Duggar Crew Confessions: Former Employees Share On-Set Stories

Sometimes while watching Counting On and even looking back on 19 Kids and Counting episodes, we can't help but wonder what it's like to have an unedited, behind-the-scenes look at the Duggars. After all, with so many rumors and stories swirling the infamous 20+ family, fans have a lot of questions on what's real and what's just reality TV editing. Fortunately for the people who work on the show, they get to see it all, and sometimes what they see can be a little surprising.

Deal of the Day

Only $12! — (And No One Will Know They Aren’t Designer) View Deal

Most people who work on production crews usually sign ironclad non-disclosure agreements to keep cameramen and production assistants from blabbing to the media. However, a few crew members who worked on Duggar productions have anonymously come forward over the past few years to share their stories about the family. Below, four firsthand accounts of what went down on the set.

Have a tip? Send it to us! Email In Touch at contact@intouchweekly.com.

The crew was told not to interact with the Duggars much.

Another person who worked on the show back in 2008 said the Duggars were so isolated from the real world back then, producers told the rest of the crew to keep conversations to a minimum to avoid potentially upsetting the family. "The producers of the show had instructed crew members to not ever engage in conversation on our own with Jim Bob or Michelle in fears that we may either say something normal that they would find objectionable or that they would say something to where we’d react funny because we weren’t used to their level of 'unworldliness' I think it was put," he explained to Gawker.

"We were constantly reminded that we were not to upset them or taint their version of the world, which is why they wanted limited conversation. Even a lighthearted conversation that might actually educate them about something they were horribly ignorant about was seen as tainting their view. It was very much like being told to not tell your little sister about Santa Claus."

Michelle once reportedly got a gay crew member fired.

According to someone who worked on the set of 17 Kids and Counting back in 2008, Michelle was none too pleased when she discovered that one of the crew members was a gay man. The discussion started when, while preparing for the Duggars' first trip to New York, Michelle approached the crew to inquire about the safety of the city. "Well, I hear the city is overrun by gays," Michelle asked the crew. "Has that been causing a lot of problems?" The crew laughed and motioned at one of their co-workers who happened to be gay. Upset, Michelle pulled a producer over and started yelling at him. The gay crew member was immediately removed from the set and transferred to a different production set.

"They kept a very tight lid on this incident," the anonymous tipster wrote, "because on future tapings when new crews would be swapped in, they were suspiciously more and more straight-edged Christian than you’d typically see on the set of a television show."

Jim Bob allegedly punished one of his sons for masturbating.

According to an anonymous account, a person who worked on production once witnessed Jim Bob's disciplining methods when it came to, uh, issues of self-pleasure. "Jim Bob walked in; he caught him doing it," they wrote. "Jim Bob's screams made the crew run to where they were filming. Immediately they asked him what was wrong. All Jim could reply was 'idle hands are the devil's playthings.' Apparently, the whole next day [the son] was supposed to do chores around the house. But Jim Bob had tied his hands together so that doing anything was nearly impossible."

The crew thought the Duggars were "just as nuts as most of us do."

A redditor who said he worked as a production assistant on the set of 19 Kids and Counting said, although he didn't have any crazy stories, that most of the crew found the family pretty odd. "I worked with the crew for a short time and in my experience, most of them seemed to think they were just as nuts as most of us do," he wrote. "I witnessed crew hiding smoking and drinking from the family for whatever reason and sharing stories about things they saw the family do that they thought was bizarre. There was a clear separation between the crew and family. The crew was just normal people doing a job and the family was just the talent they happened to be shooting.”