6

No One Believed "Joe" Was A Millionaire

The premise of this show was supposed to be "A bunch of gold-diggers learn the guy they're swooning over is actually poor!" And then both Evan and the "winning woman" who doesn't care that he's broke would walk home with half a million bucks each. So none of the women could know about that prize money. According to Sarah, the only reward they were promised was jewelry:

"We did realize at a certain point that you received a 'gift' of jewelry if you 'passed' a round. So considering that we weren't being compensated for appearing on the show, the necklaces could've been a motivator to want to get picked. It also went along with their 'romance story' BS, so [it] seemed less skeevy than if we had known all along that there was prize money. They basically sold it as Evan was the big prize, so to speak, and that certainly wasn't a motivator."

According to Sarah, none of the women ever actually bought Evan Marriot as a real rich dude.

20th Television

The producers did a really bad job at making Evan Marriot look the part. According to Sarah, there were tons of tells: "I think at one point on one of my dates, he went ballistic because he thought somebody stole a 20-dollar bill out of his wallet. I thought they couldn't find anybody and they hired him. I didn't think it was a joke on us. I thought they hired some actor to pretend he was a millionaire for the sake of the storyline."

5

The Producers Set Up Hidden Cameras To Secretly Record Contestants

Somehow, it gets shadier. "We weren't allowed out of the hotel, or out of the chateau. Everything had to be run through the channels of production. So we were losing our marbles, because we'd been locked in our hotel room independently ... You were by yourself for, like, 48 hours, locked in a room." Sarah and her fellow contestants demanded they at least be allowed some gym time, because they are all much healthier people than anyone writing for Cracked. The producers agreed, but ...

"We were guarded. And they kept saying it was because they didn't want the surprise to be ruined. They were keeping us under lock and key, but pretending it was our own benefit. They were taking us collectively ... to work out downstairs. And I was like, 'Oh my god, I forgot my something,' and I went up ..." Somehow she managed to lose the "bodyguard" who was supposed to tail her, and Sarah wound up heading to her room alone. "And I remember hearing voices in my room, and thinking, 'Well, nobody should be in there ...'"

So Sarah unlocked her door. She had an adjoining room with another contestant, Melissa, who was out on a date with Evan. "And they were in her room, and in my room, and they were talking about us changing, talking about us doing yoga, and basically setting up hidden cameras. And I caught them. I went and told the other girls. Things had been going bad, but this was ... way worse than I had thought."

The cameraman directly threatened Sarah: "He flat out said, 'If you fuck with me, I run this camera. I will fucking ruin you.' And I didn't get it, I was so naive, I said, 'Go at it, I'm not being bad.' I just didn't get it at all. I was not that savvy." But wait, why didn't she and the other girls simply leave at this point? That's the reddest flag we've ever heard of, and boy howdy was it a-wavin'.

4

They Took Cast Members' Passports When They Tried To Leave

Sarah "threw a fit," and "kind of rallied" the other contestants to demand a production meeting. "And that's where I tried to leave, tried to go home ... at one point, I asked for my passport back in Paris, and they wouldn't give it to me." We here at Cracked are whatever the opposite of legal experts are, but even we know that taking someone's passport so they can't leave is ... frowned upon? Like, it's a legal sad face, right?

3

They Fed Contestants Booze To Make Them Pliable

Sarah says the show's producers relied heavily on alcohol to lubricate the ol' social gears. This is an extremely common strategy for reality shows. Drama and lust keep viewers watching, and alcohol facilitates both. Check out this screengrab of a normal dinner on the set of Joe Millionaire:

20th Television

There's almost no food on the table, but both women have multiple glasses of wine. That was intentional. "I think part of it was, they want you to be hungry, and they want you to cooperate because you're tired, and so that you'll be fed. And they want you to drink on an empty stomach, for sure." But Joe Millionaire was cast in a more innocent time, before reality producers had their jobs down to a sinister science. The women were a little older, and they knew how to handle their liquor: "I felt like we drank 24/7, and mostly everyone maintained their composure."

But it was obvious to Sarah what the producers were trying to do. "I see it in other shows. I don't think in my show ... to be honest, nobody had sex with Evan. Nobody got in fights. Our girls were really composed. I just think we were bored and steadily drinking the whole time. I think it made us more cooperative than we otherwise would [have been]. Now I look at other shows, whatever just happened with The Bachelor ..."

2

The Producers Edited Footage To Make It Look Like Sarah Blew A Guy

Sarah and her castmates managed to avoid doing anything terribly embarrassing. "But I remember at the end thinking, y'know, it was horrible, but I didn't do anything wrong. I was nice to everybody. I didn't embarrass myself." And then the actual show aired on television, and Sarah was portrayed as a gold-digger who gave Evan a blowjob.

Sarah says that what actually happened is that she and Evan made out for a little while, then walked off into the garden. The producers edited in blowjob sound effects later. "I don't remember anything like that. I don't remember that conversation. I realized later that the girls had been exercising in one of our rooms, and they had taken audio from our working out and put it in the conversation with Evan so it sounded like I was making sexual noises."

1

There Were Consequences, And They Lasted For A Long Time

Obviously, frankenbiting had a severe impact on Sarah's life. How could it not? "It aired three hours earlier on the East Coast, where I'm originally from, and I remember I would have paparazzi on my doorstep the nights of the viewing. I think I was doing an interview, having a viewing party, and one of my friends called and was like, 'Sarah, if you have people over tonight, cancel it. They make you look like you fuck him in the bushes.'

'Well, that didn't happen. They can't.'

'I'm telling you, cancel your party. You're going to look really bad.'"

Sarah called everyone she knew to clear her name, but to the world at large, she was the girl who'd given some schmo a blowjob on network television.

20th Television

"I remember saying, 'My god, if I kill myself, it'll just boost their ratings.' It was devastating. It was bad. I couldn't leave my house. Paparazzi were on my front porch. And I couldn't defend myself, because I had Fox lawyers breathing down my neck ..."

Not only did Fox edit their footage to make Sarah look like she sucked off a stranger for money, but they also threatened to sue her if she talked. "Of course they tried to get me to sign this giant contract that -- I think it was 75 years. That for 75 years, I wouldn't discuss production, etc. etc. So that's one of the tactics, they just kinda scare you to death. Now, I had just finished a year of law school. So I thought I knew everything, and I remember thinking, 'Well, they're not paying us, so this contract will never hold ... you can't sign away all your rights for no consideration.'"

Sarah tried her best to do damage control: "I felt like my only defense was to be in the public light after as much as I could, to try to convince people I wasn't a horrible person like they portrayed. Also, some of it was kind of fun. I got to try lots of things that I wouldn't have had an opportunity to. I recorded on an Indian pop album, I starred in a Vegas dance revue, got to do other television and movie spots. I was a travel writer for a while after that ... and of course, I had the opportunity to be one of the highest-paid 'celebrity pictorials' in Playboy history ... for only going topless."

Playboy

But today, Sarah is done with the entertainment industry. She runs a business from home and lives in Northern California with her husband. And "sometimes, when I've had too much wine, I tell our dinner guests crazy stories of my days in Hollywood, and my 15 minutes of infamy ..."

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