“The truth always comes out,” frequently says Lisa Vanderpump near the end of any big storyline on Vanderpump Rules or her tenure on Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. In a recent talk with Variety, Vanderpump let the truth out. Speaking on the ever-present topic of the “Scandoval,” the model-turned-restauranteur-turned-reality-star-turned-reality-producer said the storyline has been “a producer’s dream, but talent’s nightmare.” And while she claims she was “basically having a heart attack” when she found out, let’s be honest, the situation that she’s describing could be applied to anything on reality television.
Our current wave of reality television, a veritable golden age, if you will, began with the 2007-08 writers’ strike. Why did reality TV become so popular at that time? Because producers didn’t have to pay writers or actors to be on hit dramas. They could create the drama as they saw fit. Meredith Blake at the L.A. Times writes:
The 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, which lasted 153 days, helped popularize shows like Cops and America’s Most Wanted for Fox, then an upstart network. And the last writers’ strike, which spanned November 2007 to February 2008, prompted networks and studios to order new unscripted programming and accelerate the return of others, including Paradise Hotel, Big Brother, and Celebrity Apprentice, to plug programming holes during prime time.
It was around this time that the Housewives franchise also took off, and Lisa Vanderpump made her reality television debut on the first season of The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills in 2010. Three years later, presumably after learning how much better reality is for producers than talent, she launched Vanderpump Rules, a show ostensibly starring her staff at her sexy, unique restaurant SUR. Almost immediately, it was easy to see how much better the show would be for her, who always got a heavenly edit, and how bad it was for the cast. Without her preferential treatment, how else could one defend a show that see Jax Taylor for dumping his girlfriend outside her A.A. meeting, one of Jax’s most shocking moments in a career full of them?
Viewers saw how much better the show was for producers via the locations on the show. As the cast languished in fully carpeted West Hollywood studio apartments, they would occasionally be summoned to Vanderpump’s mansion, Villa Rosa, where, to borrow a phrase from Vanderpump, the cast was “gobsmacked” by her pet swans floating peacefully in her moat. Yeah, this woman has a moat. That must’ve been especially gobsmacking in the first season when the cast members were reportedly paid $5,000 for the entire season, a measly $300 an episode. But, of course, that’s the type of pay that flies when there are no SAG minimums.
Thankfully, the cast makes more now. Considering how frequently they must debase themselves for our entertainment by living in a kayfabe reality where their worst impulses are rewarded with more screen time, they deserve the money. However, that reality exploitation is still present when we look at shows like Netflix’s latest reality hit, Love Is Blind, in which participating in the show reportedly amounts to “psychological torture.” Things are better for producers when contestants must sign a waiver allowing the show to possibly “expose information that is ‘personal, private, surprising, defamatory, disparaging, embarrassing, or unfavorable’ and open them up to ‘public ridicule, humiliation or condemnation.” Producers are also accused of not supplying food for contestants, depriving them of sunlight, and sleeping in bunkbeds filled with roaches, which must be a new form of stocking The Bachelor mansion with as much alcohol as humanly possible to drum up drama. Yeah, this does sound like a talent’s nightmare.
This isn’t meant to shame anyone from watching reality television. After decades of this crap, these people should have some idea of what they’re getting into—but they still should be compensated better for their work. If it were illegal to watch Vanderpump Rules, this writer would be serving a life sentence. But hearing a multi-millionaire brag about how much better it is for her than her very much worse off staff is one of the most obnoxious brags this side of we meant for the rocket to explode like that.