10 Reality TV Shows Sued by Their Participants

How “real” are reality TV shows? How much, if any, of their content is manipulated? Are they exploitative? Fair? Accurate? The ten reality shows on this list were sued by their contestants or participants, but does this fact mean that the plaintiffs were somehow mistreated? Sometimes, it’s up to a jury to decide.

Related: 10 of the Most Random Reality Shows to Ever Exist

10 Love Is Blind

Although Love Is Blind’s website bills the series as a “social experiment [in which] single men and women look for love and get engaged, all before meeting in person,” some of its contestants have a much different view of the reality show.

Twenty-hour workdays. Inadequate food and water. Encouragement of excessive drinking. Unfair wages. These are the complaints that Love Is Blind contestant Jeremy Hartwell lodged against the Netflix reality show and Kinetic Content, its production company. According to Hartwell’s lawsuit, he and the rest of the show’s cast were “basically locked in [a] room” all day.

The contestant’s complaint further states that “the combination of sleep deprivation, isolation, lack of food, and an excess of alcohol[,] all either required, enabled or encouraged by defendants, contributed to inhumane working conditions” and the cast’s “altered mental state.”

In another lawsuit, contestant Tran Dang accused Kinetic Content and Delirium TV of “sexual assault, false imprisonment, and negligence.” Her then-fiancé, Thomas Smith, she said, committed the assault, but, according to the law firm Wallace & Allen LLP, of Houston, Texas, “due to Delirium TV and Kinetic Content’s 24-hour surveillance of Plaintiff and Defendant Smith, most if not all of these traumatic acts were [knowingly] filmed by the production crew.” According to Kinetic Content and Delirium TV, Dang’s claims are without merit.

In a YouTube video, contestants Nick Thompson and Jeremy Hartwell discuss their ordeal, Thompson characterizing it as abusive and exploitative. Hartwell agrees that it was exploitative, adding that his experience on the show was also manipulative and included “psychological torture.” Contestants, Hartwell said, were stripped of their “autonomy,” along with their “phones, wallets, IDs, and passports.”

A fourth participant in the series, Renee Poche, filed a lawsuit against Netflix and Delirium TV for matching her with Carter Wall, whom she described as being a “walking red flag,” and compelling her to continue her engagement to him. Netflix and Delirium TV responded by slapping her with a $4 million lawsuit for allegedly violating her non-disclosure agreement, which Poche views as “illegal and unenforceable.”^[1]

9 Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip

According to Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Tripcast member Caroline Manzo, who is suing American television network Bravo, which broadcast the show, and other parties, cast members were frequently given alcohol, causing them “to become severely intoxicated” before they were encouraged “and/or” allowed “to sexually harass other cast members” for the sake of the series’ “ratings.” In her case, she said, Brandy Glanville gave her a number of unwelcome kisses during a party before sexually assaulting her.

The show’s producers are alleged to have hired Glanville for the series despite “overwhelming prior notice of Ms. Glanville’s prior deviant sexual proclivities and sexually harassing conduct.”^[2]

8 Beast Games

Five anonymous Beast Games contestants are suing Jimmy Donaldson—Mr. Beast—the host of Beast Games, and Amazon for sexual harassment and “chronic mistreatment.” The reality show, Variety reports, features over “1,000 participants [who] compete for a single $5 million cash prize.”

A redacted copy of the complaint alleges that Amazon, as well as “production companies,” among other actions, “exploited [contestants’ physical and emotional] labor under pressure-cooker conditions” and coerced them into signing “unconscionable contracts with illegal terms and illusory obligations.”

Allegedly, the contestants were fed only “sporadically and sparsely” and had inadequate “access to hygiene products and medical care.” Female contestants were also allegedly subjected to “misogyny and sexism” and “sexual harassment” in a “hostile work environment.”^[3]

7 Married to Medicine

Married to Medicine’s creator, executive producer, and star Mariah Huq is suing Bravo and other parties for alleged breaches of contract, joint venture agreement, the covenant of good faith and fair dealing; failure to prevent retaliation and harassment; and unauthorized exploitation of both Married to Medicine and Married to Medicine the Series, which chronicle the personal and medical careers of a group of Atlanta, Georgia, doctors.

The discrimination allegation is based on producers prohibiting Huq, who is Muslim, from wearing a hijab while filming was underway and for the difference in how she and Lisa Vanderpump, one of her white counterparts, were treated.^[4]

6 Vanderpump Rules

Rachel (“Raquel”) Leviss claims that her former Bravo Vanderpump Rules reality show costars, her best friend Ariana Madix and Madix’s then-boyfriend Tom Sandoval, “subjected her to revenge porn,” eavesdropped on her, invaded her privacy, and inflicted emotional distress on her, for which she is suing them.

Sandoval, Leviss contends, recorded “at least” two of her intimate liaisons with him without her consent. Madix learned of their affair in Season 10 of Vanderpump Rules after watching a FaceTime call between them. This call, Leviss said, was also recorded without her permission.

When Madix found “sexually explicit videos” of Leviss on Sandoval’s phone, she “distributed and/or showed them” to others, also without Leviss’s permission.^[5]

5 Hotel Impossible

Travel Channel describes its reality TV series Hotel Impossible as featuring “hotel ‘fixer’ Anthony Melchiorri and his team of designers” as they “revamp and transform struggling hotels into successful tourist accommodations.”

Some might describe Melchiorri as pugnacious, but the show’s host would probably prefer “direct.” After inspecting a troubled hotel, inside and out, assessing its condition, amenities, cleanliness, safety, personnel performances, and revenue, he consults with the owner and recommends corrective measures. In the process, he conducts himself much in the manner of a Marine drill instructor, accepting no excuses and speaking bluntly.

One episode shows some of the problems that Melchiorri uncovered at the Woodstock Lodge in Woodstock, New York. These included “asbestos tiles, mold, warped foundations, animal infestations, exposed electrical panels, detached toilets, leaky ceilings, a crumbling septic tank, and more.”

In October 2021, a news report stated that corrections of “25 problems at the lodge,” found in May, had not been done and that “fire and safety inspections” determined that three of the Lodge’s cabins were unsafe. These cabins were denied “human occupancy” pending a follow-up inspection.^[6]

4 America’s Next Top Model

America’s Next Top Model, as its name suggests, seeks to launch the career of the nation’s next stand-out model. Created by its executive producer, supermodel Tyra Banks, it has been criticized for humiliating and degrading women and for failing to “produce successful models.”

Despite such observations, though, the show is a runaway success, but not with Angela Preston, it appears, who sued Banks, The Tyra Banks Co., three other producers, and the CW Network, claiming that Banks disqualified her after discovering that the contestant had once been an escort.

According to Preston, she won the show’s Cycle 17 and all the prizes associated with the win, which included a $100,000 CoverGirl cosmetics contract, an Express fashion campaign, a Vogue Italia fashion spread, and a position as a correspondent on the Extra TV program. She received nothing, Preston complained, and an opponent, Lisa D’Amato, was declared the winner.

Preston admitted to signing a release agreement that authorized the show to deny prizes to a winner who was “caught or exposed committing any act which results in any public disgrace, outrage or other embarrassing act or any act that constitutes an act of moral turpitude,” but maintained that producers were aware of her “past escorting service.” Forty-two months after she filed the lawsuit, Preston “dropped” her claim when she realized that she “wasn’t going to win.”^[7]

3 Wife Swap

Defamation: that’s the charge that 18-year-old Alicia Guastafarro lodged against Disney, ABC, and its Wife Swap show. In the episode in which she appeared with her parents, Guastafarro, then 15, was depicted as a spoiled princess “obsessed” with her appearance, she alleges in her $100 million lawsuit. The characterization caused her to suffer derision and mockery from her peers, she charged.

Described as “the Princess of Pageantry,” Guastafarro, who’d won the Little Miss Buffalo pageant, “showed off her vast pageant wardrobe for Wife Swap.” Her lawsuit claims that “for their own profit, defendants purposefully, intentionally and knowingly caused severe emotional and psychological harm to a fragile 15-year-old.” Guastafarro was prevented from “explaining or defending her behavior which, she alleged, was the product of scripted lines,” and completed “high school in an alternate program.”^[8]

2 Survivor

Appearing in the first season of the CBS reality show Survivor, contestant Stacey Stillman was eliminated from the competition, “the third Survivor voted out,” as journalist Alessandro Passalalpi points out.

Considering her ejection to have been “orchestrated behind the scenes” by rivals Dirk Been and Sean Keaniff, who’d been “advised to take her out in favor of fan-favorite Rudy Boesch,” she made her suspicions known, but CBS found her claims to be without merit, Passalalpi says.

Although the lawsuit’s outcome “was never made public,” Us Magazine reported that “CBS and Stillman ultimately settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.”^[9]

1 There’s Something about Miriam

The Reality TV World website gets right to the heart of the matter that led to a lawsuit against There’s Something about Miriam: “The six straight men who sued to prevent the broadcast of [a] UK reality show in which, unbeknownst to them, they competed for the affection of a preoperative Mexican transsexual quickly got over their claims of injury and public humiliation in return for a cash payment, clearing the way for the program to debut on UK television.”

Although the amount of the settlement was not disclosed, it was reportedly somewhere in the range of $150,000 to $250,000 for each of the plaintiffs. The settlement included an apology by Brighter Pictures, stating that “it was never the intention of Brighter Pictures or Sky to upset the contestants, and they are sorry for any upset caused.”^[10]

fact checked by
Darci Heikkinen