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Hannah Gosselin grew up on camera alongside her seven siblings.
A recent exposé on adults who spent their childhoods on reality TV highlighted glaring holes in our nation’s laws.
Just as Gwendlyn Brown shared her experience with Sister Wives, Hannah described growing up on Jon & Kate Plus 8 and then on Kate Plus 8.
Hannah and her siblings figured out how to ruin shots when they needed to. When they finally started getting paid, the years on TV paid off.
Hannah Gosselin grew up ‘always surrounded’ by production
Teen Vogue has been doing solid journalism for years, even as a lot of legacy media has alternated between hand-wringing and capitulating to the mounting fascism in our society.
This time, they spoke to people who grew up on camera — not as child actors, but as members of reality TV families.
Hannah Gosselin reflected: “You’re always surrounded.”
After all, filming involves so much more than a camera operator.
Hannah detailed that there was a time when the film crew lived in an apartment above the Gosselin home.
“The film crew was there 24/7,” she recalled. Hannah then characterized: “That was our normal.”
The production team were not the only ones who were working at all hours.
This applied to the children, as well.
They could ruin a shot when they needed to
According to Hannah, she and her siblings often filmed late into the night — even on school nights.
“[Filming] made my siblings and I closer to each other,” she said upon reflection. “Even though it made my parents further from each other.”
Part of that sibling bond, Hannah explained, involved finding ways to sabotage footage if they didn’t want something to see the light of day. Just as Real Housewives might say “Bravo” or “Andy” to force cameras away from them, the twins and sextuplets would name-drop brands to cover for each other.
During her own interview, Gwendlyn Brown revealed that she and her siblings did not receive pay for Sister Wives as minors. Christine intervened, paying the kids herself.
The Gosselins filmed in Pennsylvania, where the filming of their show was one of the factors that drove state legislators to amend child labor laws.
Reality TV is still relatively new, in the grand scheme of things.
The loopholes that allow networks and production companies to spend less money creating it are a huge driving factor behind why there is simply so much of it.
How much did Hannah end up making for growing up on TV?
The good news is that, in some states, that is slowly changing. Hopefully, there will one day be laws to effectively protect children from abuse and exploitation on reality TV, YouTube, TikTok, and other, unforeseen technologies of the future.
Hannah shared that Pennsylvania law meant that she ended up getting paid enough to cover roughly half of her college education.
With tuition prices as they are, that’s no small matter. But it’s probably less than she should have been paid.
Everyone in the world deserves fair compensation for their labor.
That goes double for people whose jobs were not their own decision, but their parents’ choice.
