around, letting them live their lives with the producer occasionally throwing in some talking points and guiding the 'talent' on what topics they need to touch on."
"But there was no actual scripting involved. There was way more emphasis on the editing if anything."
- TostitoNipples
Small World
"I lived in India. Once in my school when I was in sixth grade, these 'foreign kids' popped up with a bunch of cameramen and stuff. Speculation went wild. We thought our terrible principal probably wanted to create a 'cool' image for the school and was creating some kind of weird advertisement."
"Anyway, years later, I saw a YouTube clip by complete chance of 'The World's Strictest Parents.' It was my school and those exact kids! They had come to visit an Indian family, whose children went to my school."
"The episode was a lot of drama. The parents were kind of obnoxious, at least for the episode."
"However, the last I heard on asking a few friends was that those parents were fine and their children are doing reasonably well. Not sure about the 'foreign kids' who came."
"What a small world! Seems like ages ago."
- ReelWatt
Close to Home
"Like three years ago, I lived in a big 5-bedroom house with four other friends in college. The house was in an episode of 'Supernanny.' We found out because our nice neighbor literally gave us a signed headshot from Jo Frost as a gift out of the blue."
"He literally told us, 'I think y’all would like this more than me and get a kick out of it.'"
"It made our week and we found the episode online and watched it. I asked about the family to the neighbor as our house was rented out and owned by a property company."
"He told me after the show the parents fought all the time, lost all of their money due to 2008 crisis, and lost the house to foreclosure."
"The picture stayed on our mantle for three years and I thought about that family every time."
- Redditor deleted
Beyond Surreal
"My childhood home had been in a famous episode of a famous reality show. (I'd doxx myself if I said which.)"
"It was so odd watching it. It was filmed before we bought it and my parents remodeled it. So it was weird seeing how it looked when we first bought it. Seeing all the old stuff. And also my neighborhood. The outside of my best friend's house was also featured heavily in the episode."
"My parents loved pointing out bits they personally remodeled. 'I remember pulling that out!' and 'Ug, remember that awful wallpaper!' and that sort of thing."
"The funniest part was that they pretended a closet door was a bathroom door in the show. My parents actually built a bathroom there, before ever seeing the episode. So it was really head-spinning to see that."
- harpejist
The Dreaded Watch Party
"A coworker was featured on SuperNanny. They had a pretty good experience filming and were so excited for their show to air that they hosted a watch party."
"I’m sure you can imagine what’s next. The way the show was edited made the parents look SO bad (like, neglectful bad) and made the kids (who were pretty wild) look even worse."
"It ended up being a pretty awkward watch party."
- shan_diego
A Great Future
"I don't know if this counts but I was on an episode of 'MADE' on MTV (if anyone remembers that show)..."
"It was my senior year of high school, so about seven years ago. People gave me crap about it forever and still do. I was made into a 'screamo' singer, and the experience was interesting, to say the least."
"The money and flight/trip to NYC though at 17 years old made the whole embarrassment worth it. Plus, I work in the broadcast business now, so it really opened up a lot of doors and showed me a career I LOVE."
"Seeing kids now that were in my shoes, so fascinated by entertainment media, makes me so genuinely happy."
- BLONDEB***HH
While everyone expects reality shows to be at least somewhat exaggerated, it's interesting to think about what goes on behind-the-scenes in order to make those dramatic scenes happen. Imagining someone acting completely out of character for the sake of a few scenes is particularly wild.
Dating shows occupy such a strange space in the broad array of television. On one hand, everyone lampoons them as fake, drama-obsessed monstrosities that are a waste of time.
And yet, so many of us keep tuning in year after year.
So it goes without saying that plenty of us are rather curious about what exactly is real, what is fake, and what else is going on behind the scenes.
Thankfully, at least a few Reddit users are also former dating show contestents. And they were happy to oblige and share their experiences.
Redditor Fartfartfart69 asked:
"People who have appeared on dating shows (naked attraction, first dates), what's it like behind the cameras?"
Many people, of course, talked about how fake and scripted they were. But it was still interesting to learn how they went about the faking.
Good Practice
"I was an actor in the 90s/00s."
"Our agency supplied actors to dating shows. We had three people pretending to be in a love triangle, being sad and emotional and angry and whatever, and we watched a recording of it in our classes, including the three in question, laughing at the sheer... well, falsehood of it all. It was basically improv. I actually didn't know until then that the contestants were faked."
"I guess real people do apply, so perhaps they use a mixture of real applicants and stooges to pad out other episodes."
-- Woodcharles
Be Moody
"I don't speak Spanish fluently, but one time I appeared on 'Doce Corazones' (12 Hearts), which is a Spanish language romance show where a woman has to choose from 12 men to date. (Living in Southern California, where it's filmed, and a Spanish speaking friend of mine dragged me to the set when they had a last minute cancellation and needed someone to stand in lol.)"
"Anyway, the gimmick of the show is that each of the 12 guys has a different zodiac sign, and I guess that's part of the host / matchmaker's recommendation to the woman. I didn't really understand what was going on, but they didn't care what my actual birthday was. They just told me to pretend to be a Sagittarius for the show. I made it to the second round (the woman didn't kick me off immediately, much to my surprise lol)."
"When she asked me to describe myself, I just kind of said "you know, I'm a nice guy who likes having fun" or something ridiculous in my high school level Spanish. It was a silly but memorable experience. Wish I could find it on YouTube. It would have been 2005 or 2006."
-- Jscott1986
Perhaps Not Always Scripted?
"A girl I went to high school with was on Married At First Sight, and she said it was mostly scripted and edited to make her look super bad because people 'love the drama.' "
"Except, I couldn't tell it was edited. That's just how she was. Anyway, she's engaged again. So it obviously didn't make her look too bad."
A New Man
"Had a non-actor friend on MTVs 'Next' in the early 00's as one of the three suitors on the bus. I watched the episode and the banter didn't sound like him at all."
"I asked and he said 'every single word out of my mouth was scripted.' "
Others discussed the less sexy aspect of life on the set of a dating show: the long, drawn out logistical requirements of putting together a network television show.
Long and Expensive
"A friend was on the Irish First Dates. She said everything took ages. They had to get there early and wait for hours to be called, they were told to take a toilet break during the date so they could be filmed phoning someone, this took a long time as they had to change microphones, afterwards they had to wait around to be filmed talking about the date. "
"They were given €20 towards the meal and had to pay the rest themselves. The taxi afterwards is just for filming purposes and drops them off round the corner, they have to make their own way home."
-- spodokomodo
Scheduling
"Not me, but my best friend was on First Dates (Dutch one). There was a lot of waiting, I think he was there for 4 hours in total. Had to eat a 3 course meal at 12 in the afternoon."
"What I thought was also funny was that the shot of them walking towards the restaurant is shot way before the actual date. So they are not walking towards their date, they just approach the restaurant and then go back to the waiting room."
"Restaurant"
"I was at first dates (in the Netherlands) as a date for in background. You arrive at a large empty room with the rest of the background date people and then you have to sign some stuff. I couldn't wear color or a print, that was too much of a distraction, and the attention should be on the real participants."
"We saw the participants in the same empty room but we couldn't talk to them. Then we went to the restaurant, which was a small tv studio. It looks big on tv, but is was really small. There was no music at all, because they had to edit the footage later. They told us to speak loudly. The food was good and the waiters were really nice. (Sorry for any mistakes, English is not my first language)"
-- DeZilk
And some shared a few unexpected gems. After all, a reality television set is a workplace like any other: full of flaws, bad people, good people, and boredom.
On Call
"Good buddy of mine was on a Bachelorette style show. He was drunk most of time. They used the lavalier mics to have PAs restock whiskey and replace kegs more than they used it to record actual audio for the show."
"It was interesting to see parts of his 'story' being told as sweet and kind man, but as a good friend I could just see the drunk on his face on a lot of his dates/interactions. He ended up winning. They also NDA'd him to hell and he refused to talk about the show in any capacity until a year or so after it aired."
-- tdjustin
Gotta Pass the Time Somehow
"Crews bet on everything. If it's a competition in any way crews have money flying all around it. Only producers keep out of the betting rings."
"This goes for basically every reality show."
Puppet Masters
"I got married in one of the first episodes of Don't Tell the Bride (I was the groom). The producers were f**king awful. Because it was the first season, they hadn't quite figured out the rules, what I could / couldn't do. They also lied to me on numerous occasions, manipulated things, tried to provoke me into angry outbursts on camera. I refused to play ball."
"I stayed calm but in truth it was the most stressful four weeks of my life. I lost a stone in weight over that period. The final edit was also full of lies and manipulation through editing. As it was a BBC production I had higher hopes, but it was a private production company who had zero ethics or duty of care. Would definitely not recommend it to anyone else."
-- TVnomics
At least now if you ever want to become a contestant, you know exactly what you're getting yourself into.
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People Who Were On A Reality Show As Children Describe What The Experience Was Really Like
Reality shows are extremely popular because it is an ultimate form of voyeurism.
Whether it's on a competition or a home makeover show, pleasure is derived from watching real-life people respond dramatically to inconsequential situations.
But how much of what we see are authentic reactions?
Curious about the experiences of those who were on camera, Redditor S3xySouthernB asked:
"People who were on reality family shows as kids (think super nanny, wife swap etc) how much of it was real and how much was fiction/set up for drama? Did anything change?"
Reddit Users Share Their Best 'It's A Small World After All' Experience
Unreality
The following Redditors frowned upon the concept of being portrayed differently on camera.
The Gamer
"I was on Wife Swap when I was 10 years old. My family had to switch with a farming family and we were supposed to be the 'city family' even though my family and I lived in the suburbs. There were plenty of quotes taken out of context as you'd expect. They also incited plenty of drama. I was framed as addicted to video games so they took my xbox and gameboy color for the week. A few days in one of the crew members came in with my gameboy and said 'look I found this' and handed it to me. It shouldn't be surprising that they sent the woman staying in our house into my room to 'catch me in the act'."
"To be honest not much has really changed in my life except getting snapchats of my 10 year old face when my friends catch the reruns. I'm open to any questions if anyone is curious."
It was Season 3 Episode 13 of Wife Swap"
Update for anyone who was curious about how much money the show gave us. The initial amount was $20k but after taxes it came to around $15k like others had expected."
Crazy On Cue
"My parents were 'dinner guests' in an episode of Nanny 911 and they said literally everything was staged. I don't remember all of the details, but they said the directors had a 'code word' that they would say to the kids when they were supposed to start acting all 'crazy'. And then once the scene was done, the kids would be perfectly normal."
False Front
"My friends parents were on worlds strictest parents. They came to my house on 4th of July and when they showed our house on tv it was a huge mansion rather than our actual house. The camera crew also told the visiting 'bad kids' to steal alcohol from our house."
The Master Woodworker
"My family and our home were on that show 'This Old House' in the late '90s. Norm Abrahms was the host, and they picked our house because of my dad's collection of Shaker furniture. The idea was that we gave him a tour of the house (while being filmed) and then he demonstrated to the camera how to make furniture like our."
"Everything was 100% genuine. Norm and the crew were kind and super respectful to all of us. No second takes. When he explained to the camera how to build replicas of the Shaker furniture, it became apparent that he was a master woodworker. Before he left we all took photos together and he signed some stuff. It was a really special day."
"That was right when reality TV was starting to pick up steam. MTV's The Real World was big at the time. I don't think Survivor had come out yet. That was the show that opened the floodgates."
Manipulative Producers
"Canadian Idol—-Producers tell you which songs to sing. First they make you sing in line, if you're really bad or really good you're put through to the producers."
"My friend made it through (honestly an incredible singer.) she had been singing one song the whole time and made it to the judges. She sang her song that got her that far, which was My Hero by Foo Fighters. Then, before she goes the judges the producers say she's going to sing 'Creep' by Radiohead as Foo Fighters aren't on the list of approved songs."
"So she sings Creep, doesn't impress the judges and doesn't make it through. We then watch the show when it's aired, these motherf'kers edited her into the opening and said: 'the good, the bad and the just plain creepy!!' And showed her singing Creep—-she was this gothic girl who didn't fit in with the usual pop star image, she was so humiliated she never sang again."
"Also, Ben Mulroney is one of the worst human beings I've ever met."
Hoarders
A glimpse into the lives of those who are unable to part with their possessions is not always scripted TV.
Hoarding For Real
"I worked with a junk removal company for an episode of hoarders and it was actually 99% REAL. The only thing that they would set up a couple times was if they opened a box and found something interesting off camera they would re-open it on camera and act like they just found it."
Like A Nightmare
"After just having to clear out my best friend's (deceased) mom's house who was a hoarder...I know that show is real. I really feel like I have PTSD from it. I have nightmares where I'm back there."
Laundry Tub
"My mother was (probably still is, we aren't in contact) a hoarder and you don't HAVE to make sh*t up. They're seriously, seriously mentally ill but they refuse help because they don't think they're mentally ill, or 'it's not that bad' or they're 'going to get to it next month' or whatever. Total denial and self delusion, which is, yanno, common with severe mental illness."
"Example: for who knows what reason, my mother started putting dirty laundry in the bathtub. Eventually there was just a mountain of it. She wouldn't wash it despite our washer working fine. She wouldn't move it. She wouldn't let ME wash it. I was showering at school for weeks already when I told her 'Mom the laundry in the tub has to go. This is ridiculous. I'll help with it.'"
"She said 'There's no laundry in the tub.'"
"She actually tried to DENY REALITY. I went in there and was like 'These are clothes. In the tub. This is laundry.'"
"She replied 'Oh I think those are clean.'"
"I said, 'So then put them away?' I knew they weren't clean. I just wanted to shower."
"She said 'I'll do it this weekend when I have off.'"
"I hate to spoil the ending but..... she didn't do it."
"She hired a dumpster once and was going to 'throw out everything'. It got there. Normal sized dumpster. She didn't throw out anything because 'they sent too big of a one'. Paid hundreds of dollars to hire this dumpster and didn't use it."
"Oh. Then. She was going to sell the house. Someone actually wanted to buy it to gut and flip. It was really a cool old house, speaking design-wise. She decided at the last possible second not to sell. Had to reimburse the buyer's closing costs plus a bunch of other fees."
"Then cried to anyone who'd listen how the realtor was a scammer who 'tried to sell her house out from under her'. Like they're just rouge realtors going around, listing people's houses without their consent and selling them."
Drama
Are the emotional outbursts exhibited on reality shows genuine? Not always.
Hairy Situation
"A class mate of mine was on my country's Next Top Model. Before getting into the show she was asked what kind of hair she would never want to get, so that the producers know about it and not make her have it during the makeover episode. My classmate had long blonde hair which she really loved, so she said she doesn't want them to cut her hair off and that she also hated strange unnatural colors like blue, pink etc."
"Fast forward to the makeover episode. The hairstyling team comes in and finds her hair unfitting for a model, so she needs to get a makeover and guess what? Her makeover obviously consists of a pixie cut and green hair to make her look like a 'punk fairy.'"
"My class mate cried throughout the entire process, so I guess the producers got the drama they wanted out of this."
Cue Anger
"There was a family in our neighborhood who was on a show here in Germany. One day, when accompanied by the camera crew, one of the daughters suddenly threw a screaming fit in public, which was totally unusual for her. When the mom was asked later what the f*k had happened, she said, for a tantrum you get 200 bucks extra."
– RayNooze
Birthday Party Meltdown
"A girl I went to school with was on 'My Super Sweet Sixteen'. She was always quiet but well-liked and the kids on that show were usually monsters so we were curious about how the episode would paint her."
"There was one scene where she was checking in on a vendor and they said something might not be finished in time for the party and she didn't have a meltdown or anything but she said something dramatic like, 'Oh no! That's going to ruin my whole birthday party!'"
"After the episode aired her friends who were with her said they did a couple of 'takes' because her first reaction was like, 'Oh, that sucks. Thanks for letting me know.'"
Kids, Act Up!
"My wife was hired as a home school teacher on wife swap. Since the Mom home schooled they want another home schooling Mom to step in and teach. It is all manufactured. They tell the kids to act up. My wife kept getting in trouble cause she kept turning her mic off and wouldn't play their game. She got like 3 seconds of screen time because she taught and did not play into the reality show bullsh*t."
"Incredibly Fake"
"A wedding that I was a bridesmaid in was aired on Say Yes to the Dress."
"They filmed our initial reaction to the bride walking out several times. They, like, wanted us to scream and cry."
"I'll be honest, the whole thing was incredibly fake and rubbed me the wrong way. Pretty on par for the type of person the bride is, though. I don't talk to her anymore."
It appeared the majority of Redditors who vouched for a show's realistic portrayal of people on TV was Hoarders.
For Redditor azulweber, the circumstance was relatable.
"yeah my grandmother and her sister are both hoarders and i have no problem believing that it's real. i can't imagine someone who isn't a hoarder being willing to allow a show to do that to their home and belongings just for tv."
Sadly, the exploitation of a person's mental illness seems to make for must-see television.