I recently came across this Reddit thread asking, “Redditors who have been on a reality TV show, what are some of the off-screen secrets we aren’t supposed to know?” The responses were soooOOOOo fascinating. Here’s what people said:
Some submissions were taken from this thread because they’re just too good not to share.
1. “My husband had a colleague who was on Love It Or List It, and it’s also, predictably, very fake. They weren’t even looking to move, just signed on for the discount renovation. The producers manufactured ‘roughed in’ pipes that they said their father had installed in the ’70s. That, of course, RUINED the design plan, then magically got ‘fixed’. They film the contestants saying both LOVE IT and LIST IT, but they don’t even know which one will air. With this particular couple, it was a family home, and when the episode aired, they’d said LIST IT, and their relatives started calling them, saying they were losing their minds. They had to explain to everyone that it was fake.”
HGTV
2. “I was an extra on Jersey-Licious. The main character and another girl were supposed to be having a big argument while having dinner. The scene was filmed in an empty bar filled with extras, while the girls (obviously not fighting) were fed their lines.”
3. “I went to a performing arts sleep-away camp, and one summer, MTV decided to come film a season of True Life there. It’s called Camp’d Out: I’m Going to Performing Arts Camp. One of the girls they were following was dating a guy at the camp whose parents didn’t sign the release form, so they couldn’t show him on camera, so they asked her to break up with him and date someone whose parents had signed the release.”
4. “I was on a reality show called Geek Love in 2011 about speed dating at Comic-Con. They made my mom look super overbearing, like she came on my dates to supervise and everything. In reality, she was just there to enjoy the con. She doesn’t really like coming on my dates or anything like that. Otherwise, everything else was real, though, the speed dating and who I picked was all my choice.”
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5. “We auditioned for House Hunters and made it all the way to where they wanted to schedule the shooting, after our interview with one of the casting directors. During the audition, they had us tell the same story multiple times, each time adding new, more dramatic elements. They wanted to know why we liked certain types of houses over others (which is fine), but then asked us about our upbringing and if that had something to do with it. Idk…the whole thing was just weird. My husband (who is a very private person) was so uncomfortable answering questions about his childhood that had nothing to do with us buying a house that we ended up just calling the whole thing off.”
HGTV
6. “My brother’s friend did Super Sweet 16 UK. She was supposed to do a dance, but backed out at the last minute —this was all the show’s idea. She was fine with just a DJ. Also, they asked that some of her friends pretend they weren’t invited, and then they would edit them out of the party.”
7. “I worked for a bakery that was on and won Cupcake Wars. The premise of the show is to surprise the bakers with a few, more often than not, odd ingredients and see what they’re really made of. In reality, we found out the ingredients a few months before the show. Had we not known, there’s no doubt we’d have lost. There are definitely people who thrive under pressure, both in performance and creativity, and they have better things to do with their time than crank out cupcakes for Food Network. Tell an unprepared contestant they have 40 minutes to make a delicious cupcake using tater tots, and nine times out of ten you’ll have a middle-aged woman sobbing into her mixing bowl.”
Food Network
8. “A friend of mine was on that old MTV show Next. One guy, four girls. My friend was the first ‘date’ off the bus. She’s really pretty and a super cool girl. She and the guy hit it off, and he asked her out on a second date. She accepted. But then the producers asked her to get back on the bus because they hadn’t gotten a good shot of her getting off the bus to begin with. She went back on, waited for the director to say action. When she came off the second time, the guy yelled NEXT!!”
9. “My cousin went on Judge Judy once (she sued her ex for something or other), and the producers told her things like, ‘Make sure you tell her right away if the other person is lying, don’t wait until she asks you,’ and ‘Don’t make eye contact with her, it makes her mad.’ Having seen the show, my cousin knew better and ignored everything they said. She won, but not after being berated by Judge Judy for being a liar, even though she had all the evidence needed.”
CBS
10. “I was in an episode of MTV’s True Life. The whole thing was fabricated, and they painted my (now ex-) girlfriend’s family to seem like they didn’t like me at all, when they absolutely loved me. When we weren’t giving them enough drama, they told us we had to amp it up or they’d cut our segment.”
11. “I was on Antiques Roadshow. It’s actually pretty legit, but considering it’s PBS, that shouldn’t be surprising. The main thing you don’t realize is how long you wait in lines. Your ticket has a time on it to help control when you arrive, so foot traffic isn’t bad. You get there and wait for about an hour in line. At the front of the line, you get your items checked (each person gets two), and these tickets direct you to the next line you need to stand in. I had a watch and some art, so I had tickets for the time piece and Asian Art line. After the first hour and a half of waiting, you wait in the main room. You go through the line, and when you reach the front, an appraiser inspects your item. If they like it, they go and talk to the producer to see if they’ll film it.”
“If they film, you’re taken to a small back room where they’ve got make-up and might make adjustments to your clothing (like if you’re wearing a branded shirt, they’ll make you change, but they actually advise you to wear neutral clothing if you’re coming to the show). Then, they do the interview after you sign the release.
If your item is valuable, they provide a security escort to take you to your car.
All in all, it was pretty efficient, and none of it seemed fake. It took a REALLY long time (about five hours, mostly spent standing in line).”
PBS
12. “My aunt’s family was on Nanny 911. They have 10 kids, so it was a great family for the show to manipulate. When we all finally saw the show, it gave me a lot of insight into how heavily manipulated it actually is. They made a situation where my cousin went on a bike ride seem like she was missing and was purposely not coming back to the house, which wasn’t true. They made my uncle seem like an awful dad. He actually ended up getting emails and such with awful threats after the show aired because of how badly they portrayed him.”
13. “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 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.”
TLC
14. “My dad was asked to be on an episode of TLC’s My Strange Addiction. He runs kind of a niche (small) business. And they were like, ‘Hey, you’re addicted to this, right?’ And he was like, ‘Um, no.’ It was a honeybee business. They were hoping he was addicted to bee stings.”
15. “I was on Kitchen Nightmares with my friends and family. We ate on the ‘before’ day. Nothing at our table was fake, but I don’t know about the kitchen scenes (never watched the episode). We did get our food for free because we complained (it was really shitty). The waiter seemed pretty nervous in front of all of the cameras, though. Also, they just told us not to look at the cameras when they came by. I briefly met Gordon Ramsey when I was taking out the trash at the store where I worked, which was next to the restaurant. It was pretty cool. I just said, ‘Hey, Chef,’ and walked away because I didn’t want to disturb him. He said, ‘Hey,’ back.”
Food Network
16. “My family was on Dr. Phil maybe 15 or so years ago. They definitely dug up as much drama as possible and didn’t bring any of it up until we were onstage. It was actually very traumatic for all of us. They picked us all up in separate SUVs the evening before filming and took us to a very nice, expensive hotel for the night. We weren’t allowed to leave the hotel and were picked up by the SUVs in the morning — I’m assuming so we couldn’t really speak to each other or chicken out. In the end, everything just felt so much worse. Fifteen years later and everything is a million times better, but definitely no thanks to the show.”
17. “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’ 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.”
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Fox
18. “I was on Wife Swap when I was 11 or 12. The show gets hours of footage for two weeks and then puts it into a one-hour episode. So you can imagine they can try to make the narrative whatever they want. They really try to emphasize what makes your family different and often exaggerate or encourage the participants to exaggerate. With only one or two cameras, you often enter the same ‘scene’ multiple times, so we actually met the swapped wife for the ‘first’ time three times to get different angles.”
19. “I have been to Carlo’s Bakery, the bakery from Cake Boss. While there, we learned that the wedding they were filming in Italy was completely faked, and the couple never actually got married. It kind of ruined the whole experience for me.”
TLC
20. “I had a friend who went on World’s Strictest Parents. It was very real. But there was no lasting change when he got home, lol.”
21. “A girl I went to school with was on My Super Sweet 16. She was always quiet but well-liked, and the kids on that show were usually monsters, so we were curious 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. 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.'”
MTV
22. “I knew someone on Wife Swap. Her husband cheated with the ‘swapped’ wife, leading to a very real divorce. The show ruined her life for a long time.”
23. “I was in a club when Breaking Amish: LA was being filmed in Vegas. The producers gave the cast tons of booze and brought girls over to their table. The Amish danced with one of the gogo-dancer-type club employees. I’d love to give you more juicy details, but it was not all that exciting. I signed a release to be on TV and never even bothered watching the episode to see if I made it into the show.”
TLC
24. I met someone on a plane once who was on House Hunters. After she purchased her new house, the show came and taped her viewing of that house. Then, they took her to two other houses to make it seem like she was going to pick between the three. In reality, she had bought a house before they even taped the show.”
25. “I was on Wife Swap when I was 13 or so, and they made up more than half of it. They make it so there’s a nice family and a bad family. They made us the bad family of 10 living in a house bus. Anything they can’t make look bad, they don’t put on the show. They act nice and all but make you look like a fool on TV. I remember my mum coming back home crying and stressed out.”
ABC
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26. “I knew a guy pretty well who was on Millionaire Matchmaker. Spoiler: He was not a millionaire. He drove a nice car and owned his own business but lived in an apartment with a roommate. They filmed him in his apartment parking garage pretending all the nice cars were his. He was always about the smoke and mirrors for self-promotion, and it worked. Never seen anyone so unashamed to lie and cheat.”
27. “I was on The Dr. Oz Show once. It was an episode about teen pregnancy. I thought it would be fun, so I agreed to be on the show. Basically, they wanted me to talk about my experience with a teenage pregnancy, and what I thought the impact of 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom had on me. My point in going on the show was that I thought it was irresponsible to blame a TV show for something as serious as teenage pregnancy, and that it gave parents an easy way to get out of dealing with the situation at hand. The producer and a cameraman came to my house and interviewed me for like four hours. In the end, it was about two minutes of footage in which I look like I’m completely bashing the TV shows and blame them for my getting pregnant. They actually edited out anything intelligent I said, and then PUT IT INTO DR. OZ’S LINES!!! I literally saw my opinions being used against me; it was very bizarre.”
“So they had me on stage with Maci, Kailyn, and Leah from Teen Mom, and for the first part of the segment, I was totally dumbfounded and completely nervous. I didn’t really defend my position well at all in my opinion until after the ‘commercial break’. The second half of the segment was what I was really proud of, and I got it together enough to clearly articulate what I was going to say, then when the show aired, they completely edited out the second half.
Another shitty thing was that they tried to give me lines, and the producer kept coming into the room where I was getting ready, repeating them to me over and over. When I was so nervous in the first half of the show, I ended up spitting out something dumb about prom that they kept telling me to say. I then found out that all the ‘Teen Moms’ had a copy of the lines that I was supposed to say, and Maci absolutely owned me on stage over the prom comment. It was really embarrassing.”
Sony Pictures Television
28. “My uncle and his family were on an episode of Wife Swap. We were invited over for a family holiday dinner. It was a very weird experience; we signed our souls away in paperwork before being cued to enter their house (I was in about one second of the episode, walking in their doorway). Uncle hated the experience because they coerced him toward certain behavior and made my sweet little cousin out to be a demanding, spoiled brat, which she was very much not.”
29. “My friend was on an episode of Supernanny. He told me that everything was already planned out and staged. At the end, he got to meet his NBA idol, Dwyane Wade, and came into school the next day with Wade-branded clothes and shoes. I remember them showing him beating Wade in a one-on-one basketball game. If that isn’t scripted, then I don’t know what is.”
ABC
30. “I auditioned for The Voice last year, and it is a horribly long process. I was at the audition site for more than five hours. But the strangest part is that they put you into rooms by genre, even if you don’t sing that genre. So, an incredibly talented ‘pop’ singer won’t get in because they were placed in a ‘country’ genre room. It’s pretty odd.”
31. “My ex’s brother was on MTV’s Room Raiders. It’s a show where a boy or girl gets to snoop around in three potential partners’ rooms to see if they like them based on their possessions. Terrible concept. The young lady looking around the room had zero personality, and all the ‘interesting’ or ’embarrassing’ things that were found were planted. I mean, come on…who the fuck has a tiny comb for their pubes as a teenager?”
MTV
32. Lastly, “I was a competing realtor on Million Dollar Listing for an episode. I am not, nor have I ever been, a realtor.”
Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
Have you ever been on a reality TV show? What was it like? Let us know in the comments, or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, leave a submission in the form below.
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