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When we watch reality television shows that involve families and kids, we don’t spend a lot of time wondering whether or not they found any long-term solutions, or whether or not – and how – the experience might have affected them going forward.
It makes sense that it would, though, because childhood is such a formative time. Anything “big” that happens to us then is likely to impact us later on, but how?
These 14 kids, whose families were on reality shows like Supernanny and Wife Swap, talk about what the experiences meant for them.
14. I think a lot of house-buying shows are like that.
I knew a girl who was on the Tiny Homes show with her mom.
She said they had already bought the tiny home, and the show set things up like they were looking at a bunch of others and picked that one.
13. That sound like an interesting job.
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.
12. It just makes sense.
Homes Under the Hammer starts by filming the auction, asking for the buyer’s permission to film the property they just bought, and then go to the property for the “pre-auction visit”.
Which is the only sensible way to do it, really. Can you imagine them scouting properties before the auction, spending a few hours filming in them, and then finding out the new owners don’t want to be on the show after all?
11. This is cruel and unusual.
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.
10. So stinking sleazy.
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 fuck had happened, she said, for a tantrum you get 200 bucks extra.
9. I’m sorry, what? Ha!
My ex’s brother was on an old MTV show room raiders. It’s a show where a boy or girl gets to snoop around in 3 potential partners rooms to see if they like like based on their possessions in the room. Terrible concept.
The young lady looking around the room had 0 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?
8. You’ve gotta smile for the cameras.
One of my neighbors was on a house disaster, renovation show and it was a mixed bag.
I think the crew hired by the show actually did very competent structural renovation and repair type work but the ‘designer’ had super niche tastes so the family ended up repainting everything and pitching all the decorating aspects to get the house ready for resale after having to act super happy for the cameras.
7. I bet the kids had a good time.
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.
6. Please don’t be normal.
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.”
5. The face I am making right now.
It’s all so staged! When I was 14 in the UK I was walking the high street of the city I lived in and a woman approached me and my friends, she was from Channel 4 or something and she asked me, do you want to be on TV? I was like, not really and she proceeded to say I’d get 1000 (pounds) if I participated in a program called Worlds strictest parents.
I wasn’t doing anything bad at the time just shopping with friends. She went on to ask me and my friends, what’s the worst thing you ‘could’ do at school, would you throw a chair in the class or smoke a cigarette in the school bathroom for 1000 (pounds) – don’t know how to change the currency on my phone haha.
She kept pestering us about weather our parents would let us cause a ‘small’ amount of trouble at school for a payment.
One girl from my school must have later been approached by them as I saw her on the program a couple of years later acting like some crazy bad ass for the reels which is stupid as I never saw her acting like that in school before.
It actually went on to shape her life pretty bad as a quick google of her name brings up all these cringeworthy clips of her pretending to take drugs and shout abuse at people etc and from socials it seems to be a narrative that she took hold of and ran with after the show.
4. There has to be drama.
I had some friends on my super sweet sixteen. It’s been so long I remember there was a lot of misleading things done to invent drama.
One thing that does stick out to me is the sports car she was gifted was actually leased and she only drove it a few times including the time in the episode. Her parents used the car until the lease expired.
To be honest the parents were typically well reserved with their money and wanted their kid to work hard and her own stuff. The scenes of anger or outrage were out of character for the girls normal behavior.
3. None of it is real.
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.
2. It was no big deal.
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.
1. I guess reality isn’t that interesting.
MTV’s “Made” came to our high school to turn two girls into each other.
One was portrayed as this artsy starlet who did musicals and show choir, and the other was portrayed as this sporty, fit, athletic girl.
The reality was both girls were into sports and the performing arts.
There you have it! It’s all pretty fascinating, really.
If you or someone you’re close to was on reality television, tell us about your experiences in the comments!
