If you've ever wondered whether or not reality TV's
really real, here's the answer you've been waiting for.
About four weeks ago the reality show
Survival Of The Richest finished its run on M-Net Series. In case you didn't catch it, the premise of the show pitted 7 rich-kid contestants up against 7 poor-kid ones.
They were all put into partners that consisted of one rich-kid and one poor-kid and then the couples battled it out against each other in an elimination format for a $200 000 prize.
The snag for them was that if one of the partners got voted off, their partner had to leave with them, no matter how popular or hardworking they were.
The rich kids all came from "important" billionaire-type families. Amongst them was a
Yellow Pages heiress,
an Afghan princess and
Kat Moon, the daughter the freakazoid Moonie leader. All 7 rich-kids were spoilt and lazy and spent copious amounts of time expressing their distaste at working and living out of the lap of luxury.
In contrast, the poor kids were all in debt, came from "simple" backgrounds and they all had a hardworking approach to life.
As the show unfolded the rich kids went through a change in the way they saw things after they completed tasks that involved things like manual labour, being in the army and improving conditions at homeless shelter type places.
The show ended with a team of two guys winning and next thing one of the cast members got in touch with TVSA to spill the beans on what really went down in the show.
The juicy thing is that they were adamant that what they had to say isn't specific to just this one show but to numerous, if not the majority of reality shows we see.
The only requirement they had for delivering the goss was that they weren't mentioned by name for fear of ending up a million bucks poorer, which is the price of the contract (that includes confidentiality) they had to sign before doing the show.
The first big whopping lie we were told in the show was about why the contestants were in it and what their net worth was, the source claimed. Everyone told us different stories and reasons for them wanting to do the show but the truth is that they were all there simply in their capacity as actors. Approximately 90% of the cast auditioned because they're full-time actors who are determined to break into the TV industry.
The poor kids were actually regular middle class types and while the rich kids did come from wealthy families, none of them have the titles they were given nor the extreme amounts of cash the show said they did.
For instance
Hunter was supposed to be from Dutch aristocracy but he's a Harvard American through and through and the Yellow Pages heiress isn't an heir to the empire at all - her uncle or stepfather or something's involved with Yellow Pages.
Sam, the Aghan princess isn't a princess but rather her family had a royal title generations ago and while Kat Moon really is Moonie's daughter, he doesn't have the billionairre fortune they said he does.
As you can see, the show took something that was real from each of them - like their education or a relationship or general background and then exaggerrated it for effect.
The next lie was the one that was told to the cast about what the show was about before they started filming. At the auditions they were all told that the show was looking for people to travel the country to do charity work for different projects. This from my mole:
It wasn't until I got to the location that I was told the premise of the show and I was very upset. None of us knew what the real set-up was. Had they told us, many of us wouldn't have done it if we'd known how silly it was and how it was going to make us look. We had signed a million dollar contract that said if we broke it we'd have to give one million dollars to The WB (the network that created the show.)
Once we found out what the show was about we decided to go with it and act the best we could based on the characters they wanted us to be.
They were also directed by the producers and writers of the show who'd tell them what attitude they should have in their interviews or instruct them on what to do - like Hunter was told to develop a crush on Elizabeth Yellow Pages. They'd also be stopped and told to re-film something if the producers wanted them to say something different.
I would give answers that were nice and sweet and they'd be like: "Come on, that's not what we want. Say this. You're under contract. " It was like emotional blackmail. I got yelled at numerous times by the producers.
Then this, which was my humdinger 'cos of reading
Ben Elton's book about Big Brother in which there's a producer who does this exact same thing:
They'd come into interviews and say: "Come on, don't tell me you don't think so-and-so's a prick? Come on say it, say it."
When I wouldn't they'd get really upset - one in particular wanted to strangle me. She hated my guts because I wouldn't collaborate. You forget about the outside world, cliques are formed and they'd say things, like "You know what, I heard so-and-so said this about you," to rile us up and get nasty answers about each other.
You forget that there's life beyond the show and you become nasty too. You hear someone's saying something horrible about you and you start viewing them as competition.
When they came up to me and told me things people had said I just kept answering them with: "You know what? I don't care." I wasn't prepared to compromise my principles and morals for some stranger who was talking trash about me and the producers would be livid with me.
As you can see the crazy thing about this is how incredibly psychological it is. The boundaries between what's real and what's not blur to the extent that even though they were all acting, many of the emotions they expressed were real as a result of being prodded and provoked like this.
The other intense thing is that not all of the cast were as aware of how manipulated it all was as some of them were. For instance my mole became convinced the whole show was rigged from the start after they walked past a producer and writer and overheard them saying this just before the second elimination:
There's no way Sam and Jacob are leaving before the end - DO something about it.
Which is exactly what happened. Every time those two seemed about to go something would happen and they'd get to stay.
Mole's partner on the other hand wasn't as convinced that the plot was being contrived, which is of course how the producers need it if they're to get people to commit properly to what they have to do for the time they're on the show.
Essentially what happened was that the producers had everyone involved in one big
Joe Schmo scam where what they thought was real, wasn't. Of course they also did the same thing to us! We were totally Schmo'd on our couches and after hearing all this it's clear that we have been time and again.
I must say I've always suspected it in shows like
Average Joe and
The Bachelor - espesh in the latter seasons where the way things have worked out have sent some kind of idealised PC "moral" lesson. Like in
The Bachelor 7, the bachelor ended up choosing a chick who was homely and wanted a family instead of the fiesty troublemaker or the slut.
It also all makes sense after
the interview I did with
Kept's winner
Seth Frye who was supposed to be Jerry Hall's toyboy for a year but never saw her again after he won.
Some reality contestants struggle to break into television afterwards but for others being in a reality show does bring them advantages - like Seth who's working in TV production as well as my mole who got an agent and a manager out of being on the show.
As for which shows aren't up to such Schmo'ing - I'd hazzard a guess that the way
Survivor and
The Amazing Race operate is that they manipulate some of what happens and then leave lots of it up to fate.
The key in Survivor is that the manipulations are very transparent in the form of the harsh environment, the challenges and the indepedent voting that happens. They probably poke them when it comes to their attitudes in the interviews but ultimately the decisions they make are fully theirs.
I also reckon a show like
Project Runway that's so dependent on physical practical skill leaves itself much more open ended. They must poke them to beef up their relationships but the design skills they each have can't be manipulated.
I'm absolutely convinced that the whole Big Brother UK
racist saga was fully manipulated from start to finish to achieve
the outcome it did though.
I also know that if I were a producer I'd go beserk to spice things up too. The trouble with reality TV is that it has to be interesting to be a success but at the end of the day, people aren't necessarily as interesting as we like think we are.
It's the way we're presented and how we behave when faced with a particular set of circumstances and influences that makes us watchable so writers and producers have to do something. Even if it means strangling someone.
It's all so trippy isn't it? Also, there's another freaky angle to it regards whether or not it's a problem if we are Schmo'd. If a show's entertaining to see - does it matter?
Here's a fably brain-frying something from my mole to leave you with:
The whole world thinks it's real and the funny thing is that when you're living in LA you pretty much know that everything's fake - all the scandal with Paris Hilton and other actresses - everything's made up, it's just ridiculous. I would never known any of it if I wasn't in the business.
PS: Each member of the 14 contestant cast of Survival Of The Richest got paid a once-off $3000 fee. The winners did get their cash - but a long time afterwards. The show's subsequently been sold to numerous countries across the world.