In Hannah Gosselin’s memories of her childhood, the film crew was always there, ready to document the lives of her family for the reality tv show Jon & Kate Plus 8. The show, the most-watched episode of which netted more than 10 million viewers, revolved around Gosselin, now 21, and her seven siblings, made up of a set of sextuplets and a set of twins. For a time, the film crew even lived above the family’s garage in a detached apartment. It wasn’t until Gosselin and her siblings went to elementary school and paparazzi showed up at the bus stop to capture footage that she realized other kids weren’t constantly followed by film crews.
Gosselin is one of a new generation of children, some of whom are now adults, who were raised in front of the prying eyes of a reality television camera. From Jon & Kate Plus 8 to shows like Real Housewives and 90 Day Fiancé, tens of millions of reality television viewers have watched the entire lives of children unfold from babyhood to elementary school to puberty and beyond. While audiences find entertainment and intrigue in their favorite reality shows, there are few legal protections for the kids at the center of the plots, their privacy sometimes traded for little, or even no financial gain.
The kids of reality television have had their lives changed by filming, and not necessarily by their own choice. They’ve lost privacy; they’ve gained fame; their lives have shifted and morphed through the view of the camera lens. When Gwendlyn Brown, of Sister Wives fame, was 9 years old and home sick from school, she says a fan knocked on her front door and asked if she could hug her. Gosselin sometimes wonders what would have become of her now infamously divorced parents if they hadn’t done reality television. Noelle Robinson, who spent her childhood and adolescence on Real Housewives of Atlanta, finds making friends difficult because she questions if their motives are genuine, or if they’re just trying to get a piece of the spotlight.
And yet – knowing what they know now, would they do it all over again? The answer was a resounding, “yes.”
Gwendlyn Brown was 8 years old when her family began filming for Sister Wives, a show exploring the lives of then-polygamist Kody Brown, his four wives, and their combined 18 children.
“I was super into it as a kid,” Brown, now 23, says. When Brown went to school, she says she would subtly tell the other kids about her status as a reality television star and she and her siblings would compete to get the attention of the camera operators. Brown considered the film crew to be her “new uncles” and the show lifted her family out of what she called “a poverty situation.”
“We just got thrown into fame and thrown into money. And I stopped wanting and needing things,” she says. “Life is a lot easier for a kid that’s not going hungry. It was quite a blessing initially.” It was later, when Brown was trudging through the muck of puberty while filming, that her view of reality television as a blessing became blurred. Brown knew someone was always watching and it left her feeling stifled.
“I couldn’t have a hard day,” she says. “There wasn’t a lot of privacy.”
Though she had a bedroom where cameras were not allowed, Brown recalls many times when it felt like she was under a microscope. Once, Brown remembers, she was angry at one of the moms and slipped out of the house to get some space. She had just let out a yell of exasperation when she noticed the camera watching her. “I was so embarrassed,” she remembers, having been caught in a moment of teenage angst. She was worried producers would include her yell on the show, but it didn’t make the cut — a small mercy.
“All that anger and all that publicity,” Brown says. “And oftentimes, I even wanted to be angry on camera. I think there were a few times that I probably [was]. Even if as a kid, you want attention, you can look back at it as an adult and be like, ‘that poor kid.’ Also, poor me now.”
Of course, there are times when Brown was glad the cameras were there, like family vacations. She says getting to watch those back is fun. The cameras also captured the family’s hard times. In 2021, Brown’s mom, Christine, divorced her father, starting an almost chain reaction that resulted in three of Kody Brown’s four wives leaving him. Once a polygamy evangelist, Kody Brown now talks about being a “monogamist,” committing to his one wife, Robyn. In Gwendlyn’s view, the divorce was bound to happen, cameras or not.
“I felt like they should have divorced for a while,” she says. “I remember one time as a kid, I saw them arguing, and my first thought was, I hope they get a divorce. What kid thinks that, right?”
In retrospect, Brown thinks her parents made the best decision they could. She doesn’t think growing up on camera is the best idea, but she also enjoyed parts of it. Now, it’s sort of an ebb and flow, her feelings about being filmed continue to evolve.
“I'm growing a bigger dislike for it. And [in the past] it was like, ‘this is my normal,’” she says. “But now it's like, ‘this does not have to be my normal,’ and it's weird.”
Aniko, 20, and Aspen Bollok, 19, daughters of reality star Darcey Silva, who has been on shows including 90 Day Fiancé and one specifically about Silva and her twin sister called Darcey and Stacey, can relate to the lack of privacy Brown describes. A simple Google search pulls up a clip of their mother giving them the sex talk. “Did they teach you how to like, put a condom on a banana?” Silva asks as Aniko and Aspen cover their eyes.
“That’s such a weird moment, but also, viewers love that stuff,” Aspen says in a Zoom interview, reflecting on having that talk on television. “I still think about that scene a lot," Aniko says. “And I can’t watch that scene because I hate the way my hair looks in the back.”
The sisters were around 10 and 12 when their mother first appeared on reality TV, making her debut on 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days as she tried to nurture a relationship with a man abroad. “It was always her biggest dream to be on TV,” Aniko says. “We always knew that. She was like, ‘girls, I did it.’” (Years before Silva was actually on TV, the family tried their hand at what Aniko described as a Kardashian-style reality show called The Twin Life. It didn’t make it to air.) At first, Aniko and Aspen thought filming was simultaneously boring and sort of cool. But once the initial shimmer of being on TV wore off, Aspen says it actually felt kind of strange.
“Over time, it felt weird. When you're younger like that, you don't imagine yourself in your life on TV and with cameras in your face,” Aspen says. “You have no clue what's going on. You don't know if you can be yourself or what you should say. It's definitely weird.”
Like Brown, they describe a roller coaster of feelings about having their young lives documented. At first, it’s fun and exciting, then it becomes sort of uncomfortable — the awareness that someone (if not a large swath of America) is always watching, even in your worst moments. Then that awareness fades, cameras becoming second nature, and the cycle repeats.
And, for Aniko and Aspen, being on TV meant opening up their personal lives not just to the world, but even more intimately to their community. The pair grew up in and were largely filmed in Middletown, Connecticut, a city of about 47,000 people that felt much more like a small town for the sisters.
“There's been so many moments where filming has both affected me and Ani because, first of all, our whole drama was on TV for kids to see our age, for parents to see,” Aspen says. “Especially living in a small town. I think that it really affected us because it's all our personal [business] aired online.”
Though it’s been hard to face the judgments of viewers over their mother’s love life (which Silva’s reality TV show stints often focus on), the sisters like being able to watch their lives back. “We just see ourselves growing up over time,” Aspen says. Over a recent break from college, they sat around with their friends and watched old episodes. But sometimes, the sisters find themselves questioning the motives of possible new friends and romantic interests. Are they interested in Aniko and Aspen themselves or in the possibility of being featured on reality television? Can a new partner handle meeting their mom, who the sisters say can be “overwhelming”? Will the glitter that prospective friends imagine comes with being on TV not turn out to be gold?
Noelle Robinson, 25, who started filming for Real Housewives of Atlanta when she was 8 years old, wonders the same. She says that, as a reality star, it’s harder to make friends and navigate the waters of dating. “There are repercussions of being on television,” she says. “I think it did make me a lot more closed off and not as trusting. People like to be around celebrity. There’s just so many things you have to be vigilant for.”
As the daughter of model Cynthia Bailey and actor, singer, and producer Leon Robinson, Noelle Robinson was born into fame. Though Robinson would have had some of these considerations whether or not her mom went on reality TV, the Bravo show added another layer of visibility. Filming has even changed the milestone moments of her life, like her sweet-16 birthday party, which she feels was stilted by the presence of the cameras. “I wasn’t really able to just have fun and relax with the cameras there,” she says. A few years later, when Robinson headed to college, the cameras followed. “It’s something that I would have rather not shown because when you're rolling into a university with huge camera crews, it is obviously going to alter your social experience. I never really feel like I got a fair shot to even see if college was right for me or not.” She completed two semesters at Howard University, and never returned.
But if not for the show, Robinson wouldn’t have had the chance to provide meaningful representation. In 2019, she came out as sexually fluid on The Real Housewives of Atlanta in a touching conversation with her mom. Showing that conversation and being open about her identity was important to Robinson. She says she wanted to write her own story, rather than having her sexuality speculated about if she were seen out on a date, so coming out was important in allowing her to explore freely. But she also knew it was a chance to model LGBTQ acceptance both for her peers, and for parents who might be struggling with their child’s sexuality.
“It was just a really great thing to show on television because there are still parents, even in this day and age, that would kick their child out for their sexual preferences,” Robinson says. “To show that positive representation on a big network like that, I think is very, very positive.”
Brown had a similar moment on Sister Wives, but for her, coming out on television wasn’t really the plan. Brown says she doesn’t like the idea of having to come out as queer when straight people don’t have to come out as straight, but sitting in the interview chair, a producer asked her a question that caught her off guard.
“We were interviewing, I think about the divorce or about my sister Ysabel moving to North Carolina. Then all of a sudden, the producer was like, ‘Hey, your mom mentioned that you're bi. Do you want to talk about that?’” Brown remembers. “And I was like, ‘Well, it's true.’”
Brown recalls stumbling through an explanation of what being bisexual means, one she now feels was “so dumb.” (In the scene, Brown described being attracted to men, women, and “other gender spectrums.”) The stilted description came from what Brown called being “jumped” by the producer asking the question. She’s not the only reality kid whose sexuality was unexpectedly called into question.
When Brooks Marks was 19 years old, his mother, Meredith Marks, joined the cast of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Marks, who is now 25, was excited for his mom and figured the show wouldn’t have much to do with him – a perspective he held onto until the show started airing and viewers feverishly discussed his sexuality.
“That was something I was really unprepared for,” he says. “I thought I had the thickest skin ever. Then it got ripped apart by thousands of people online and [I had] to build even thicker skin.” Marks was alternately lauded and panned as the first openly gay child of a housewife — despite the fact that he wasn’t openly gay. (“My family doesn’t really believe in the need to come out or label yourself,” he says of his sexuality. “That’s the end of the story.”) When viewers speculated on his sexuality, “it felt like I didn’t have control over my own story.”
But before all of that, Marks was excited by the prospect of the show. “Any entrepreneur knows that reality TV can be leveraged to provide a larger platform for any business,” Marks says. The show, he figured, would also be a way to showcase his family’s close relationships with each other – but then his sexuality became a plot point. And, Marks says, it’s hard to see his mother “attacked” by other cast members. “Seeing people go after her over the most absurd, horrible things is just really upsetting. Those are the times when I don't like to watch.”
But there was an undeniable upside for Marks: exposure for his clothing brand, which he launched in 2020. He found himself split by the experience of being on reality TV. On one hand, his business was doing the best it had ever done, in part because of the success of the show. On the other hand, he was “an emotional wreck” suffering from extreme anxiety. Seeing his mom be attacked on the show and by commenters, and facing his own social media trolls put Marks on edge.
“I just would dissociate from everything in terms of what was causing my anxiety. I was having breakdowns every so often, and I just felt extremely overwhelmed,” he says, joking that his mom’s publicist essentially turned into his therapist. (Don’t worry, he has an actual therapist, too.) “Anxiety for me has always manifested as a physical feeling of just there's a blender in your body. It just feels like cryotherapy or something. You just feel numb.”
When Marks met people in those early days of the show, he would wonder if they were some of the faceless trolls attacking him online. “I was like, ‘Where are these people coming from? Who is a real person and actually is there for me?” he says.
That’s all led to what Marks calls “a lot of wisdom.” As a result of being on television and having his life opened up to strangers, Marks says he’s more self-assured, more confident, and knows to trust his gut. He says the show has strengthened his relationship with his family, and it’s recorded a lot of their good times. His business benefitted hugely, he says, and he plans to keep the momentum that being on the show gave him going — using the show as a springboard into his own, independent success. In fact, Marks has been filming a show with other children of reality stars called Next Gen NYC, about them forging their own path in the big city.
The show, which premiers on June 3, is part of a larger cultural moment, a sort of turning point for famous kids. On one hand, states like Illinois, Minnesota, California, and Utah have passed laws protecting the rights and profits of influencer kids and stars like Demi Lovato are advocating for the rights of child actors — highlighting the lack of legal protections and vulnerability these kids face. On the other, many of the children of this early generation of reality stars and influencers are aging, meaning the people who didn’t have a choice or much of a voice now do – and they’re using it.
Hannah Gosselin was basically born into reality TV. The first time she appeared on television in a documentary about her family, she was only 15-months-old (though the episode featured footage from when Hannah and her siblings were in utero). By the time she was 3, Gosselin was a mainstay on TLC’s blockbuster show Jon & Kate Plus 8. Gosselin grew up always having a film crew around – at one point, they even moved in, living in an apartment above the Gosselin garage. Hannah remembers the crew as always present, a part of the family. “That was our normal,” she says. Her life was shockingly public, but it was what she was used to.
Gosselin and her siblings grew from bumbling toddlers into awkward adolescents in front of the cameras. Going through puberty was especially difficult; even if she was in a bad mood or had a pimple on her teenaged face, the cameras were still there. “You’re always surrounded,” Gosselin remembers. “The film crew was there 24/7.” Making friends was difficult, with Gosselin wondering if people actually wanted to be her friend or just wanted to be on TV. She watched as her parents’ relationship, which ended in a divorce that was splashed across tabloid covers, appeared to be changed by filming.
“[Filming] made my siblings and I closer to each other, even though it made my parents further from each other,” she says. “It’s hard to go back and watch my parents argue.”
And the cameras were almost always there, catching arguments, makeups, and everything in between. After school, the cameras filmed the kids until late at night. In the morning, they were there again, capturing the chaos of getting eight kids to school on time. “School mornings are stressful as it is,” Gosselin says, with the presence of the cameras only exacerbating the race to get lunches packed and breakfasts eaten. Those were the moments she would wish the cameras weren’t there.
In the face of the ever-present cameras, Gosselin and her siblings found loopholes to the constant filming, like when they realized that footage couldn’t be used if they said a name brand because of trademark and product placement issues. If the siblings ever wanted to say something that they didn’t want to end up on TV, one of them would say a brand name over and over while the other did or said whatever they wanted. Eventually, the crew caught on and told them to stop.
But Gosselin doesn’t know anything different and she wouldn’t change it. If she misses her siblings, she pulls up clips of the shows to watch. When she tells a friend about a memory from childhood, she Googles it and lets them watch the footage instead of relying on her description. The show brought opportunity she wouldn’t have had otherwise, even if it did add stress in parts of her life. It also gave her a paycheck, and made the industry more regulated for kids like her.
The child labor laws in Pennsylvania were changed in part as a result of the Gosselin kids’ involvement in filming Jon & Kate Plus 8, resulting in legal and financial protections for child actors and reality stars that left Hannah Gosselin with enough money to pay for about half of her college education. In return, she and her family members have become tabloid fixtures, with the most innocuous of sibling hang-outs making headlines.
Minors on reality television are largely unprotected legally; the laws that protect the earnings of child actors largely don’t apply to children featured on reality shows, an issue which was exemplified by the publication of Jill Duggar’s memoir Counting the Cost in which the reality star recounted her experience of allegedly being paid only $175,000 for 13 years of filming for the family’s reality show. The lack of legal protections leaves reality kids in a vulnerable position in which it’s often up to their parents to choose to pay them for their labor.
“The network only paid the parents,” Gwendlyn Brown says of TLC’s Sister Wives. “I’m not sure if they did or didn’t expect the parents to pay us kids, but we weren’t paid.” In later years, Brown says, her mother decided to pay her kids “a certain amount per day or half-day of camera time.” She’s not sure exactly how much she was paid though she adds, “it certainly hasn’t been a fair share.” (A spokesperson from TLC said the network doesn't discuss specific talent agreements, but that “compensation is handled in accordance with contractual commitments and applicable labor laws and regulations.” Christine Brown Woolley, Gwendlyn's mother, confirmed that the children were not paid directly for filming at first, though the family did put money aside for their college and vehicle funds.)
Noelle Robinson says she wasn’t paid for spending her childhood and adolescence on Real Housewives of Atlanta. Does she think she should have been? “I don’t know,” she says, her mother listening in on the call. “I don’t know.” (Representatives for Bravo confirmed Robinson was not paid.)
Each of these reality kids would do it all over again, sacrificing their privacy for the experience of filming a show. In all, each of them said the experience and opportunity was worth the pitfalls. But, it can be tough to grapple with, probably because the hypothetical scenario of choosing to do it all over again is different from how they ended up on tv — as a result of their parents’ choices.
“My mom was… able to make a conscious choice after having a childhood [and] having a life outside of being famous,” Robinson says. “For me, I was thrown into it without actually knowing what was really going on or what the lifelong pros and cons would be from making that decision."
“Would I go back and do it again?” Robinson continues. “I think I would do it again. I think I would do it again because I feel like life is about the highs and lows, the good and bad.”
Hannah Gosselin
Photographer Isabella Kahn
Photo Assistant Isaac Swartz
Gwendlyn Brown
Photographer Cassidy Araiza
Brooks Marks, Ani Bollok and Aspen Bollok
Photographer Julia Kokernak
Photo Assistant Alyssa Hannah
Noelle Robinson
Photographer Maiwenn Raoult
