Everything You Need To Know About Going On Reality TV

Reality TV, by nature, is unpredictable. You can’t control what the cameras see or how your castmates react. You can’t control how footage gets stitched together into a narrative. And you certainly can’t control what the audience thinks of you when it all airs. But that doesn’t mean you have to head into the experience totally blind. For Bustle’s special-issue handbook to becoming a reality TV star, we’re asking industry veterans and top reality stars all your pressing questions about the practicalities of casting, filming, and navigating fame.

How do I read my contract?

Would you sign your life away for a shot at reality stardom? In short, that’s what a talent contract will ask you to do, according to Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer Paul Menes. Menes’ career spans decades, and he’s represented talent on all manner of reality programs, from competitions to docu-soaps. So when he says reality TV contracts are essentially crafted to take advantage of talent, at the cost of their reputation and even their lives, he knows what he’s talking about.

“You absolve the production company and everybody connected to it from anything that happens to you, whether they kill you or you kill yourself. They’re not responsible for death, dismemberment, spontaneous combustion, or anything else.” Menes says. “You become a total captive of the show and its tentacle, so to speak.”

More often than not, Menes says, agreements to join the cast of a reality TV show are “unconscionable contracts” — the parties don’t have equal bargaining power, and the less-powerful party is staring down an unfair, even unenforceable deal. However, if you want a chance at fame, the only option is to accept the terms and conditions presented to you, as unsavory as they may seem. That can mean consenting to a nasty villain edit, on-camera sex, or even giving the production company a cut of your hard-earned TikTok Shop affiliate revenue post-show. Your only true out is to not join the show.

That said, with a few years of fame, and a good lawyer on your side, you might be able to negotiate a sweeter deal for later television endeavors. Just don’t try to go in without representation. “To me, it’s like if you need a knee replacement and don’t go to a doctor. You go on the Mayo Clinic website and ask Chat how to cut your leg open and replace the joint and expect you’ll be fine,” Menes says. “If they’re that ignorant, that afraid, or that reticent to hire a lawyer and spend the money, God bless them.”

What’s in a mental health evaluation?

The best reality TV shows are packed with a colorful cast of characters. There’s the drama queen, the villain, the underdog, the dark horse — and they all have to live together. To create the ideal mix for viewers at home, a casting team will sift through applications to find each personality type. It’s a lot like playing a game of Tetris, says psychologist Loni Fagel, MA, MEd, LPCC, who worked in casting in the mid-2000s. “They’re not necessarily looking for the healthiest people,” she says. “They’re looking for people who are emotionally expressive, dramatic, messy, engaging, or unpredictable.”

But what happens when the drama queen gets rejected on a national dating show or the underdog spends 60 days on an island without a call home to family? Because reality TV is a pressure cooker of stress and scrutiny, production teams rely heavily on mental health evaluations before filming — partly to protect the contestants, but also the cast and crew (plus the show’s reputation). According to Fagel, the goal is to walk a very fine line between finding the eccentric gems and accidentally casting someone who crumbles the moment the cameras roll. “Without some level of screening, these environments can go sideways pretty quickly,” she says. (According to Enter the Villa, Anne Peele’s behind-the-scenes look at Love Island, 40% of the contestants producers eye for the show get cut during the evaluation stage.)

While each show’s process is different, Fagel says you may meet with a team of evaluators who ask how you handle conflict, stress, surprise, and jealousy. “Think of it like scenarios they might ask on a job interview — only this job is to be on a reality TV show with millions of people watching,” she says. Some teams might use the Adult Attachment Interview to analyze your approach to relationships or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory to better understand your behavioral patterns. They may ask about trauma, substance abuse history, and other topics in that vein. It’s possible they’ll also reach out to your friends or family to corroborate what you say. Meanwhile, they’re also keeping an eye on your body language: Does this person seem honest? Are there topics they have a hard time with?

That said, the mental health evaluation isn’t about weeding out everyone who’s ever experienced anxiety, trauma, ADHD, or depression. And it can even be a good thing if you have a prescription. “The diagnosis should not matter as much as: Has this person had treatment for it? Are they on medication? Do they have support?” Fagel says. As long as you tick those boxes, you might be good to go. After all, reality TV wants drama — just not a crisis.

When should I get work done?

If cameras are about to be on you 24/7 — and you intend on being, say, the most earth-shaking Bombshell to ever enter the Villa — you may find yourself pondering cosmetic enhancements. You wouldn’t be alone in that: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul talked about going under the knife prior to filming her (since-canceled) season of The Bachelorette. But depending on how much time you have before filming, some procedures make more sense than others. Leave a few weeks for Botox and filler to fully settle. If you have about two months, liposuction around the face and neck or a breast augmentation could be the move, according to Dr. Sean Doherty, M.D., a board-certified plastic surgeon in Boston. A little longer, and you could get a blepharoplasty or body liposuction, which take around three months to fully recover from. Six months, and you could go for a tummy tuck, rhinoplasty, or abdominal contouring, according to Dr. Rian Maercks, M.D., a Miami-based board-certified plastic surgeon.

There are a few things to keep in mind before you set a surgery date. First, if you’re on a GLP-1, you’ll have to take a break for at least two weeks leading up to the operation, as the medication can pose an aspiration risk while under anesthesia. Doherty recommends that his patients stay off the weight loss drugs for two weeks following the procedure as well, to encourage a balanced diet (including adequate hydration) to assist with the healing process. Another aspect of the reality TV lifestyle that might get in the way of recovery: high stress scenarios.

“I always say be happy because happy heals,” Maercks says. “If people are worried or upset, they retain swelling. They tend to have more healing complications.” It’s certainly something to consider before diving into a televised psychological experiment.

How do I give good confessionals?

Confessional interviews are an essential piece of most reality shows, and they’re often when you get the audience — if not the whole production — on your side. “With competition reality shows, it’s won in the interview chair,” says superstar drag queen Trixie Mattel, who came in first place on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars in 2018 (and also co-created and starred in the home-renovation docuseries Trixie Motel). “You really can’t win without good interviews. You can’t win without a good story.”

Still, speaking in the present tense about past events and emotions like they just happened is a strange exercise, especially if you’re a television newbie. Mattel says it gets easier to tap into the right mindset when you remember the function of these talking-head interviews. “You represent everything that’s cut out,” she says. “You’re gluing what happened yesterday morning to what’s happening today and reminding the audience what the stakes are, why this matters.”

Of course, having a sense of humor helps, but you don’t have to be the biggest personality in the cast to make entertaining confessionals. “I never felt like a contestant on Drag Race — I felt like a correspondent live on the scene: ‘Here’s what happened today because this sh*t was crazy,’” Mattel says. “I felt more like I was the voice of reason in the room.”

Another tip: “Nothing is more interesting than what actually happened, so you can’t retell history in the interview chair,” Mattel says. If you bombed a challenge, say so. “The audience hates delusion. What the audience can appreciate is you getting in the chair and saying, ‘That was humiliating. I don’t know what happened. I just flopped.’” In a way, Mattel adds, “the audience is looking for you to have the thoughts that they would have.”

What production lingo should I know?

Two terms you might encounter are soft ice and hard ice, which refer to how much you can talk with your castmates off-camera. The former means chit-chat is OK, as long as it’s not about the key storylines at hand. “Soft ice is like, ‘Hey, it’s lunch — if you guys want to talk about the latest episode of Bones with David Boreanaz, sure, but we don’t want to hear you talking about the challenge,” Mattel says.

Hard ice means no talking it all — save everything for the cameras. “When you’re doing reality TV for the first time and they tell you, ‘Hard ice,’ you’re like, ‘What is this? The Hunger Games? What am I, a tribute living in a cage?’” Mattel jokes. “But later, you realize they’re actually trying to protect you by making sure that you can have that genuine moment on camera.” Think of it less as a favor for production and more as one for the audience. “I hate on shows when you can tell they’re having a conversation that feels shoehorned because they obviously talked about it on the phone the night before,” Mattel says. “It’s so much better to wait.”

How do I not lose my mind?

If you’re worried about what isolation does to your brain, don’t be. “I could talk to a wall now,” says Love Island USA winner Amaya “Papaya” Espinal. “You’ll be surprised. OK, now I have to talk to you: ‘Do you like when the sky’s blue or cloudy? Do you see how this cloud looks? It looks like a star.’ Your communication skills just really do improve, and you don’t lose your mind by just building community with each other.”

You might even relish the break from the outside world. Going phone-free for The Traitors “was the first time that I’ve ever really unplugged from everything,” says Phaedra Parks of Real Housewives of Atlanta. “And that was a joy to me because I’m usually on it every single moment of the day except for when I’m sleeping.” She was able to talk to her children, so she wasn’t totally cut off, but being able to focus on the game otherwise? “That was a welcome treat.”

What do I do after elimination?

So your time on a competition show didn’t last as long as you’d hoped — that’s not the blow you think it is. “In Drag Race world, we joke that when you get eliminated, that’s when everyone loves you,” says Trixie Mattel, who placed sixth on Season 7. “Once you’re not in the running, people are like, ‘I loved you. I wish you would’ve stayed longer. Are you doing any shows? I want to come see you.’”

What matters more than your placement, perhaps, is what you do with the eyeballs on you. “Mimi Imfurst told me there’s this window of time where you have borrowed fans,” Mattel continues. Your job, then, is to convert those fans into permanent ones as your show is airing. “And the best way to do that is to provide something beyond the show, whether it’s music, comedy, content, social media. Girl, make one of those channels where you just sit and try snacks — but make it work for your strengths,” she says. “Don’t be afraid to entertain the idea that you have so much more control over that than you think.”

Also: Start early. “I think of Drag Race as college. You graduate — congratulations! — but do you have a job after college?” says Kori King, who placed ninth on Season 17. “Even before we were announced [as a cast], I was pre-filming YouTube videos, I had TikToks lined up, tweets drafted for each episode. I prewrote jokes [for moments] that I knew were going to happen because I was there. I was literally planning out my entire social media for the six months ahead.”

How do I win back the audience?

“Having people hate me online was a heavy thing to deal with,” says The Valley’s Janet Caperna, whose approach to cast conflict in Season 2 had many viewers declaring her the show’s villain. “You go through different stages. You want to be self-aware: ‘OK, if 100 people are saying I did something wrong, I should probably listen, take that in, rewatch myself, figure out how I could have handled certain situations better.’” But at the same time, she adds, you can’t live your entire life according to the comments. “You still have to try to stay true to yourself and not let it really get to you.”

Parks knows this all too well. “The number of times I’ve met people that have said horrible things about me on social media, and then I see them?” she says. “I’ve got a wonderful memory. I say, ‘Gosh, I remember you made a comment,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh, ha ha!’ People are just trolling.” Ups and downs across seasons are a natural part of reality TV; overcorrecting won’t dig you out. “A lot of people go wrong because they don’t have good self-control or don’t know who they are or don’t have a very strong sense of, ‘This is a job. I can’t make everyone like me,’” Parks says.

Caperna now takes audience feedback in moderation. “I have bits where I’ll allow myself a few minutes to see what the general consensus is from an episode, but I don’t let it consume me anymore,” she says. Still, perhaps the most effective way to come across better on TV is to focus on feeling good in your own life — and trust that the tides will turn. So far in Season 3 of The Valley, viewers are digging a calmer, cooler, and more contrite Caperna, who notes that she spent her first two seasons on The Valley either pregnant or newly postpartum. “I was definitely a new version of myself dealing with hormones and a lot of things that were very new to me,” she says. “This season, my son turned 2 right around when we started filming, and I felt like I was back in my own skin again. I was back to being me.”

Should I go on Dancing With The Stars?

“Honey, if you’re not disciplined and you’re not willing to work hard, Dancing With The Stars is the worst move you can make,” says Parks, who competed on the show’s 33rd season in 2024 following her stint on The Traitors. “I totally enjoyed myself. It was the best experience because I pushed myself to limits that I probably would have never pushed myself to — but it is definitely the hardest show I have ever done in my life. It’s much harder than the physical challenges on Traitors. You get much more rest on Traitors than you will on Dancing With The Stars.”

On top of the physical demands, there’s also the added pressure of live performance — something many reality stars may not be used to. “There’s no room for error. There’s no room for redos,” she adds. “The show must go on, honey.”

How do I crush it on Cameo?

A strong Cameo game won’t just make you money — it could supercharge your career. Just ask King, who didn’t make it far on RuPaul’s Drag Race but became one of her season’s breakout stars (and signed with CAA) thanks to the off-the-wall characters and impersonations she inhabits while filming videos for fans.

“You can tell some [reality stars] are just in their bed like, ‘Hey guys, happy birthday, I guess,’” King says. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, she’s over it!’” King, on the other hand, has topped the Cameo leaderboard and regularly goes viral when happy customers post their commissioned videos to TikTok. “You have to make it entertaining for yourself,” King says. “How are you going to bring joy to it? If you want to put on a funny outfit and a stick on mustache and do the Cameo like that, there you go. If you want to have a glass of wine and go to town, that’s what you have to do. You have to find any way possible to make it just as entertaining for you as it is for them.”

King films anywhere from 20 to 50 videos a day, which have gone for $100 a pop, so getting through them all can take a few hours. (“If I’m balls to the wall, I can do it in two.”) To make it a more manageable undertaking, she tries to pause new Cameo requests on travel days or during other periods when she can’t film. King also treats Cameos as a bedrock of a larger social media strategy. “Yes, the money’s great,” she says, “but I’m already in a crazy costume — I can film a TikTok, I can film a YouTube video, I can film content for every other social media platform as I’m doing Cameos. That will then speed-run more opportunities and brand deals because my social media’s growing. Everything works together perfectly with the Cameos.”

How do I prep for a reunion?

By actually watching all the episodes and keeping track of what’s unresolved. Since you’ll likely be asked about events or conversations that were filmed months prior, it helps to reacquaint yourself with the season’s storylines and come in with a game plan. “I do have a notes app where I will write down maybe three bullet points after each episode — little things in the back of my mind that I wish I could address if given the opportunity,” Caperna says.

Preparing any more than that, however, might be fruitless. “You really have no idea what’s going to happen,” Parks says. “I always read comments saying, ‘Oh, they’ve rehearsed things,’ and maybe somebody can, but there’s no way to know what someone is going to say live. There’s no way to gauge what you’re going to be asked. You can obviously try to come up with it — ‘Oh, people will ask me about X, Y, Z, because that was a big part of the show’ — but reunions turn so quickly based on absolutely nothing. I’ve seen it!”

You also only have so much opportunity to say your piece. “Get everything off your chest as quickly as possible,” Caperna advises. “It’s a long day, and we have such a large cast that everybody wants to make sure they get their two cents in. It’s really just about not rambling on and trying to have concise answers so that you can move onto the next subject.”

Allow some room to be pleasantly surprised, too. You might, for instance, prep some fiery remarks for a castmate who wronged you only for them to show up in a different headspace. Says Caperna: “The argument that you made up in your head, that you’re going over in the shower — all that’s gone because the person came in and apologized.”

How do I deal with the DMs?

Trust and believe: Your DMs will get weird. When Harry Jowsey went on Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle in 2020, he was overwhelmed by the requests in his inbox from people, uh, “wanting to have a good time,” as he puts it. So he mostly ignored the messages, other than an occasional quick scan to see how the audience felt about him. “Early on, I was a little bit scared, because I was new to dealing with that pressure and hate. Now, I’m a bit more of a veteran,” Jowsey says.

Over time, and with several more stints on reality TV under his belt, he’s grown more open to responding to fans who seem normal. “It wasn’t until recently that one of my friends was like, ‘Oh, no, I always respond to DMs — it helps build that relationship,’” says Jowsey, who also hosts the podcast Boyfriend Material and will star in the upcoming Netflix series Let’s Marry Harry. He’ll reply to earnest messages from people sharing what’s going on in their lives and even send a voice memo on occasion. “If it feels meaningful, if it feels appropriate to respond, I will.”

Still, no amount of experience will ever make sussing out a stranger’s intentions easy. “I don’t know what people want and if it’s genuine,” Jowsey says. “Sometimes it gets a little bit overwhelming when people have direct access to you, because they’ll constantly try to call you and stuff.” It’s one judgment call after another. “If people say mean stuff, obviously I’m not responding to them at all,” he says. And there’s no obligation to engage with thirsty messages just because you went on a dating show. Says Jowsey: “I got to a point where it was like, ‘If I meet someone in person, that’s what the universe wants.’”

Should I start a podcast?

Sure! If you’ve got the gift of gab, it can be a low-lift, high-reward endeavor. “There’s a lot of money in podcasting,” says Caperna, who co-hosts This Side of the Hill (and previously co-hosted Scheananigans with Vanderpump Rules star Scheana Shay). “When we got our first check for our podcast, it was a really fun, awesome day.” Some effort is required, however; don’t expect to wing it. “You really need to produce it a little bit,” she adds. “You do have to talk about: What do we want to cover? What’s going on on the internet this week? One of the hardest parts about it is also not talking about it [off mic]. We’re like, ‘Save it for the podcast!’”

Because you’re in control of the edit and production, a podcast can offer fans a fuller picture of yourself. “We wanted to not talk about Bravo stuff,” says Caperna, who covers pop culture and lifestyle topics with her husband and Valley co-star, Jason, and their friend Jared Lipscomb. “We get a lot of people who watch the show and then listen to our podcast like, ‘Oh my gosh, I learned something new about you,’ or, ‘I saw a side of you that I didn’t know before.’”

And consider the math: When your TV show is airing, that’s usually about 45 minutes a week, and you won’t be in every scene. With podcasts, fans have more time with you, as well as more direct access. “There’s an intimacy that podcasting offers that is unlike anything else,” says Mattel, who co-hosts The Bald and The Beautiful with fellow RuPaul’s Drag Race star Katya. “They feel like they’re hanging out with their friends every week.”