I Was A Contestant On The Worst Reality Show Ever

If that sounds "incredibly shady" and "what the hell dude, no" to you, good news! You're a human being with a functional moral compass. That puts you above the producers of this show. One of the contestants was Sarah. According to her, the whole "not really a millionaire" thing wasn't where the surprises started. Fox went out of their way to hide the basic structure of the show from the women.

"And they also give you these contracts at the laaaaast minute, and you don't have time to get them reviewed. It's all a trick. Everything was a lie. I remember I had one of the female producers say to me, I kept trying to get information out ... we were told it was not a dating show, but you had to be single so that you'd be open -- what if you meet someone? Y'know, anything like that, but we were never told it was a dating show."

At one point, Sarah was told it was a cooking show. Sloppy Joe Millionaire! Brilliant! "Y'know, they said everything. Everything but a dating show." Sarah was a law student in Los Angeles. The producers said that, in part, was why they were interested in her. "They said, 'We're only casting professional women. The show was for role models, for little girls, we want really strong women.'"

Evan and the "winning woman" were each supposed to walk away with $500,000 at the end of the series. The more cynical among you might think that was why Sarah signed up to be on the show, but it turns out they also hid the fact that there was any prize at all. "We didn't know that there was any prize money, so it certainly wasn't a factor ... they just don't tell you anything until you're super hyped that you've just been cast on this awesome show, and it's this free trip to France with these other amazing women, and it's gonna be great, and a good, positive show."

Sarah got the contract 24 hours before she left for France. "They keep saying things like 'We're not sure you've got the part yet' ... they don't want you to have any advice."

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."

Joe Millionaire himself was inconsistent about his backstory: "Evan told us he was a pro wrestler -- like currently, not as in 'in the past.' He made a huge mistake about where he lived ... I don't remember now, but basically couldn't keep his story straight with me on a date, and I actually covered for him. He told me he worked as a doorman at the Four Seasons or somewhere, and he told me secretly, covering his mike, that he had no intention of marrying any of these girls, and asked me if I was 'cool with that,' if he picked me ... Overall, he wasn't exactly convincing as a Prince Charming Millionaire."

But as the Doorman, a pro wrestler gigolo? Absolutely.

"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'.

Sarah claims the director's strategy was to shame her into letting this stupid show happen: "The director was like, 'Listen, people are gonna lose their jobs if you leave. We're not going to be able to use this footage. We'll have to recast it. These guys have families. This cameraman's gonna lose his job.' They really lay it on thick and coerce you ..." The producers' main concern was keeping the "reveal" of the show intact. If one of the contestants were to leave, that put it all at risk. Locking them all in a hotel far away from civilization was their questionable solution. That created some problems:

"This was right in the beginning, we were in the hotel waiting to be taken out, the first day ... somebody was trying to fish around -- 'Does anybody have a tampon?' Everybody was kind of trying to pool resources, because we weren't allowed out. So I remember ... this one girl literally didn't have tampons, and I think the response time for that might have been ten hours ... before somebody took her out to a store to get some supplies. It was a kind of rude awakening, right away."

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 ..."

She's talking about a scandal from earlier this year on Bachelor In Paradise, wherein one cast member drank seven shots of whiskey, an entire bottle of wine, and went sort of nuts. He had "an aggressive makeout session" with one cast member, insulted another who was missing an arm, then passed out on the beach and soiled himself.

"They really just slather you with alcohol. We weren't allowed to have food or tampons, but we had open access to the wine cellar, 24/7." And all that alcohol did wind up influencing Sarah's behavior. She told us about the fateful night when she kissed Evan: "On what was supposed to be a big deal romantic date, we went to a champagne/wine tasting, and then rode home on bikes (almost killing ourselves). The thing was, when you got back to the stupid chateau after a date, you still had to be filmed and hang out with Evan ... and your choices were the hot tub or a walk around the lake by moonlight. In hindsight, it was clear that Evan had been told to get me 'off camera,' because he dragged me off all of a sudden on a cue from the cameraman. We walked around the lake, and at one point we kissed for about three minutes."

Sarah notes that this "doesn't mean I liked him ... I would've probably made out with a poodle after all that champagne." That's mildly embarrassing, sure, but no worse than we've done on literally every single weekend of our short and terrible lives. But that wasn't enough for the producers ...

That's a common practice in reality shows, called "frankenbiting." Sarah's case is actually the most infamous example of it, and the editor of Joe Millionaire happily admitted to doing it in an interview.

If you're wondering why this is legal, well ... shit, so are we. But that contract Sarah signed the day before flying out apparently gave the producers the right to lie about her sex life to millions of people.

"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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For more check out 5 Details They Cut from My Season of 'The Biggest Loser' and I Was On MTV's The Real World: It Was Not Like You Think.

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