*Chauncey Bellamy
I. Introduction
Lawsuits have been piling up against the makers of reality TV.[1] From Bravo’s The Real Housewives franchise to Netflix’s Love Is Blind, reality TV stars have taken their complaints about unsafe working conditions and substandard pay to the courts.[2] For instance, Leah McSweeney, former star of The Real Housewives of New York City, alleges that producers “mocked her sobriety, egged on castmates to push her buttons, and created an environment that made it nearly impossible to stay sober.”[3] Stephen Richardson, a former contestant on Love Is Blind, alleges in a recent class action that producers took away contestants’ phones, wallets, and ID cards and told staff not to give contestants any food.[4] Jeremy Hartwell, another former Love Is Blind castmate, “revealed that contestants were paid $1,000 per week,” amounting to “roughly $7 per hour for working 20 hours a day and seven days a week.”[5]
To resolve these complaints, three potential solutions include (1) courts granting reality TV participants “employee” status, (2) participants unionizing to protect themselves from future harm,[6] and (3) stars funding shows on their own.[7] Due to the profit motive inherent in the television industry, however, each solution could yield unintended and undesirable consequences, presenting obstacles to meaningful change.[8]
II. Independent Contractor or Employee?
Some reality TV productions classify stars and contestants as independent contractors.[9] Thus, in contrast to employees, reality TV participants do not “benefit from workplace safety regulations” or “receive additional perks such as health insurance, retirement plans, and paid leave.”[10] In response, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has alleged in a complaint against Love Is Blind producer Kinetic Content that contestants should be classified as employees because “the show exercised significant control over their lives, including rigorous schedules and behavior restrictions, extending beyond filming.”[11] The NLRB also alleges that the contestants’ daily stipend entitles them to overtime pay, unemployment insurance, and other benefits.[12] If a judge rules in favor of the NLRB, Kinetic might have to pay penalties and reclassify contestants as employees.[13] Other reality TV shows might have to follow suit.[14]
Accordingly, the consequences of this potential reclassification could “force networks to . . . rethink the way they make [reality] shows entirely.”[15] At the moment, reality shows are watchable and cheap to produce, especially compared to fictional shows, which is why Netflix has dedicated a significant portion of its content library to the format.[16] To illustrate, Netflix paid about ten times more per viewing hour for the fourth season of fiction series Stranger Things than for the first season of reality series The Ultimatum.[17] Because non-fiction storytelling, including reality TV, is “the most cost-effective form of entertainment,” reality shows like The Ultimatum do not need to attract the same number of viewers as megahit fiction shows like Stranger Things to be profitable.[18] But reclassifying reality stars as employees could change that.[19] The consequences of the increase in production costs range from producers moving production overseas to releasing fewer shows.[20] As a result, reality stars and other workers could have fewer employment opportunities,[21]which could counteract the benefits of better working conditions and pay.
III. Obstacles to Unionization
In addition to being reclassified as employees, reality stars could unionize to further protect themselves from abusive working conditions.[22] But there are obstacles to this goal.[23] First, because of the high turnover rate of reality contestants and the backstabbing tendencies of reality stars, banding together to unionize is unlikely.[24] Second, even if the contestants and stars manage to unionize, producers do not have to employ them.[25] Third, the protection of a union and improved safety conditions might lead to phonier storylines that bore audiences because the “unavoidable contradiction of reality programming” is that people are drawn to the abusive and exploitative parts that make it “undeniably real.”[26] Ethics and reality TV do not mix.[27]
IV. When a Star Becomes a Producer
If achieving employee and union status fails, reality contestants and stars might have another option: taking control by funding their own shows.[28] As producers, they would theoretically have the power to decide the kind of working conditions and pay their shows provide.[29] The challenge, however, would be the price tag of such an endeavor.[30] For example, when twenty-six-year-old YouTube content creator MrBeast used his own money to help fill in the funding gaps in his Amazon reality show, Beast Games, he lost tens of millions of dollars on a show that featured contestants racing in potato sacks and climbing towers on the road to the biggest prize in television and streaming history.[31] But reality participants probably would not be able to take the same kind of financial risk to produce their own shows because they have much less wealth than MrBeast, which is a major reason why they want to be classified as employees.[32] This is true even of the highest-paid reality stars.[33] In addition, even if they were to band together to pool their money, their high turnover rate and penchant for backstabbing would likely present an obstacle in this context as well.[34]
V. Conclusion
The increasing number of lawsuits against reality TV producers could change the status of reality TV participants from independent contractors to employees.[35] Even still, employee status may not be enough to improve reality TV’s poor working conditions and pay, and the reason why is not simply the producers’ profit motive.[36] Because the participants’ best chance of success is to band together, their frequently combative behavior could prove to be the obstacle that makes a win in court a loss in reality.[37]
*Chauncey Bellamy is a second-year student at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he is a Distinguished Scholar of the Royal Graham Shannonhouse III Honor Society and serves as a Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Lawyering Skills and a Staff Editor for the Law Review. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre, with honors, from New York University and spent this past summer as a summer associate at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP. In spring 2026, he will intern with Chief Justice Fader of the Supreme Court of Maryland and then work as a summer associate at Ballard Spahr LLP.
[1] See Winston Cho, Ex-‘Love Is Blind’ Contestant Files Class Action over Inhumane Working Conditions on Reality Shows, THE Hollywood REP. (Sep. 16, 2025, at 16:07 ET), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ex-love-is-blind-contestant-files-class-action-over-inhumane-working-conditions-on-reality-shows-1236373084/.
[2] Id.
[3] JJ Palmer, Leah McSweeney’s Lawsuit Could Reshape Reality TV, law.monthly (Apr. 4, 2025), https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2025/04/leah-mcsweeney-reality-tv-lawsuit/.
[4] Cho, supra note 1.
[5] Id.
[6] See David M. Prager, Adriana Levandowski & April Hua, NLRB Challenges Love Is Blind over Contestant Rights, NIXON PEABODY (Dec. 23, 2024), https://www.nixonpeabody.com/insights/alerts/2024/12/23/nlrb-challenges-love-is-blind-over-contestant-rights.
[7] See Sherin Shibu, MrBeast Says He Lost ‘Tens of Millions of Dollars’ on His Hit Amazon Reality TV Show ‘Beast Games,’ Entrepreneur (Feb. 24, 2025), https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/how-much-mrbeast-paid-to-create-amazons-beast-games/487540.
[8] See Prager, Levandowski & Hua, supra note 6.
[9] Cho, supra note 1.
[10] Prager, Levandowski & Hua, supra note 6.
[11] Id.; see also Cho, supra note 1 (“One of the factors used by courts to decide the classification question is whether the employer, in this case Kinetic and Delirium, exercised a certain degree of control over their workers.”); Palmer, supra note 3 (“When someone is told where to be, what to wear, what they can and can’t say—and when they’re being filmed nearly every waking hour—it starts to look a lot more like a job than a gig. Courts are beginning to take notice of that.”).
[12] Prager, Levandowski & Hua, supra note 6.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Palmer, supra note 3.
[16] See Daniel Parris, How Netflix Built a $200B Business on Reality Shows and Docuseries. A Statistical Analysis, Stat Significant (Dec. 13, 2023), https://www.statsignificant.com/p/how-netflix-built-a-200b-business.
[17] Id.
[18] Id.
[19] See Prager, Levandowski & Hua, supra note 6.
[20] See Andy Dehnart, The Reality TV Industry Is in Chaos and People Are in Despair. Producers Explain Why., reality blurred (Sep. 29, 2024), https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/2024/09/reality-tv-producers-state-of-the-industry/.
[21] See id.
[22] Emma Bowman, ‘Love Is Blind’ Cast Are Employees, Labor Board Says. Could a Reality TV Union Be Next?, npr (Dec. 17, 2024, at 05:00 ET), https://www.npr.org/2024/12/17/nx-s1-5229111/love-is-blind-housewives-reality-labor-union.
[23] See Katie Kilkenny, These Unionized Reality TV Workers Have Been Seeking a Contract for More Than a Decade, THE Hollywood REP. (Mar. 6, 2025, at 12:09 ET), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/itv-unions-reality-tv-workers-call-first-contracts-1236156010/.
[24] See Bowman, supra note 22; see also Louis Staples, 2023 Was the Year of the Reality TV Villain, RollingStone (Dec. 24, 2023), https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/reality-tv-backstabbing-2023-tom-sandoval-vanderpump-rules-squid-game-real-housewives-1234935716/ (noting that villainous reality stars on television shows including Vanderpump Rules, The Traitors, Below Deck, and The Real Housewives franchise create good television by “lying, cheating, [and] backstabbing”).
[25] See Kilkenny, supra note 23.
[26] David Brancaccio & Ariana Rosas, The Origins — and Moral Conundrums — of Modern Reality TV, MARKETPLACE (June 25, 2024), https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/06/25/relativity-tv-emily-nussbaum.
[27] See id.
[28] See Shibu, supra note 7.
[29] See Palmer, supra note 3; Cho, supra note 1 (“[B]y classifying contestants as independent contractors rather than employees, the productions can avoid minimum wage and overtime obligations, among other things.”).
[30] See Shibu, supra note 7.
[31] Id.
[32] See id.; Cho, supra note 1.
[33] See Barclay Palmer, Reality TV’s Financial Appeal: Low Costs, High Returns for Networks, Investopedia (Dec. 8, 2025), https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0410/why-networks-love-reality-tv.aspx (“[S]alaries for popular reality stars have shot up exponentially. . . . Denise Richards reportedly made $1 million per season on . . . The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”); Shibu, supra note 7.
[34] See sources cited supra note 24.
[35] See Cho, supra note 1.
[36] See Bowman, supra note 22.
[37] See id.
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