Fitness influencer Jillian Michaels is not pleased with her portrayal in a new documentary about the reality competition show “The Biggest Loser.”
“Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser” debuted on Netflix on August 15 and became an instant hit. The three-part limited series explored incidents from behind the scenes at NBC’s popular reality series, which featured overweight contestants vying to lose the most weight and win a cash prize. Michaels was a trainer on the series for several seasons, but did not participate in the Netflix documentary.
Now the fitness expert is breaking her silence on some of the allegations made in the documentary by former co-host Bob Harper, former medical consultant Dr. Robert Huizenga, and former contestants.
Michaels shared her thoughts on the allegations through a series of social media posts. The first showed alleged email communication about supplying contestants with caffeine pills, which the workout coach said was done with the full support of both Harper and Huizenga.
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“Wild how some folks still lie like it’s 1985 before texts and email were a thing,” Michaels wrote in one of the posts, saying her co-host and the medical consultant “not only knew about the caffeine pills,” but approved of them being used.
“Caffeine was NEVER banned on The Biggest Loser,” she added.
In a second post, Michaels responded to “the allegation that I restricted contestants from eating enough calories” by sharing “direct written correspondence” from Season 11 winner Olivia Ward.
The email shows Michaels instructing Ward to “eat 1600 [calories] tomorrow,” directly contradicting contestant Suzanne Mendonca’s claim in the documentary that she and others were restricted to just 800 calories per day.
A third Instagram post refuted the claim about something Michaels allegedly said during the show’s finale.
“In response to the claim in the documentary that I told a contestant at the show’s finale, ‘You’re going to make me a millionaire,’ I want to state unequivocally that this is false,” she wrote. “The full moment was captured on camera, and both the contestant and I were wearing microphones. If such a comment had been made, it would exist on the audio record.”
“Furthermore, two of the show’s executive producers, Mark Koops and Dave Broome, have each provided written statements in text messages to my business partner confirming that this exchange never occurred,” the post went on. “For clarity, below are their texts verifying that no such comment was ever made.”
Michaels also told TMZ on Tuesday that the docuseries is “filled with so many lies, and, of course, I have the emails and the text messages to back all this up.”
She told the outlet that she was meeting with her lawyer to potentially pursue legal action against Netflix, Harper, and Huizenga.