30 People From Reality TV Share How Fake It All Was In This Viral Thread

I went on The Doctors show after my whole "man with no butt crack" story went viral. See my top post history for more info.

Got a call from CBS a couple days after everything went down, and they asked me to come out to California for their "What The Health?!" segment.

Everything on the actual set was real. Essentially just an interview. But the little "montage" backstory beforehand was completely setup and fake. They rented a house to pretend it was mine. They asked me to act like I was in more pain than I really was. I had walk around the pool that I don't own and reflect on my difficult life.

It was super awkward for someone with zero acting experience. But it was also a ton of fun. They flew my wife and I out for free, put us up in the Roosevelt Hotel, and gave us a certain spending amount every day for reimbursement. They didn't "pay" me anything, but they did reimburse me for lost wages from work since I had to be out there for a few days. All in all, it was really cool because I essentially got a free vacation for my wife and I, all expenses paid. Plus, we got to go on a legit television set which was pretty cool.

I was on an Australian reality called Surprise Chef. The premise of the show was that the celebrity chef would meet someone at the supermarket and then cook dinner for them. On my episode I volunteered at an Aquarium. The story in this episode was the chef met my boss at the supermarket, then cooked all the aquarium volunteers a nice surprise dinner.

Of course this was all pre arranged. There was no meeting by chance. We all knew what was happening so for the scene we all got surprised in the shark tank, we knew what was happening and did 7 takes of fake surprise.

The celebrity chef cooked nothing. He went in for a few takes and an actual chef cooked all the food while the CC stood outside chain smoking. The food was average, basicaly local RSL quality, chicken parmy and profiteroles.

I think I drew the short straw of things you get in a reality show, a shi**y meal. Others get like cars or renovation makeovers.

My uncle was on Pawn Stars attempting to sell something. The item wasn't even his. He knew a guy who worked on the show.

My brother was just in another reality TV show. It's the third or fourth he's been in. Without giving too many details(so he wouldn't get in trouble and so the show won't get ruined too early), it's insanely fake. He was given a new name and backstory, and even his "wife" in the TV show is some random actress he's never met that is married to someone else. They set up 90% of the stuff in his house specifically for the show. The only real parts of the show are his dogs and his house(as in the house itself, a lot of details were changed).

It's not even just this show that is super fake. As I said before, he's been in several and all of them have done the same thing. The first one I remember him on was Room Raiders(pretty old now but it was on MTV back in like 04 or around then). They did use his room, but they staged almost everything. All the "significant" things that the girl would comment on or look at were all placed there by the crew, so it was all pre-planned and fake.

I was on Amazing Race. It was not filmed daily I remember it was like every week as compared to what is shown on TV. And it was filmed months before airing so you already know the winner but cannot say to anyone because "non-disclosure agreement". Everything has to be in perfect shot, like how you run from A to B, how you open the paper tasks, how you ask from people etc. The only thing that's not scripted are the people we choose to ask randomly to complete the task - they are really just random people we meet on the street. But everything was like "okay we will re-shoot the part when you are climbing the tree/running in the subway etc." because there were not "much action/drama/sweat". Also I felt cheated. I kinda felt that the producers has an "apple of their eye" who are destined to win the game even before the show started. The game was played fair in the beginning till mid part, but during the final episodes, the "favorite team" are getting all the special treatment they would get in order to be in advantage. Since your team is being shot at different location as the other team, you wouldn't know what kind of cheating could have happened. Yes, you got it right, the "producer's favorite" won the race and I felt/cheated used for the sake that they have contestants/drama/whatever. There are real contestants like me who auditioned from scratch and there are lucky ones who are close to some big guy and got in the show and are set up to win. So if you are joining these sorts of reality shows, prepare for this "reality".

This probably doesn't count but I interviewed for What Not to Wear. It started at a punk show on the west coast. On the east coast, you dress punk for a punk show. I'd just moved to the west coast and didn't get the memo that everyone would be wearing a plaid shirt and jeans so I was in full on regalia. So this woman approaches me and says she likes my outfit and that she works for a fashion show that she'd like me to be on, and asks for my contact info so she can follow up afterwards.

Later on I get an email from her and find out it was What Not to Wear. Obviously this made me feel like complete sh*t since I felt like my outfit looked pretty nice. I battled a lot internally about whether or not I should enter. They told me I would get a prize of my choosing worth $20,000 plus an entire new wardrobe of fashion designer clothing, but the trade off is that it would be really degrading and probably ruin my self esteem, plus they would destroy all of my "alternative" clothing. They said I would have to get all of my friends and family on board so they could have interventions to tell me how bad all my clothes are.

Eventually I decided money is money and went into the audition which was in the SAG building (I also decided I was going to hide all my favorite clothes so they couldn't destroy them). A filmographer was asking me some questions when the director walked in and dragged him out of the room. She came back in a minute later and told me she thought my outfit looked great, that she had no idea how I had ended up there but that I was welcome to recommend any other poorly dressed friends to the show.

I guess in the end it was a confidence boost but $20,000 prize would have been pretty sweet.

I have a friend who signed up to audition for a show that she thought was "The Bachelorette", or something similar. I guess its standard practice to not give the actual name of the show, and just say, "We need good looking, energetic young women for blah blah blah."

So she got called back, went through a few different interviews and a screen test. Finally, they tell her that the concept is that she will be running a Pawn Shop with another woman. She is a dental assistant with no experience remotely related to the Pawn business.

"Pawn Queens" ended up being on for two seasons and they gave her a backstory about how/why she got interested in the pawn business. Not exactly SHOCKING, but it was pretty interesting to see that they basically looked for hot girls first, then put them into a proven concept ("Pawn Stars"-type reality show).

I worked on a couple of low key reality shows a while ago. This is what I learned from the people who worked on other shows.

- Each show has a team of "Story Producers" who stand behind the cameramen with walkies telling them to get specific shots. As the reality is happening, the story producers are there to make sure they're getting the shots they need to make whatever story for the episode. It's really hard to make something that didn't happen, but it's not too hard to change an emotion, or a mood, within what happened. Like when a woman doesn't like seeing the guy kiss the other woman. Just use some out of context shots and boom.
- Mostly everything that people say on a show is what they said, but sentences can be taken out of context. Sometimes if the editor is good they can "frankenbite", which means they can take specific words to make a new sentence. This is rare because it's pretty hard to do, and you have to find a place to put it. Usually off camera and subtitled.
- Producers will often talk sh*t in private interviews to get reactions. "Did you hear that so and so said this about you?" Booze also helps fuel drama. And they cast people who are going to be dramatic anyway.
- Producers will also select people to be on the show. Like Pawn Stars. The producers select which customers get to be on the show. With Hardcore Pawn, it's the same thing, but more for a dramatic event rather than someone who has something interesting.
- When it comes to makeover shows, it varies. You could either have a Pimp my Ride, which did cosmetic fixes to cars. Or an Overhaulin, where they did a full resto-mod on the car. It just depends on the show.
- However, if it's a game show, or any show where you win money, the federal government sends a rep to make sure the game is fair. There's laws against rigged gameshows.

A friend of mine was on the MTV show Next. It was a really crappy "speed dating" show where 3 guys go on a date with 1 girl (or vice versa) and she can yell "next!" at any point in the date to meet the next guy.

Nearly 100% of it was fake. Date locations weren't picked by the contestants (even though they state they are), lines were fed by producers, and the prize money (you could choose to date the girl again or get something like $200 iirc) was a lie, too. They all got paid a flat rate for the day, even if you didn't make it on the show. Most notably, the 'bio' that showed on screen when the contestant first shows up was completely made up, too. It'd list things like Name, Age, and 3 "interesting facts" about them, and none of them were true about my friend or anyone else. I think they even got his age wrong lol

Anyway, that show sucked really bad and disappeared pretty quickly, but it was really funny to see my friend on it and get a peek behind the veil.

My sister Julie was on The Real World. Our entire family went down to visit her. Julie was really excited for us to come down, but she also gave the show a ton of footage of her being annoyed that we were coming. When we got down there, she started inventing issues and even picked a big fight with my dad. When our family was leaving, the producers begged us to stay. They even offered us money. No one in the family had any hard feelings about the fight. We all knew it was drama she made up for the camera. When the show aired, my family had like four episodes. Julie was by far the most successful cast member. These shows don't pay well, but she made a ton of money on her celebrity.