Fake Reality Shows- They Try to Pretend It's All Really Happening

Like it or not, reality television is everywhere. From HGTV’s home renovation shows to Pawn Stars, a huge space on network television is now taken up by real people, living real lives, doing real things… that, honestly, aren’t quite so real. When you peek behind the curtain things are really messy and we find out the lengths producers go to create these fake reality shows and try to keep the truth hidden from viewers. Scenes are staged. Scripts are written. Situations are edited to make good people look bad, and rude people look nice.

Read these facts, but be ready because you’re never going to look at your favorite reality shows the same way again. And don’t forget to SHARE these crazy revelations of fake reality shows with your friends so they’ll at least be in on the secret too!

Pawn Stars

Pawn Stars is as fake as TV gets. Sure, all the people are real. And sure, they really do run the pawn shop. But the customer interactions aren’t. Not only do stars like Rick Harrison never work the actual counters — they prefer to find more private settings — but all of the customer interactions on TV are carefully arranged beforehand. Before filming begins, any item a person wants to sell to the pawn shop is cleaned and vetted, while the customer must sign a consent form. Honestly, though, this shouldn’t be a surprise. If you don’t trust real pawn shops, why would you trust a TV show about one?

Love It or List It

First of all, most families on this show never truly consider moving out of their homes. Would you if HGTV was going to renovate it for you? The arguments between couples are forced by producers (if they’re putting you on TV, you listen), the big “structural problem” twists are well-known by everybody beforehand, and all those alternative houses the couples explore aren’t even truly for sale. If you think that’s crazy, here’s one better- There are couples who have recorded “listing it” endings (i.e., selling their renovated home) who are actually happily living in it instead. Perhaps the harshest truth? The two hosts, Hilary and David, have very little to do with the renovation process. They’re just actors. Bummer.

Duck Dynasty

Take a look through a few photo albums of the Duck Dynasty stars before their show hit the air, and you’ll find a bunch of clean-shaven, sharp-dressed guys who’d look more at home on a yuppie golf course than in the woods. As for the crazy arguments between the characters — and yes, they are characters — those are scripted, as the stars themselves have explained that producers come up with tense situations, and the cast simply finds ways to end up in them. Sometimes “bleeps” are even inserted into their pseudo-arguments, just to make it sound like they’re swearing more. Cheating!

House Hunters

House Hunters is all about finding the right spot to live. Everyone can relate to it, either from experience or in their dreams. However, the very concept that the show rests on is a lie, because by the time families are filming their episode, they’ve already purchased a house. Wait, “What about the other houses they visit?” you ask. Lies. Fake houses. Those unrealistically massive budgets are also simply made up by producers, and as you can imagine, all the interactions are a bit (a lot?) staged.

Jersey Shore

While some of the obnoxious shenanigans on Jersey Shore are probably real, many eyewitnesses have claimed that scenes are exaggerated for effect. For example, anybody who stayed at the house overnight was vetted by producers, rather than being a nameless club pickup. That brutal fight between Vinny and Pauly in Italy? Staged. Most of the cast aren’t even from New Jersey! As if that isn’t disillusioning enough, get this- Before Jersey Shore, nobody called Nicole LaValle “Snooki.” The show’s application asked for a nickname, her friend suggested Snooki as a joke… and, as you can see, it stuck.

Long Island Medium

As they say, don’t drink the kool aid. TV has a long history of fake psychic mediums, and Theresa Caputo is yet another example of this. Researchers have dug deep into her methods and found that she does a lot of research on people well before “reading” them. How so? You guessed it- she spies on their social media. Combine that with a lot of misdirection, and voila, “psychic” readings for the win. That doesn’t mean real psychics don’t necessarily exist — you be the judge, on that one — but if they do, she probably isn’t one of them.

Fixer Upper

First, the good news- Fixer Upper is a bit less staged than some of the other shows on this list. The bad news? It’s still pretty staged. You know that moment at the end where the family sees how amazingly Joanna and Chip Gaines have renovated their house? All that high-quality furniture, and the accompanying decorations, go right back in the moving truck once the cameras stop. It’s just for show. Furthermore, conversations and reaction shots are filmed live, but guests have said that they’re asked to repeat things they just said, to get a better angle, recording, et cetera. So, honestly, this show fits more in the “based on a true story” category rather than “documentary.”

Beachfront Bargain Hunt

That couple sure seems insanely picky about that house they just turned down, right? Actually, it turns out they’ve already closed the deal on their real home purchase, and they’re simply walking through fake “potential” homes — and citing silly reasons for rejecting them — in order to pad out the TV show’s format. In fact, one realtor who appeared on the show said that the requirements for a client were that they had to already be under contract for a home, or a new home owner. No true house hunters allowed, huh?

Mountain Men

When it comes to History Channel’s Mountain Men, exaggeration is the word of the day. At different times, the show’s stars have all candidly admitted that their rough and tumble personas are just a TV act. They also have a lot more money than the show acts like they do. Furthermore, many of the seemingly dangerous incidents on the show are just scripted recreations. For example, one episode which depicted a close call with wolves was actually just filmed with friendly dogs. Good boy!

Designed to Sell

What is a “renovate and sell your house” reality show supposed to do if the guest isn’t actually planning on selling the house for a year or more? Well, HGTV didn’t blink an eye. For the show Designed to Sell, they just staged a fake open house, and filmed a bunch of friends and family walking around pretending to be potential buyers. Weird, right? Designed to Sell also asks guests to film multiple endings for different sell-or-not-sell scenarios, and reportedly does sloppy repairs, which are hidden by careful camera work.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians

Kris Jenner’s Meditteranean family home, as seen in exterior shots in Keeping Up With the Kardashians, isn’t really her home. The actual house was empty, at the time of filming, and was just repeatedly used as a stand-in until the property sold in 2018. However, that’s far from the only time the Kardashian drama show has been heavily altered from reality. A lot of the fights that pop up in the show, and sometimes seep over to Twitter, are staged for ratings. At least two marriage proposals were staged. It’s all an act.

Catfish

If you watch Catchfish, you’re fed the idea that producers are contacted by the victim, worried they might be getting catfished, and it’s the do-gooding hosts who seek out the truth. For the victim’s sake, of course. In reality, it is the catfisher, not the victim, who applies to the producers. The catfisher is investigated, made to sign release forms, and must agree to be heavily edited to suit the necessary storyline. So, any catfisher who acts surprised to be found out, well… they’re just playing another role. Which, apparently, they’re already good at.

American Pickers

American Pickers is all about the haggling, but unfortunately, the haggling prices are determined in advance, according to guests who have appeared on the show. The rundown locations where they find all the great deals are actually located by producers, not the pickers themselves, who send representatives to investigate almost a month before filming. By the way, “Hobo Jack,” a.k.a. Jack Sophir, isn’t actually a hobo. He’s a successful collector who owns multiple buildings, and never called himself Hobo Jack before the TV show got started.

Cake Boss

The fact that there’s a reality show about cake is almost a punchline unto itself, but hey, a lot of people really like Cake Boss. Unfortunately, the show’s storylines are largely staged. Every episode presents customers who appear to be wildly surprised by the amazing, creative cakes they receive from the team, but in reality, these customers have discussed precisely what they want beforehand. Which makes sense. Who would pay hundreds of dollars for a cake, and not want to know exactly what it was going to look like?

The Biggest Loser

There is a lot of suspicion that the medical staff on The Biggest Loser are not properly trained, which would explain all the rumors about them feeding contestants illegal drugs. Even more fake, though, is the famous scale that contestants weigh in on- it’s actually just a fancy, useless prop, that doesn’t do anything, and customers do their real weigh-ins a full two days beforehand. Much of the show’s drama is also created by editing to make contestants look lazier than they really are, which has garnered an increasing amount of criticism as the years go on.

The HGTV Dream Home Giveaway

Okay, to be fair, HGTV really does give away a huge, fancy home to somebody every year. That part isn’t made up. But TV doesn’t show you the real consequences of this wonderful prize- painfully high taxes. If you do get that dream home prize, you owe 40 percent of the prize value to the IRS, which is why almost none of the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway winners have been able to actually keep their homes. Think of it as a nice vacation that suddenly turns insanely stressful.

Deadliest Catch

Not only does Deadliest Catch have some fakery going on, but its methods for creating dramatic TV are causing real problems for the fishing industry. How so? Because the TV fishing crews are making money from producers, rather than the industry, so they don’t need to make fishing quotas. This means they’re able to price out regular fishermen, so it’s harder for everyone else to make a living. In addition, the show uses editing to create dramatic storylines, such as when it spliced together footage from two separate storms to look like one big one.

Storage Wars

For years, A&E’s Storage Wars was the most popular show on the cable network. It followed storage locker auctions and the folks who bid on the abandoned lockers in hopes of finding valuable items. However, one of the biggest names on the show, David Hester, referred to as “The Mogul” on the A&E website, sued the network claiming most of the production was fake. Hester’s lawsuit claimed the show’s producers planted some memorabilia and other valuable items in order to make it appear the storage lockers were littered with valuable items, according to ABC News. A&E and Hester eventually reached a settlement and Hester returned to the show, but the producers never admitted to planting items… nor did they deny it.

Bridezilla

If you think the women on Bridezilla seem too dramatic to possibly be real people, you’re right. Several of these women have explained that producers are constantly pushing them to be more dramatic, more teary, more angry, and so on, doing multiple takes on the same moments until they can get the best one. The more curse words, the better. In addition, the whole reality of being followed around by TV cameras certainly does a lot to amplify the stress.

Bachelor In Paradise

By this day in age, we all are well-aware that this show is mostly made in the editing room, but the contestants aren’t as privy to that same fact. They sit in front of the camera for their individual interviews, have whole conversations about their feelings, and then editors come in and take the juiciest clip they can find to turn hopeless romantics into “villains” of the show. While on-set, contestants are also heavily influenced by what their producers are telling them, which is mostly just for the sake of creating more drama.

Chrisley Knows Best

One source from the set of ‘Chrisley Knows Best’ admitted, “More than half of the dialogue on the show is scripted and a large majority of the scenes are re-shot when they are not as funny as he wants them to be…”

Ice Road Truckers

The very opening of the show’s first season, featuring a truck dropping through the ice into cold water, was created through miniature models. Ouch. That would be bad enough, but cast members have gone on record as saying that the show is scripted, and then further edited to make regular people look like heroes and villains. Standard reality TV stuff. And while ice road trucking is definitely quite dangerous, the series goes out of its way to make circumstances look riskier than they really are.

The Bachelor

The Bachelor and its sister show, The Bachelorette, have been around for a long, long time. As you’ve probably guessed by now though, this game show format doesn’t tend to result in true love, and most of the couples created by the series end up divorced … if they even get married to begin with. Lots of sequences are scripted or edited into dramatic storylines, but that’s par for the course. Also, since the producers have been doing this show for so long, they’re pretty good at picking the suitors who will be popular on TV, and carefully arranging situations to make sure they end up as the winner, or at least, a runner-up.

The Real Housewives

Go ahead, believe that The Real Housewives isn’t scripted. However, you know who disagrees? Teresa Giudice, a real housewife of New Jersey, whom during a public court trial was caught swearing, under oath, that the show was scripted. Well, that’s that. Most of the fights are planned, staged, and/or dramatized for TV, the stars are all actors, and the fancy lifestyles seemingly exhibited on the series hide the fact that many of them are actually facing crippling debt, and simply living above their means via heavy credit usage. Doesn’t sound so great, when you think of it that way.

Naked and Afraid

It sure seems like those naked folks are really out in the wilderness, but former contestants have admitted that — camera crew aside — civilization isn’t far. One season 3 contestant reported hearing a DJ play club music nearby, all night long, and also had run-ins with local kids playing soccer. The show’s editing is also deeply manipulative, as contestants are fed storylines, dramatic events, and tricky editing to give them histories or situations that have nothing to do with real life. One contestant, for example, reported getting food poisoned by a crewman before filming, whereupon the editing tried to make it look like it was her fault for drinking untreated water.

Property Brothers

The thing about the Property Brothers, Jonathon and Drew Scott, is that they’re TV stars. Sure, they have a background in real estate, but these days, what they really do is act in front of the camera for a few hours, smile for photos… and hire real contracting crews to do the actual labor. As with many HGTV shows, the whole “looking at houses” aspect is staged, since prospective clients are supposed to have a home under contract before they’re accepted onto the series. So when clients act stressed out about choosing a house, it’s just acting. Which is, in the end, all that the Scott brothers do, as well.

American Idol

If you think the lucky ones who make it in front of the famous judges have waited on line outside for hours, well, you’re right… sort of. The reality behind American Idol is that the main characters are picked months in advance, as are the ones who are legitimately terrible and have been moved forward for entertainment purposes. As many tell-all stories have emerged from the long-running talent show, it’s become clear that American Idol is as scripted as any reality show. Talent scouts and producers do the actual contestant picking, holding auditions months in advance of the main judges visiting a city. Those scouts and producers whittle down thousands of eager singers to just a few hundred, and then a few dozen. Performers have to travel multiple times to the same location if they are approved for the next round. Finally, when they are to appear before the judges, they are told, “Some of you are here because you are really good. Some of you are here because you are really bad,” according to The Daily Beast. They often don’t know if they’ve been chosen because they’re actually good, or because they’re bad. They soon find out when they go on stage though.

Breaking Amish

Breaking Amish is purportedly about Amish youths who want to experience the world outside their old-world, conservative communities and venture to New York City to experience things like electricity, cellphones, and cars. However, TLC didn’t do their due diligence prior to filming and it quickly became clear the show was completely fake. Two of the stars claimed to have just met one another when meeting at the airport. However, social media posts show they had been in a relationship for at least a year and even had a baby together. The guy, Abe, had also been arrested four years prior in Kentucky for public intoxication, meaning he had left the Amish lifestyle years before the show. Another cast member, Raber, though claiming to have just left his Amish community for the show, had married another Amish defector and had three children with her. The woman filed for divorce from him claiming he was physically abusive, was granted a restraining order from him, and was living in a domestic violence shelter. The original cast members had easily accessible trails to discover they were no where near the devout Amish that TLC hoped to portray. It’s no wonder the show lasted just 20 episodes.

Mystery Diners

On Food Network’s Mystery Diners, the owner of a restaurant contacts host Charles Stiles, who then sets up a secret sting operation in the restaurant to attempt to catch bad employees. But tales from former employees revealed just how fake the show was. Many accounts say that the “employees” who are misbehaving on the job are actually paid actors and the real restaurant servers and employees sign non-disclosure agreements to keep things quiet. On one episode, Radar Online uncovered that “Chef Dave,” the new cook “hired” at The Grove Bar and Grill in Gilbert, Arizona, was actually an actor named David Gilbert, who owns a production studio.

South Beach Tow

Although the companies featured on truTV’s South Beach Tow, Tremont Towing and South Beach Towing, are real, the incidents on film were completely dramatized and in some cases completely fictionalized, according to former employees working on the show. The show centers on the exploits of the two towing companies and how they deal with people getting their cars towed. Most of the incidents are based on former real-life scenes, though with some added drama for TV, and the “rival” towing company that is shown to steal tows and hurt employees of the main towing companies is completely made up.

RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul’s Drag Race pits competitors of dressing up in drag against one another. Throughout the competition, they must face off by impersonating celebrities and even lip-syncing. There is always plenty of side-eye, quick quips, and drama, some of which is faked according to one former contestant. Jaremi Lee Carey, known professionally in the world of drag as Phi Phi O’Hara, was the runner-up of the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2012. He returned for the second All Star season in 2016, where according to him he was offered a redemption story arc. He claims however that producers often egged on drama behind the scenes and would goad him (and other contestants) into saying something ridiculous, only to use that soundbite somewhere out of context to make him and other contestants look bad. It’s just another example of producers doing some shady things behind the scenes of these “reality” shows.

Basketball Wives

Basketball Wives isn’t trying to deceive anybody with its title. It’s a reality show that follows the wives of some prominent NBA basketball players. Shaquille O’Neal’s ex-wife Shaunie is one of the stars (and also produces the show). Other cast members include Tasha Marbury, wife of former NBA point guard Stephon, and Doug Christie’s wife Jackie Christie. But just like a good no-look pass on the hardcourt, the VH1 show is great with misdirection and deception. According to former cast member Matt Barnes the show is highly scripted and staged. Barnes said he regrets his participation in the show. Those claims of fakery were confirmed by another star, Tanya Young, who said producers would ramp up drama behind the scenes so it would spill over onto the show.

Southern Charm

The Bravo reality TV series Southern Charm hopes the “charm” distracts you from the fact that it’s basically just like any Real Housewives show out there. And given that it follows basically the same format of following wealthy people (in this case South Carolinian socialites), it’s no wonder much of the show isn’t real. According to some reports, the show’s original drama-filled couple Craig Conover and Cameran Eubanks didn’t actually live in Charleston, South Carolina while filming season one. So, was anything they did or say true? Additionally, one of the recurring stars of the show, Danni Baird, revealed that some scenes were “cut and pasted” to make them seem like they happened early in the season when they didn’t happen until later. Evidently, this was all done with the intention to ramp up drama.

The Voice

If you’re a big fan of the ultra-popular The Voice singing talent show, you may want to sit down. While the decision rests with the audience on who ultimately will win, it turns out who gets to the stage is very much pre-planned. In 2015, the lead singer for Philadelphia-based band Low Cut Connie took to the group’s Facebook page to reveal that he had been approached to compete on the show and why he turned it down. A couple months ago the TV show The Voice contacted our agent and said they wanted to cast me… they checked out various Low Cut Connie videos and they wanted to have me as a contestant on the new season. I spoke to them a couple times, and they told me that they had seen everything they needed to see, no need to audition, and that I simply needed to get to L.A. in about ten days time to shoot for a month or more, depending on how far I got in the contest. I really thought it was a joke, but after many conversations it became very clear that they were serious. The Voice is entirely ‘pre-cast’ and they had an opening they wanted to fill with me. I guess they really wanted that classic ‘big-nosed, greasy looking, Fonzie piano-player type.’ They wanted me to perform ‘modern pop’ songs but in my style, at the piano… but also be open to other duets, group performances, sharing sessions, vocal coaching from the musical genius that is Blake Shelton etc. etc. I would have had to cancel some Connie shows and clear my life for this fall in the hopes of that ONE shot to impress Adam Levine, the famous acne-survivor. Anyway, long story short… I said NO.

MasterChef (USA)

While you wouldn’t think a cooking show would need to add any heat behind the scenes, here we are. MasterChef is actually a very old show dating back to the early 90s in the U.K. That original iteration has spawned spin-offs in countries all over the world. For whatever reason, the MasterChef U.S. version is supposedly rife with bakery fakery. A former contestant, Ben Starr, revealed that before signing on, they had to agree to potentially being “fictionalized,” which would sometimes include humiliating portrayals that wasn’t true to who they were. Starr said that producers also faked lines of dialogue, sometimes splicing bits of dialogue to make it seem like a contestant said something, when they didn’t say that thing at all. (Incidentally, the MasterChef Australia rendition is supposed to be much more real and focuses much more on the cooking rather than the drama of beating the cooking clock or other contestants.)

Chopped

The Food Network favorite, Chopped, pits chefs up against one another in a timed battle of culinary ingenuity. Each cook is given a set of ingredients and prepares dinner courses for the judges, who one-by-one eliminate the weakest dish. While the timed cooking challenges are real, some things on the show are unfortunately not what they seem. According to sources, in the beginning of the show’s run, the producers would purposely short a common ingredient (say butter) in the pantry, to create tension and drama between the chefs. (They reportedly no longer do this.) And speaking of the pantry, part of the “drama” of the show is the moment after the “secret” ingredients have been revealed and the chefs need to run to the pantry to get their ingredients to make their dish. However, the chefs have ample time prior to filming to look through the pantry to start to formulate different dishes they can make. And about the “best dish winning” in each round, that unfortunately isn’t always true. While the chefs do taste test and judge the food immediately after preparation, they don’t always eliminate the worst dish. There have been reports that if a particular chef’s story is compelling, they’ll leave them on the show as someone who might garner more sympathy from the viewing audience. So if you’re watching and you see a dish that there’s no way it could lose, well, it might…

Geordie Shore

Geordie Shore is the British version of popular American reality TV show, Jersey Shore. And if you’ve ever killed brain cells watching the American version, then you probably understand that much of the U.K. version is just as fake. One particularly embarrassing moment for MTV came in 2018 when a new trailer was released for an upcoming episode. In the trailer, Marnie is shown celebrating her 26th birthday. The problem- the trailer came out when it was actually Marnie’s birthday, meaning it was filmed months prior. Viewers took to social media, rightfully questioning, “I don’t understand how it was @MarnieGShore birthday sic in the house a couple months ago and it’s also Marnies sic birthday today????” In a tweet response that was quickly deleted after posting, Marnie said, “It’s coz sic it’s fake and scripted.”

Made in Chelsea

Another British reality show…that’s not so much based in reality. Made in Chelsea isn’t about the affluent New York City neighborhood, but rather the equally posh Chelsea area of London, England. There’s usually lots of drama surrounding the wealthy youth of the show, much of it inauthentic, unfortunately. Former stars have called out the producers for scripting scenes and generally creating the drama out of nothing. One former MiC star said they would get a call early in the morning and told where to be, what to do, and how to act. Another former star, Tina Stinnes, told the Daily Star how they would film dinner scenes at seven in the morning, and were often egged on by producers to say “what your really think” in order to draw out reactions.

Alaskan Bush People

Could you survive the wild Alaskan wilderness? That’s the premise of Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People, which follows the Brown family, who was according to the network “a newly discovered family who was born and raised wild.” However, soon after premiering their story began to fall apart. First, the Browns’ neighbors told Radar Online that the family didn’t just live in the wild. They were also residents at the Icy Strait Lodge in Hoonah, Alaska. Other locals came forward to reveal the “bush home” was used strictly for filming, and thus hardly a situation of life and death. Additionally, some legal trouble sprang up for the Browns after the Anchorage Daily News discovered the family had resided outside Alaska for much of 2009 to 2012, and thus were not entitled to Alaskan residency dividends.

The Island

Getting dropped on an deserted island and trying to survive for four weeks isn’t easy. That’s the premise of The Island, the American version of the U.K. show, The Island with Bear Grylls. The contestants must find water, food, and shelter. Usually things start out rough, but there always seems to be a body of water that appears just at the last moment. And lo and behold, there’s food available too! Turns out, that wasn’t so miraculous after all. When fans began to question the authenticity of the show, the producers revealed in a statement that, “We had to ensure the island’s only water supply, a muddy pool, would last through filming in the dry season and that there was enough native animals and native vegetation that could sustain the men for 28 days — as long as they had the ingenuity to find it, catch it and kill it.” So they basically created the pool and brought in caiman to the island to serve as a food source.

Jersey Shore: Family Vacation

As we’ve already mentioned, much of the the original Jersey Shore was scripted and staged to perfection, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the long-running reunion/sequel series Jersey Shore- Family Vacation is as well. Much of the drama between cast members as well as “surprises” like Pauly D “booking” a luxury hotel just for the cast during the COVID pandemic or Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s return to the series were actually set up by producers and rehearsed.

Total Divas

In some ways, professional wrestling is the original scripted reality series, so it should likely come as no surprise that Total Divas – the reality series that followed some of WWE’s female performers – was mostly fake. Often both the “behind the scenes” drama as well as the aspects of the women’s personal lives that were shown were scripted much like a typical professional writing match. In addition, the series would often play with timelines, for example, making wrestling shows that occurred months apart happen close together).

Total Bellas

Since Total Divas is mostly scripted, it shouldn’t come as a shock that the spin-off Total Bellas – which focuses almost exclusive on pro-wrestling twins-turned entrepreneurs Nikki and Brie Bella – is as well. The show presents mostly scripted, or at least preplanned family drama, as well as staged business and wrestling events. Speaking of wrestling, both Total Bellas and Total Divas before it would often edit crowd reactions and cad placement to make the featured women’s wrestlers seem like they were more popular and higher on WWE’s totem poll than they actually were.

The Surreal Life

In the early to mid 2000s, the CW and VH1 aired The Surreal Life, a series that allegedly followed celebrities who’d fallen on hard times as they lived together in an attempt to pout their lives together. While they show claimed to show real emotions, that’s been disproven by – of all people – comedian Bill Hader. Prior to his own fame, Hader worked as a PA on the series. He explained during an interview, “I worked on a show called The Surreal Life where they took a bunch of celebrities and put them in a house. Corey Feldman was in this one and he got married.” Hader elaborated that during a scene where Feldman was supposedly really crying, producers had him stop, add some lines, and do the whole scene over, complete with tears. “I was so bummed out because I like reality shows… I was like 20, I was like ‘Wait, what?'” Hader elaborated.

The Simple Life

The Simple Life, which featured celebrity socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie working in various rural settings including on a farm, at a fast food restaurant, and as summer camp counsellors. While the two were legitimately working on site, Hilton has since confirmed that many of their reaction shots, as well as many the seeming gaps in their knowledge about everyday life, were either exaggerated or downright made up to increase the show’s entertainment value.

Newlyweds

Pop stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey turned their marriage into reality tv fodder on the wildly successful series Newlyweds. The show became a hit thanks to Simpson’s “dumb blonde” persona, highlighted by by moments like questioning whether Tuna was fish or chicken. However, in 2020 Simpson revealed the truth behind the scripted nature of the series and the strain it put on their marriage. “We just kind of had fun with it until the end, until we started having marital problems, and I just can’t lie to people. I felt like I was being a phony, and I didn’t want to continue on with that. It wasn’t real anymore. It wasn’t reality. It wasn’t who we were. There was lots of eye-rolling, and that was real stuff.”

The Osbournes

In the early 2000s rocker Ozzy Osbourne and most of his immediate family – wife Sharon, son Jack, and daughter Kelly – became reality superstars thanks to the MTV series The Osbournes. The show revolved around a dysfunctional family dynamic, with the family often arguing, the kids acting out, and Ozzy himself engaging in comical antics. In later years, it was revealed that this was all scripted and planned, with the family and producers often planning out exactly what was going to happen before camera rolled.

Say Yes the Dress

There seems to be some debate as to just how scripted Say Yes to the Dress truly is. Some of those who’ve appeared on the show have claimed that they weren’t told what to say at any point, while others have countered that their reactions were coached and filmed several times. Also, one former bride claimed that she didn’t actually say “yes” to the dress. According to her, she didn’t’t actually commit, following “Yes” with “You know, I’m really nervous. My mother always told me to go home and sleep on something before you make a decision this big, but I guess that I’ll have to say yes.” Allegedly, the show simply died her answer to an enthusiastic yes.

Bar Rescue

Reality show fans love Bar Rescue for host’s John Tapper’s brutal takedowns of failing bars and restaurants, followed by Tapper and his team’s remolding of their bar for a “successful” grand opening. However, the truth behind Bar Rescue is that many times the wooers are told to make things look as bad as possible for filming, and on occasion events are even staged to make the restaurant’s situations look worse than they are. Furthermore, the bars and restaurants often reverted to their former name and decoration shortly after filming.

Judge Judy

For well over two decades, Judge Judy Sheindlin’s show was a ratings hit thanks to her acerbic wit and irritable personality. Judge Judy would listen to each strange case that came before her desk, often mocking whichever plaintiff she felt was in the wrong (and sometimes even those who were she thought were in the right) before making a formal ruling. The only issue? All cases on the series were already ruled on before filming of the show even began, which means all of Sheindlin’s actions were for show.