People Who've Participated In TV Shows Reveal Some Hidden Secrets That Regular Viewers Don't Know (30 Posts)

"Earlier this year I was on House Hunters, and obviously, everything was staged. You buy the house first and then you get to go on the show. You can always tell what house they’re going to buy because it’s always the empty one. The house touring was fake for us, at least when we did it, because one of the houses didn’t want us filming there, so we had to get a fake house to tour. I remember we were filming us going somewhere in the car, and I was dropped off in a cornfield.

"The filming crew were really nice and took us out for lunch. They were all super fun to be around and made us laugh during cuts. But the filming process lasted over three weeks, and it’s only a 20-minute show, so it was definitely tiring. I remember everyone, even people I barely knew, watched the show, and it was kind of embarrassing, but still a fun experience overall."

UK Weakest Link contestant - although the show appears quite frantic and fast paced, there was at least a 10 min break in between each round. Anne would leave the studio set and you had an opportunity to appeal questions you think you might have got right (happened a few times) have a drink, use the loo etc. If the appeal was upheld, you redid the whole round.

You then voted a person off and there would be another short break before they did the Anne speaking to people. We were warned that Anne was playing a character and that we should try to be witty.

They also asked you in your application forms what subjects/questions you would be good at - also what you would be weakest at. Surprise surprise people (including me) started getting multiple questions on their weak areas. We all realised as we discussed after the show. This leads me to believe the game is semi-fixed/stacked in certain people’s favour.

Fun experience - free food - did not win but was not the (first) ‘weakest link’.

A work colleague of mine was one of the couples in married at first sight.

She had a horrible experience, needed counseling afterwards and is still receiving an “appearance fee” (read hush money) even though her season aired like 5 years ago.

Her words: unReal may as well be a documentary

It’s not a game show, but I was at a group date for The Bachelorette. As you can imagine, the show is heavily produced. They only aired about 5% of what actually happened on the date. I have a really reactive face, so they used a bunch of my reactions in the show, but they were completely out of context because they cut all of the actual drama out of the date, and only aired the vanilla stuff. So one contestant says something like “women are always right” and they show me making this gasping face, that’s totally out of place haha.

I was in a sort of "kids racing games" show. It was cancelled shortly after I participated on it. I can't remember the exact details because I was like 6 or 7, but I will never forget how they made me feel. Basically, we were a bunch of little kids racing each other to complete the most games in a certain time, if you completed the whole thing (around 20 games or so) without the time running out nor breaking certain rules for each "level", you won a s**t ton of toys or something like that. They made "tests runs" that were actually them recording the whole thing without us knowing I completed the whole thing in like 7 minutes -it was suppossed to last at least 15- The "level helpers" took me aside and told me it was an amazing run so I got qualified to appear on the TV show. In the actual "recording", the level helpers sabottaged me, they grabbed me to prevent me from popping the balloons of the first level, pushed balloons away from me, pushed the correct balloons towards other kids (you were suppossed to pop balloons to find a key for the next level), gave me "time out" for breaking rules that I wasn't breaking. I specifically remember running up a ramp, after being sabbotaged a LOT by the ""helpers΅", to get to my next level, I was catching up to the other kids, and they f***ing grabbed my ankle and made me fall off the ramp. I was "disqualified", because "i took too long to get to the other level". They forced me to sit on the losers box and watch all of the other kids, that I had already beaten up in the test run, finish the thing and win. I did not appear in that episode when it showed on TV. Not even me "failing".

Not a gameshow but was in the audience for the steve Harvey show. Holy crap is he a shallow and fragile individual. We were told we could ask him questions between takes if he was in a good enough mood - which he would only be in if we reacted well during takes. We also were not allowed to ask him any questions about his teeth or mustache. He also said that his lifelong dream was always to just be on television and that's it.

I was a contestant on the Price is Right. They don't choose people at random. They interview everyone in the audience for about 30 seconds earlier in the day and decide who to pick based off that.

I was on Pointless in the UK. If you're the first couple to answer and haven't thought of anything, they just give you longer by doing some chatting with the other contestants.

Alex and Richard were incredibly friendly, and Richard has the biggest hands I've ever seen

I was in the audience of Polish versions of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. To prevent cheating you have to pass 2 metal detector Gates before entering studio. No phone or other electronic allowed. Everything takes sooo long here. Episode lasts around 30 minutes, but recording it - 2-3 hours, there are only 3 episodes recorded every day. Once the big screen behind host back broke and we had to sit for 4 hours until it was repaired. At least we got paid extra. Friend you phone in one of the lifelines is sitting in the same building as studio, just other room.

I've also been author of few question for Jeopardy (which is called Va Banque here, pretty badass name). Most of the authors had to be Ph.D. Or experienced experts in their field, I was accepted as a student just because they were short on economy and mathematics question. Sadly it was only one-time gig, but it was pretty fun seeing contestants trying to find question for answers I wrote. It also paid pretty nice, 100 złotys (so around $25) for each 5 question from 1 category which was like 15 minutes of work.

Not me but my uncle's friend went on Big Brother this year and was a COMPLETELY different person. They made him the villain of the show which is completely different to him in real life. IRL he's actually a really nice footy bloke.