Fitness guru Jillian Michaels has trashed the recent Netflix documentary about the reality show “The Biggest Loser.”
Netflix claimed the documentary revealed the “intense, damaging reality” behind the show.
Michaels did not participate in the Netflix documentary, called “Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser,” as noted by Fox News.
“Zero regrets about not doing it because I would have simply lent credibility to something that is an egregious lie,” she said, calling the show “literally just lie upon lie.”
She did not rule out legal action against Netflix; former co-trainer, Bob Harper; or the show’s physician, Dr. Robert Huizenga. However, she said, she may just let the claims she denounced slide.
Michaels coached the Red Team on “The Biggest Loser” beginning in 2004. She left the show in 2014. The show ended its 18-season run in 2020.
“To be totally honest with you, at the moment I’m choosing my battles because there are a lot to fight. I will absolutely take on one of these. The question is, you can’t fight 10 Goliaths at the same time. So, I have to determine what I want my legacy to be, and that is going to be a result of which fight I pick,” she said.
She said another possible response would be a documentary to tell the other side of the story.
“I might do that. There is talk of that. I might take that path instead, and I think I don’t know that I am necessarily going to need to sue because it’s very timely. It’s very expensive,” Michaels said.
Michaels pushed back against a claim from a contestant he made her a millionaire.
Did you ever watch “The Biggest Loser”?
“I was wearing a mic, so like, there’s this, apparently there’s a contestant from season one, which is 21 years ago, who magically remembers this moment where I jump into his arms after he supposedly pisses blood in his medical, which I have nothing to do with, by the way. That was the doctor. Like, yay. Interesting. So he pissed blood in the medical, but this wonderful benevolent doctor didn’t disqualify him. Somehow, nobody heard about this,” she said.
“So he’s saying this happened, and then I jumped into his arms and said, ‘You’re gonna make me a millionaire.’ I’m wearing a microphone. He’s wearing a microphone. You can actually watch the moment, and the hug is like a second. There’s no possible way that exchange could have [happened]. And then both of the executive producers are like, ‘She was mic’d. We would have heard it, and there will be a record of it if such a thing was said.’ So I think it’s interesting,” Michaels said.
Huizenga called urinating blood “a not uncommon side effect of vigorous exercise, so it would not be a cogent reason to disqualify a contestant.”
“Season one of ‘Biggest Loser’ had a policy against dehydration. Contestants who were dehydrated and in line for monetary end of show prizes were penalized (i.e. pounds were added on to their final weight in proportion to the amount of dehydration observed),” Huizenga continued.
Michaels also rejected claims she gave caffeine pills to a contestant named Rachel Fredrickson.
“In the documentary, they try to make it look like she was my contestant and I gave her caffeine pills. I was never actually fortunate enough to have trained Rachel Fredrickson one time, let alone give her a caffeine pill. And by the way, can you imagine if caffeine was that powerful of a weight-loss tool? I don’t think you’d be seeing Ozempic anywhere,” she said.
She said in fact she was concerned with the amount of weight Fredrickson lost, adding that her concern was a catalyst for her leaving the show.
“The response that I got, I actually posted on my Instagram, where the chairman of the network at the time, who has subsequently been fired, arguably for things like this, basically told me, you know, ‘You better get in line, otherwise we’re gonna sue you.’ Then he says, ‘We’ll spend the weekend drafting letters to your lawyer, and we’ll be dealing with you as a past tense problem,’” she said.
“And instead of getting in line and continuing to profit off of the show, I resigned immediately, and that’s where I can tell you definitively that the bad outweighed the good,” Michaels said.
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