KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN

by Robert Hoffman

  Jon and Kate Gosselin PA Reporting

  September 2009

  I spoke to a nearby neighbor today and asked if she had any contact with Kate or Jon and she told me “They always say they live in Wernersville but they never even drive through town. Kate never comes near us. She always goes the other way down State Hill Road. That’s more high society I guess. She calls Wernersville ‘Ghettoville.’ She thinks she’s better than the rest of us.”

  Jon and Kate Gosselin PA Reporting

  November 2009

  Next we headed toward the house but got on the highway heading in an entirely new direction. Nobody had a guess as to where we were going. It was exciting. We went 75 mph in a 55 zone in the rain, in and out of traffic and ended up at St. Joseph’s Hospital on Rt. 183. She pulled up to the front door and an employee came running out and handed her some files through the passenger window. I’m sure we could all get that same service at the hospital if we asked.

  I WANT MY FAKE TV

  “We’re not scripted. You heard me. We are not scripted. We’re living.

  The kids run in and out of the frame and they just live.”

  – Kate Gosselin

  It should be no secret to anyone that “reality” television isn’t anywhere near as real as networks would like us to believe. There does, however, seem to be a large contingent of people who believe that camera crews really do remain silent and in the background, just following the “reality stars” around and documenting them going about their normal, everyday lives while, oh by the way, filming them for a television show. I keep flashing back to the haunting words from the paragraph in the Gosselin’s contract with Discovery Communications that stated “…Company and/or Company’s designee shall have all creative control with respect to the Program including, but not limited to, approval over Family’s make-up, hairstyle and wardrobe.”

  There is nothing about a company having “creative control” over the “Program” of a family’s life, or dictating such things as “make-up, hairstyle and wardrobe” that is true to how a family really lives.

  Kate Gosselin has been quoted many, many times proudly declaring that, “Our show is the most real reality show you’ll ever see.” If you are a person who believes her statement, and who wants to continue to believe her statement, stop reading now.

  The true “reality” is that the Gosselin kids were told where to go, how to act, what to say, and what to do to fit each episode’s pre-planned and “scripted” storyline. They were threatened and/or bribed before filming began to smile and look happy, and they lived in constant fear of being punished or hit by Kate for not performing up to her standards during filming. They were tricked, lied to and/or deprived of food and drink if they didn’t perform to Kate’s satisfaction.

  The camera crew bribed the kids with candy and presents to get them to be happy during their couch interviews. Lollipops, jelly beans and M&Ms were the candies of choice. The kids’ interviews were shot, and re-shot, over and over, until they got things right. A film crew member told me “It all depends on which kids act the happiest as to who you see on the interview couch during an episode.”

  It was painful, but I watched all of the Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht episodes, at least twice, after the fact, and after I knew what I knew about the show from my own personal experience. The first time around, I started with Season 3, Episode 1, because the kids were around the same age as they were in Kate’s journal, and I wanted to compare that period first. Watching those episodes, I learned first-hand the ugly truth behind the edited, re-shot, carefully constructed “reality” show that was Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht.

  Kate’s stock spiel to the world was that the kids “love filming” and their world would collapse if the filming stopped. She continually said that her children were being given opportunities to go on all kinds of “adventures” and were getting to have wonderful new experiences. But how much could a 3- or 4-year-old child possibly remember from a trip to, say, New Zealand? It was pure BS, but the public bought it.

  The problem with all of these “family adventures” is that they were actually some of the worst kind of torture you could put a small child through. The kids were driven or flown long hours from home to a location where they were marched around and told what to say and what to do and how to act so they could be filmed like little actors and actresses. They couldn’t just BE. They were never allowed to do what THEY wanted to do, and they were denied the chance to act naturally and spontaneously during filming. It would be incredibly frustrating for anyone, small child or otherwise, to be constantly instructed on how to feel or behave or react to life.

  On one of their “adventures” to the beach on Bald Head Island in North Carolina, the TLC cameras were rolling to capture the children’s reactions as they saw the ocean for the first time on the trip. The kids were so excited to run down to the water from their beach house and play and splash around like normal kids do when they hit the beach. Unfortunately, the “adventure” the Gosselin kids got to experience that day was 3 minutes of being filmed as they ran down to the water’s edge. They were then ordered to immediately turn around and return to the house because they had more filming to do elsewhere. They were wrangled like cattle down to the water for a few minutes of filming, and then marched right back to the house and taken somewhere else. Just think about how disappointed and frustrated they must have felt when they weren’t allowed to play on the beach after a 10-hour car ride.

  In another high point of reality programming, the Gosselin children were misled about Christmas Day, that most magical of childhood holidays. Can you even begin to imagine how stressful it must have been for those small children to wake up on Christmas morning, with a TLC camera crew upon them, and lights and cameras in their faces, filming their every move for a Christmas episode? Can you understand how confused they must have felt when, after experiencing all the joy and excitement of their Christmas Day festivities, and opening their presents with wide-eyed anticipation, they found out later that it wasn’t really Christmas Day at all? It just happened to be a convenient time for TLC to shoot their Christmas episode.

  “Reality?” The only thing real was that this cruel deception actually occurred.

  In another example of non-real reality, TLC filmed the kids’ first day of school on September 12, 2006 – two weeks after the first day of school actually took place on August 31. The kids were told by Kate and the crew to act like it was their first day. This pretense was not something that was out of the ordinary. In fact, it was a common occurrence for Kate Gosselin, TLC and their film crew. The “powers that be” would set a schedule that was convenient for them, and then they let Kate know in advance what they would be filming, where they would be filming and, most importantly, what products would be featured in any given episode. It didn’t matter how this deception would affect the kids. It also obviously didn’t matter to the adults involved that they were teaching the children to lie.

  This is part of an entry from Kate’s journal where she talks about the first day of school filming:

  September 2006

  Kate said the big buzz of the day today was the principal called from the girl’s school and was asking about Jen and the whole filming thing. Kate said the principal says that Jen wants to film Friday as if it was the first day of school and wanted to make sure that Kate was okay with it. Kate said the principal also wanted to make sure that she knew which amused Kate. She wrote (hello?!)

  Obviously the school’s principal found this to be an unusual request and wanted to alert the parents about the filming. She must not have understood how reality must be constructed for reality TV. This is just one instance of reality TV’s standard operating procedure. Here’s another example of how they deceived the viewers, as documented in this journal entry from Kate:

  February 2007

  Kate said that the film crew arrived early and they faked Janet being there while they ‘were away’.

  There is so much more. How about you�
��re a kid, sitting around your house on Thanksgiving Day, not celebrating Thanksgiving like everyone else because your mommy is too tired to wake up and watch the staff cook the Thanksgiving meal because she got in too late the night before from filming in California? Then, how would you feel when you finally get to celebrate Thanksgiving the next day, on Black Friday, but you are forced to dress up in an Indian costume and be paraded out on your front lawn for the paparazzi to photograph you having a great time? That’s how the Gosselin children spent their Thanksgiving in 2010. You may have seen the photos of poor Collin standing there in his little Indian dress. His classmates probably saw them as well.

  On another trip, this time to Alaska, Mady couldn’t take it anymore and called Jon the night before, begging him to come and get her and take her back to his apartment. She absolutely did not want to go away for more filming, and especially not as far away as Alaska. I know this because I went to Kate’s house that night with Jon to pick up Mady, and I heard the discussion between Jon and Kate – through the intercom at the gate. Kate completely disregarded Jon’s concerns about Mady and blew it off by saying that Mady was just tired and she didn’t mean what she said. She, of course, managed to insult Jon several times during the exchange. This was at night, in the dark, with no paparazzi watching; it was just a loving father coming to get his unhappy daughter who had called him for help. Jon told Kate that he would be back in the morning to get Mady, and Kate told him that she would have the police at the house to arrest him if he tried. Mady went to Alaska.

  While only a handful of people knew about the drama leading up to the Alaska trip, the family photo that TLC released to the media to promote the episode actually ended up giving away the fact that something was going on with Mady. Google it and look at the photo closely for yourself. You’ll see a very smiley Kate with all the kids. But if you look at Mady, on the far right, you’ll see how sad and miserable she is. She’s crying in the publicity photo. That photo is all the proof anyone would ever need to see that she didn’t want to be there. TLC couldn’t come up with one single publicity “still” where Mady appeared even a little bit happy. Not one. That picture was worth a thousand words.

  The last few seasons of Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht and Kate Plus Ei8ht were nothing more than damage control. The couch interview sessions were always about answering the public criticism that they read online every day. They would deny that, but it’s obvious to anyone who followed the Gosselin saga. Without fail, they always seemed to address, either on the interview couch, or with Kate giving a television interview somewhere else, the rumors and criticism that they were receiving in the public. It was tacky, and after people caught on a little bit more, it became blatantly obvious.

  As an example, people were saying that Kate didn’t do her own grocery shopping, so TLC filmed Kate grocery shopping at the supermarket with all eight kids to prove them wrong. The tactic must have worked, because the show continued on.

  Even with all evidence to the contrary, Kate continued to steadfastly deny that her show was fake and she was difficult. After some negative comments started circulating on the internet about her and Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht, Kate posted the following message on the Gosselin family website:

  To our faithful fans who deserve an answer.

  In the recent days, we have been informed there are a lot of lies circulating about us. Just so you know we have worked hard to show you our real life and we have succeeded. Although it is not always easy we will continue to show you the good, the bad and the ugly on our show. Unfortunately, as with anyone who is on TV there are jealous bystanders, family included, who for whatever reason insist upon telling hurtful untruths. We will continue to love these family members. We will not retaliate. We will leave it alone out of respect for them. But as a reminder, nothing that you read on the internet or in print is true unless it is approved by us. Thank you for watching as our family grows and develops. Our children have always been our priority, will continue to be our top priority and quite honestly nothing else matters to us.

  (This message has been personally written by Jon and Kate Gosselin)

  This is a TLC producer’s scripted question to Jon and Kate, during the Season 3 “Behind The Scenes” episode of Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht. The “random” question, like most questions on the interview couch, was thrown in there to dispel any rumors that were floating around at the time. Kate spent hours rehearsing her responses to these questions, and it sometimes took that much time to shoot and re-shoot her answers to her satisfaction.

  Q: Would you say that the show that we do is realistic?

  Kate responded that Yes, the show is realistic. She said there is no scripting but there’s a plan about what they wanna get and when they are gonna do it, when they are gonna talk about it and when, you know, how they are gonna accomplish it. Kate says that she’s a very big stickler and if you say let’s do this and this and she says that’s not how they do things, then they don’t film it because it annoys her and from the very beginning Kate has always said that she doesn’t want to watch a show that was done a certain way for the sake of TV, because it will bug her so what you see is what you get.

  She finished the thought by saying, “Our crew follows us whatever we do and how we do it.”

  In that very same episode of Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht, we see shots of producer Jen Stocks holding a clapboard with “Take 4” written on it, and a cute little video montage of the clapboard clapping, signaling retakes aplenty. Just minutes later though, we see an interview clip of “Alex, the location sound guy” sharing his insight. Here’s what “Alex, the location sound guy” said, just minutes after we saw the clapboard clapping:

  Alex the sound guy said that the one thing about the show is that it’s not your typical reality show where it’s all fake and they’re doing things two or three times and all this sorta nonsense. He said everything they do happens in real time and what you’re seeing actually happens so he appreciates that his show is dealing with real people and not dealing with actors.

  Really, Alex, the location sound guy? Were our eyes playing tricks on us when we saw the clapboard clapping away, with “Take 4” written on it? How can you say just moments later that retakes don’t exist? How can you stand there and lie that “everything happens in real time”?

  Kate, ever undaunted in her quest to “set the record straight,” tweeted this long after most people had already caught on to the charade:

  My show is real but ppl bel tabloids.i get2pt I don’t care. ppl believe what they want.i live4my kids – that’s all that matters.

  IT IS WHAT IT IS . . . OR IS IT?

  Talking about how real her reality show is Kate says that it’s their life. It’s them telling their story. She says it starts with an idea and they roll with it. Whether it’s an event like they’re going somewhere, or just, they’re gonna do a day in the life or just hanging around the house, sometimes even then, once they start shooting it, it takes a change. Kate says they’re not cast and they’re not producers. They’re filming their lives, and unless they’re absolutely dead set against something in the show, it’s too bad because once it’s created, it is, and they don’t really have a say, so basically, Kate says, when the crew walks in the door, what they get is the footage and they have permission to use it.

  This is not true of course. Kate was given the opportunity to view the episodes and ask for changes before they were broadcast. I read emails where Kate requested that certain scenes be edited or cut completely because she didn’t like how she was being portrayed. In one particular email, she said that “overall” it was a “good hour,” but she wanted “a few things” changed:

  Kate noted that “there’s a little too much crying in the hair braiding scene…” and she really didn’t want all the nasty emails about it.

  She said that in the cake decorating scene where she was referring to Collin wanting to help, Joel was shown.

  She followed that comment by saying “the way I am shown sending him
away (what I am saying) is not good... Could we cut that out please?”

  Kate then complained that the licensed song at the end “is plain hideous!!!!” and the lyrics were not appropriate for a Fourth of July episode where they were watching fireworks. She described the kazoo music used during the episode as “horrible!” and asked if it was possible to find a new music composer for the series because she wished she could hear “what good music would sound like!!!!” Kate said all this “as kindly as possible, of course!!!!” and signed off with her standard “Thanks! Have a gr8t day!”

  After Kate sent her email with her change requests, Jen Stocks replied to Jon and Kate, assuring them that the changes Kate had requested were being made. She said they had also heard from Julie May about concerns Jon and Kate had about the FAQ episode, and she wanted to let them know they were making the changes they requested right away. Jen apologized that they had included shots and information that were upsetting to them.