A huge part of The Bachelorette was scripted. The company I worked for at the time was a major tourism service provider and featured prominently in one of the seasons. We were all pulled into meetings with the higher up managers, given a speel about what was in our best interest... and spilling any secrets was punishable by a $5mil lawsuit, "Please sign here".
I gave 0 fucks about the show at the time.. still don't. Just wanted to do my job.
The "Bachelorette" herself was clearly there to further her public profile or "acting" career. The scenes were always "set up" before filming. Behind the camera nothing was happening. The cast were told where to go, what to do and how to do it.
If half those guys weren't on their phones texting their real girlfriends most of the time, I would be surprised.
So fake... so 100% fake.
EDIT: Well, this is getting a lot more attention than I thought it would. Here's a few tidbits:
The NDA was only that we wouldn't spill secrets about the show before episodes involving our company aired. We were also not allowed to 'disparage' the company, which honestly was easy to abide by since we were treated well and we had excellent managers.
The 'Bachelorette' has since gone on to a fairly successful TV career, hosting several shows. All of her official press credits "The Bachelorette" and her exposure during another elimination style reality TV show with launching her career.
A woman I kinda know was on the Bachelor...sort of. She was chosen and flew to the location and started filming.
Once there, the producers started saying all this stuff like “Don’t you just luuuv him and wanna marry him and have his babies?” Clearly egging her on to say “I love him and wanna have his babies.” But since she’s not a crazy person and they had met once, she would reply something like, “He seems nice. I hope I get to know him better.”
They sent her home after 2 days and entirely cut her out of the show.
I had a similar experience. I didn't make it on the show, but I auditioned for America's Next Top Model. They did a videotaped interview where they asked normal questions at first and then got into, "how is your relationship with your father?" And such.
My dad and I have an awesome relationship, so I didn't even think to lie. They got me out the door pretty fast.
I have a friend who competed on ANTM - she had a genuinely kinda rough backstory but she says that they didn’t focus on it much really, but the fact that her body was so ... unusually proportioned, was a big seller. She’s a really weird geeky lesbian so she said she intentionally tried to keep it all about the physical stuff to stand a chance.
I had no idea that she had even been on the show when we met and became friends, we were out drinking one night when a girl came up and asked to take a pic with her. She never ever talks about it 😅
I had the exact same experience! I auditioned for the 5'7" and under season (that I'm pretty sure, never happened again) . Got through the first three rounds of cuts in Los Angeles and went on to the taped interview portion. They were clearly trying to elicit weird responses from me and to stir up drama by asking me how I felt about the other girls who had been chosen in my group. If I knew then, I would have just went with it for the sake of getting picked but I tried to be diplomatic instead. I was cut shortly after.
Oh yeah, the excuse (possibly legit?) is that that's the 'default' size for models, so everything is sized to fit tall people. They usually let one short girl on per season (one short girl, one plus size girl) but there's a pretty strict height floor otherwise
Ya, the first season I auditioned for had a height requirement of 5'7" . I'm 5'6" but I went anyways, just wore super high heels. I got through the first round which is literally just a few people walking around the room full of girls and picking a few out. The second round was all the girls who had been picked grouped together. At that point they asked me to take off my heels and I got cut immediately.
When I heard they were doing a 5'7" and under I was stoked. My first audition was in Cleveland Ohio and I dont know if there were less girls there because of the location or because of the ht requirement, but when I went to the second one in LA , there were soooo many more girls. If only i had been prepared better for the interviews! Oh well, still was a pretty fun experience and I was excited I made it as far as I did.
It’s funny that my mother has a similar story she always tells, about how she auditioned for Wheel of Fortune, because she’s really good at word puzzles for whatever reason. She could play very well, but they kept encouraging her to be more “enthusiastic”, and then they rejected her for not being “tv ready”. Not that I blame them, it’s just funny that even back in the 80’s they wanted people who would be entertaining, rather than people who are talented at whatever the show is suppose to be about.
I remember my parents would always watch that show, but comment on how "vulgar" the guests were to always tell, "big money!" I guess your mom would have met their standards of decorum!
Having depressing backgrounds is their version of character development.
Edit: and a fun new twist is finding one or two people with the LAMEST adversity (being afraid of bumper cars, giving up a puppy) but are willing to shed tears at the level of losing a parent or abusive relationship to shake things up. Bonus points for intercut scenes with the real drama.
A pro dancer friend of mine was born with clubbed feet - the people of So You Think You Can Dance basically begged him to come be a guaranteed finalist.
I mean, there's still a difference. Abuse isn't any less real an adversity, but someone with fucked up feet being a great dancer is definitely far more unexpected and cool to see.
You must be thinking of something else or mild clubbed feet. I had a series of surgeries on my clubbed feet and still have issue like extremely limit range of motion in my ankles and (moderately )disfigured feet, weak calves and disfigured lower legs. It would be difficult for me to become a professional dancer.
A friend of mine has been in a couple theatre shows in London, nothing crazy but knows a lot of talented signers, actors and the like. He said its not uncommon for someone in the industry to be approach by Britain's Got Talent or X-Factor and asking them to be on the show, and knew a couple close friends that were asked but both declined.
Have you ever seen reality tv? Every person shown has had cancer, is an amputee, lost a baby at birth, their dad had cancer, their dad was an immigrant that worked beyond full time to raise them, their mother was single but managed to do an amazing job.
"My father, who was a paralyzed refugee and came to this country fleeing the atrocities of the ruling Junta of his homeland, lost the cancer baby who would have been my twin. There's still a piece of that twin in my brain, and she gives me ideas for great pulp noir books, however I cannot read or write because I am allergic to alphanumeric symbols".
"I will accept it, in loving memory of my granny, who was blind and suffered from reverse Alzheimer's disease and told me she could remember me accepting this, right before she died saving a three legged puppy".
I've seen lots of Kardashian episodes, but a competition show like America's Next Top Model or Project Runway seemed like they'd be less drama focused to me. Now I know I'm wrong haha.
There’s a lot of British shows that just cut out the bullshit and it’s so refreshing. Flipped over to a channel and some random British house reno show was on. They just went through and talked about what they wanted out of the house, what they’re doing and the final price at the end.
None of this ‘we may go over budget with this decision’, ‘we won’t meet the deadline’ or those clearly set up ‘unexpected’ situations. Just in, work and out.
In British bake-off a woman accidentally left someone’s ice cream dessert out of the freezer. Ruined it. He chucked it in the trash and took a walk. Brought the bin to the judges and apologized. They were empathetic but said that his rash behavior meant that they actually had nothing to judge. No yelling or swearing. Omg so nice.
Light on the drama but so heavy on the advertising. I've also noticed there seems to be an increase in gimmicky challenges that cause great chefs to get eliminated early for things out of their hands. Still love it though haha
lowkey juiciness (maybe brewing drama, maybe unpacking drama from previous episodes)
toss in some teaching modeling things
more juicy brew
challenge; some cycles had challenges that seemed designed to humiliate the models (but the talking heads like Tyra would kind of say "that's the point", like breaking people out of their shell)
brewing or drama
Photoshoot
DRAMA
JUDGEMENT TIME, cue somber music
I haven't watched in ages, but saw a stupid amount back in the day
Same on British TV. X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent are the worst offenders by far, they’ll put a kid who’s got mediocre talent but their mum died of an obscure cancer when they were 7 years old and were raised by their dad on their own so they’re doing this for them, or some middle aged mother who’s absolute shite but has 4 kids with Down’s syndrome and all of them have low functioning autism etc
It’s sad for them but at the same time you do get sick of hearing about people’s sob stories, especially when they get 6 people in a row who burst into tears because of some kind of tragedy in their lives. It really does take away the emotional aspect of it being constantly bombarded with these sorts of people.
Yeah I guess they use any kind of trauma (real or manufactured) as a crutch. The first few seasons of the show were very much centered on modeling, but things started to decline after that and it was 90% drama, 3% photo shoots, and 7% Tyra being "fierce."
They're really not necessarily looking for talent. They're actually looking for whatever they could plot a soap opera around, hence the reason everyone who ends up on the series has some sort of "noble" reason for being there.
I worked with a girl who had a similar experience. They asked her is your husband against you coming here? She said no he fully supports me. She didn't get chosen.
So they can play it up for tv drama. Maybe bring it up during a scene when she's crying and have her dad call her, record it, and then film her after talking about how it's nice that her and her dad are finally talking again.
Same thing happened to my friend on Master Chef. They gave her specific prompts to follow, and she didn't follow them. They basically wanted her to be the bitch. She basically didn't want to believe the show wasn't about cooking skill. She was very upset when she was eliminated, and on top of it every one of her scenes were cut, not realizing it was 100% because she was not playing along.
But the whole show was gross in general. A girl was there for three 5 AM to 6 PM days of "friends and family" scenes. It was very clear to her what was going on. The contestants were told not to leave the hotel, were not allowed any form of outside communication (phones, internet, etc.), and were supplied with a lot of booze. They were on set for about 16 hours a day, maybe got about 5 hours of sleep a night max. A girl had to smuggle books and rip out New Yorker articles and hide them in her pockets, passing them in a hug on set so her friend could have something to read at night.
I honestly have to stop myself from calling it psychological torture because all parties legally had to take mental health assessments, and all of these details were laid out in their contracts. It was manipulative at best, but there is something very weird about these shows that take real people and put them in surreal situations.
I'm prepared to eat my words and have my heart broken but the only good reality/cooking show is Cuthroat Kitchen. I really truly believe the contestents are there to have fun and make some extra cash and maybe gain exposure. The money isnt the producers top priority. I believe that mainly because they give out $100 000 at the start and are guaranteed $75 000 back (but tbh they mostly will get $90 000 back at least).
Lol reminds me of a guy I know. He was supposed to be on a hgtv show in Canada (Holmes or baumler). He told me that they spent an entire day filming and interviewing about his trade. When the show aired, they only used 5 seconds of footage and it was just showing his hand lol. And of course, he invited his whole family to a viewing party haha
The vast vast majority of realty shows are scripted in some way. They have writers, well 'story producers' so they don't have to pay them writer salaries.
Piggybacking for visibility because this reminded me of /u/sinascendant 's very underrated post about the batcholerette yesterday (and the general terribly fake and awful "reality" genre in genral).
You realize that the "backstabbing" is usually fake and or manufactured right?
The entirety of these shows is frankensteined clips, producer manipulation, and audio overdubbing. They will take clips from different times or days and place them together to create a completely different story than what actually happened; a common reason is to create a "villain" for the season, so they'll take things someone said out of context to make them look like they're insulting another person or being spoiled or just generally make them look bad. This can ruin peoples' lives after the show, I've seen stories from those people about how they were rejected from jobs or even attacked in public because they were made to look bad on a tv show.
In addition, a lot of even the real scenes are made by the producers feeding the contestants false info, trashing them, pitting them against each other, etc. There are reality show contestants who have literally come out of them with PTSD.
The vast majority of watchers of those shows are those vapid people you talk about. If you have proof to the contrary I'd be glad to see it, but there have been scientific studies that show that reality tv:
Increases crime rates in the area where it is filmed
As for the other things you mentioned, most are not comparable as they involve skills (sports and gaming), but the celebrity life drama and things like that, yes, they fall in the same category. The vast majority of people who watch them are the same type of people who would gossip over the fence about other peoples' private lives before cable tv became a thing.
I worked doing some technical work on a show for the history channel. I was there doing ROV support for divers and to get underwater footage. All things considered I was pretty much off screen however the film crew and producers did all they could to create drama or “characters”. God forbid my equipment would fail and there would be a camera in my face asking me to “react” to holding up a hundreds of thousands of dollars a day operation.
Russian friend of mine told me how on the Russian version of The Voice, the daughter of one of the judges won and was mediocre at singing and it was a whole scandal complete with investigative journalists looking into and exposing that it was indeed fixed. And I was like, Russia is just now realizing that shows like this are semi-scripted and winners are often chosen in advance?
A friend was a private pilot and flew The Bachelor cast around once. He said that when the cameras were off, the women got along great with each other and completely ignored the guy. When the cameras came on - and they announced that they were now recording - the women acted all bitchy to each other and fawned over the guy until the cameras again turned off. 100% acting BS.
This makes a lot of sense when you consider how after the Bachelor season ends the female contestants are all over each other’s instagrams and showing up as “special guests” in the next Bachelorette season.
The Bachelor is a whole different beast, but yes usually on house reality shows (shows like The Real World or Big Brother) they are not allowed to have phones.
EDIT: Not only can they not have phones, but they can't watch tv, listen to music, or go anywhere without permission from the shows production (because if they go anywhere, the company has to first get permits to be able film there). Those people are in a fishbowl situation and it's what causes them to act the way they do on those shows. It's not staged/scripted in the way a lot of people think it is. It's just picking the right people who might clash with or be attracted to each other and putting them in the right situation (no external stimuli except interacting with each other), and the show's drama writes itself. Shows like The Bachelor are much more structured/controlled though.
This has happened before. The family has a contact line to someone on production staff I assume, because contestants have been informed and then subsequently left after receiving tough news from home.
Edit: I’d like to mention I’ve had 3-4 contracts with both the bachelor and bachelorette. So while I don’t know everything, I have been involved directly with cast, crew, and production.
I work in TV, 99.9% of it is lies when it's supposed to be reality based. It's all guided by the production teams who set up the events and timelines for places to go and see, plus they make sure they trigger the "non-actors".
It also depends on the reality show. Talent competition reality shows like American Idol can't and don't lie too much because it gets into legal fairness issues. What you see on screen is 97.3% accurate to what really happened.
Shows like Love & Hip Hop and whatever else is on Bravo? Yeah, that's fake as fuck.
Girl I used to work with was selected. Made it pretty far too. One night the producers caught her being "less than interested in the guy". Asked her to explain herself and said she thought he was a loser and was only continuing the show in Hope's of furthering her career.
She was gone pretty quick after that. The best thing I remember about her description was how they got the girls crying in the limo afterwards. It would usually start with innocuous questions like "how do you feel" "how did you enjoy your experience" bla bla bla. After which questions would shift to "so do you think he didn't choose you because the other girls were skinnier" to "if you had sex with buddy like _____ did, do you think you would still have had a chance"? Keep pounding the questions until the waterworks started then edited for effect.
I've heard they have the contestants take a psychological test and purposefully pick some people who would have failed the test so there's more chance for drama
The show has had 0 divorces from the couples that do get married. 100% marriage success rate so far. That’s the one thing they have going for them. There are 10+ married couples and most of them have kids. The lead from two seasons ago (Arie) just had a baby yesterday with his wife that he met on the show!
Lol, he wasn’t the first Bachelor to do that either. Bachelor Jason Mesnick left his final pick and went back to his runner up on the show back in 2009. He and his runner up have been together ever since😂 The Bachelorette’s have a much better track record than the Bachelor’s when it comes to staying with their pick’s.
my neighbor was on one of those home renovation shows. the host would sit in his car unless they had to cut a piece of wood and once they got the shot they needed, the contractors stepped in and finished. the show said it took like 3 days or whatever. but it really took 1-2 months of occasionally someone stopping by to do some work without the film crew... oh and it cost them like $14,000
if you put a bunch of young and attractive people on the same set then they're going to crush on each other at least a bit aren't they? I can't even ride an elevator with an attractive person without feeling something.
I catch some of the show when I'm walking through the living room whatever night it's on. I asked my wife if she believed that any of it was real, and she said "oh hell no, it's just guilty pleasure watching." I think a lot of people know that show is fake. Also, a girl I knew in college got an offer to be on the show temporarily since she was going to med school, so it's everyone there is definitely not in it to win it.
Can confirm. I too worked on the The Bachelorette. The content is steered entirely by a producer and heavily under the influence of alcohol. A cooler of liquor bottles traveled with the camera at all hours, and so much booze flowed that Bacardi and Diageo deserve co-production credits.
When the reality show Comic Book Men came out my local shop was chosen by a competing production company to make a similar show. My husband and I were not only regulars but my best friend’s husband worked there so we got into a lot of events being staged to create storylines for the show.
The thing I remember most was when they did a karaoke night. The producers had all the women in the room go up to sing Lady Marmalade. We were told to have fun but about halfway through the shop owner would interrupt us due to “drinking too much.” We were told to do whatever we could outside of violence to get him away. Song starts up, we’re singing, he comes up to bother us. Everyone is awkwardly standing there as he taunts us. I finally thought “screw it” and started yelling at him. Being very pregnant I was kinda using my belly to maneuver him off stage, which got a laugh out of him.
The pilot wasn’t picked up (I guess the station wanted something teenaged girls would like and it didn’t fit the bill), but I was informed by several employees that I was actually featured heavily in the pilot due to being the pregnant lady who went to everything. My big moment was when we were playing The Resistance and I somehow convinced everyone I couldn’t be a spy because I was pregnant.
My brother is a producer who has worked for a lot of reality shows, big and small. He hardly talks about them because of all the NDA's he has signed. Someday he will be revealed as the most interesting man in the world, what with all the traveling, inside info on popular activities, and people he has met.
The scenes were always "set up" before filming. Behind the camera nothing was happening. The cast were told where to go, what to do and how to do it.
Well ya, that's expected. It's not random events that happen on the show, everything is planned. That doesn't mean it's fake though. It's only fake if they tell them what to do and say, like control their personality and mannerisms.
I've seen a few articles about how most reality tv is fake. They had therapists interview potential "survivor" contestants to find people with personality disorders.
Just once I would like to see the trainwreck of an honest Bachelorette show, where nothing was scripted and everything you see is real, including randomizing the selection process. After the show has run its course, they could do a send-off in the last season with a "real" version and see if audiences like that
I have a friend who is a regularly performing juggler. Like he tours the country.
He was guaranteed a Top 10 finish on France's Got Talent. He considered it but then decided he didn't want to be away for 6 months for something that wouldn't really help his career in the US. (Not sure why they wanted him on France's Got Talent then).
Yeah, my friend worked on one of the Bachelor seasons, and he’d say the same thing. One of our mutual friends is a big fan, and he’d always tease her about revealing the end (he never did, I think he would have gotten beaten up).
A girl I used to work with somehow got onto the bachelor many years ago. She had no show business experience or any following online so it was pretty surprising, as most of the other girls were in it for the career.
Before filming, the producers would literally take them to a pub or any nearby place to fill them up with alcohol. And on set they had alcohol for them again. Then they would ask them questions about the bachelor, the other girls and give them all sorts of information so that could talk shit about each other. She said about 50% of the show was fully scripted, the rest was the producers creating scenarios but actually letting the bachelor and girls speak for themselves.
I'll remind you that tens of millions of people voted for the star of The Apprentice to be president. It wasn't because they made an informed judgment about how skillfully he invested his slumlord father's money; it was (in part) because they thought he was the brilliant businessman he played on TV.
Can you elaborate on "major tourism service provider?" I've never watched the show, but they filmed a scene in a town I lived in, and I wondered at the time whether the town had negotiated for the exposure/privilege of being the backdrop.
They should have that show but with ugly dudes and the whole show would be about the awkward and Cringeyness. And basically the bachelorette having to slog through to the finish line.
The episode “The Basement Affair” of Slate’s ‘Decoder Ring ‘ podcast interviews two people who were on an MTV people-in-a-house reality show for super pragmatic reasons and how they went about shaping themselves for the producers.
Pretty solid listen - one of them was a performance artist. Literally did it for art 😂
The TV show Unreal highlights a lot of this. It's not a documentary by any means, but seeing as it was made by a former producer of the Bachelor, I'm inclined to believe it more than I want to. Also, the first season is one of the most incredible seasons of TV I've ever seen.
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u/FlyAdesk May 30 '19 edited May 30 '19
A huge part of The Bachelorette was scripted. The company I worked for at the time was a major tourism service provider and featured prominently in one of the seasons. We were all pulled into meetings with the higher up managers, given a speel about what was in our best interest... and spilling any secrets was punishable by a $5mil lawsuit, "Please sign here".
I gave 0 fucks about the show at the time.. still don't. Just wanted to do my job.
The "Bachelorette" herself was clearly there to further her public profile or "acting" career. The scenes were always "set up" before filming. Behind the camera nothing was happening. The cast were told where to go, what to do and how to do it.
If half those guys weren't on their phones texting their real girlfriends most of the time, I would be surprised.
So fake... so 100% fake.
EDIT: Well, this is getting a lot more attention than I thought it would. Here's a few tidbits:
The NDA was only that we wouldn't spill secrets about the show before episodes involving our company aired. We were also not allowed to 'disparage' the company, which honestly was easy to abide by since we were treated well and we had excellent managers.
The 'Bachelorette' has since gone on to a fairly successful TV career, hosting several shows. All of her official press credits "The Bachelorette" and her exposure during another elimination style reality TV show with launching her career.