Celebrity
Jinger Duggar Claims Family Sometimes ‘Didn’t Like’ Reality Show Edit
Jinger Duggar claimed that she and her family didn’t always like how they were portrayed on their reality show 19 Kids and Counting.
“Maybe we felt like some things might have started to be cut in a way that we didn’t like it,” Duggar, 31, said on the Wednesday episode of her and husband Jeremy Vuolo’s self-titled podcast. “And it was like, ‘I didn’t say that.’”
Jinger is one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children. She and her family rose to fame on the TLC series which premiered in 2008. Jinger shared on Wednesday that she and her family members picked up on how the show’s editing didn’t match their recollection.
“Or I rolled my eyes in an interview [then] they put in there next to something I said about my mom and dad,” she alleged. “And it was like, ‘No I didn’t mean that.’”
The former reality star explained that she and her family would usually watch the “rough cuts” of the episodes before they aired on TV. They would later go back to view the “reruns” to “see if they put in anything like that.” Jinger added that sometimes she and her family would gather around and watch the show to recount a “fun trip” they took.
“It’s like our home videos really because so many years before it came out my parents were really good about taking home videos of those,” she explained.
However, once the Duggar family started filming their series, the authentic home videos captured by her parents “faded into the background” in favor of the “fully produced home videos.”
Us Weekly has reached out to TLC for comment.
Now that the series has come to an end, Jinger wants access to the old episodes to show her children what her childhood was like. Jinger and Vuolo, 37, who tied the knot in 2016, share two daughters: Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 3. The couple are currently expecting baby No. 3.
Throughout Jinger’s time on 19 Kids and Counting, the reality series captured countless of her and her siblings’ milestones. The series also followed the Duggars as they grew up with the fundamentalist Christian teachings of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). Jinger wrote about her experience with the conservative household in her 2023 book Becoming Free Indeed.
While Jinger doesn’t follow the strict religious rules — like being unable to wear pants — of her childhood anymore, she previously shared that it hasn’t diminished her love for her parents.
“I’m grateful for my childhood. It was not perfect. I shared a lot of difficulties that I struggled with throughout my childhood, but at the end of the day, I’m grateful for my parents,” Jinger said during a June appearance on Matt and Abby Howard’s “Unplanned” podcast. “I love them, we have differences, everything’s not perfect between us, but I think that at the end of the day, I love them and I know that they know that.”