Duggar Family Secrets’ Producers Speak Out

Sharing what they’ve seen. The producers of Shiny Completely happy Folks: Duggar Household Secrets and techniques are talking out about what they realized whereas researching the household made well-known by the truth sequence 19 Kids and Counting.

The four-part restricted docuseries — which hits Prime Video on June 2 — focuses on the Duggar household’s ties to the controversial faith Institute of Primary Life Ideas (IBLP). Codirectors and govt producers Olivia Crist and Julia Willoughby Nason make clear what viewers can anticipate from the doc throughout their Tuesday, Could 23, look on the “Actuality Life With Kate Casey” podcast.

“What we finally discover within the present is — there’s the shiny, glad facade, after which beneath the floor is that this insidious cult behind the household, referred to as the IBLP,” Willoughby Nason defined. “The Duggars are a leaping off level for us for a a lot, a lot bigger story.”

Jill Duggar — one in every of Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar’s 19 youngsters — participated within the sequence alongside along with her husband, Derick Dillard. A press launch for the doc described it as “the primary time” that Jill, 32, “will go on file along with her personal story.”

In 2015, the Duggar household’s OG TLC present was pulled from the community amid reports that the eldest sibling, Josh Duggar, molested a number of women when he was 14 and 15 years outdated. It was later revealed that Jill and her sister Jessa Duggar had been among the many victims.

Regardless of the scandal, the household returned to actuality TV that very same 12 months with the spinoff Counting On. The present aired for 11 seasons, coming to an finish in 2020 — one 12 months earlier than Josh, 35, was arrested on child pornography charges. TLC officially cut ties with the Duggars in June 2021. Josh is at the moment serving time in a Texas Jail after being discovered responsible on two counts of receiving and possessing youngster pornography in December 2021. He’s anticipated to be launched in October 2032.

The Duggar household aren’t the one IBLP followers to be affected by abuse. Willoughby Nason famous that what she discovered most “disturbing” about interviewing former members of the non secular group was the “pervasiveness” of abuses of energy.

The Fyre Fraud producer added: “The boys are on the high with final authority after which the ladies after which the kids beneath. … This type of construction is simply ripe with abuse.”

Though Jill is the one one in every of her siblings who participated in Shiny Completely happy Folks, her cousin Amy Duggar was additionally featured within the trailer. Jill’s youthful sister Jinger Duggar, in the meantime, opened up in regards to the restraints of IBLP teachings in her e book Turning into Free Certainly: My Story of Disentangling Religion From Worry, which hit cabinets in January.

Talking completely to Us Weekly forward of the e book’s launch, Jinger, 29, stated that she “undoubtedly” thinks her strict upbringing was “cult-like in some ways.” She continued: “It was built on fear, manipulation, management and superstition, so all these issues mixed in how onerous it’s for teenagers to go away or adults to go away — anybody, actually. … When you hear the teachings, you’re not purported to depart from these.”

Though a number of the Duggars’ secrets and techniques have already been uncovered, the Shiny Completely happy Folks producers suppose that the present will go away viewers questioning why sure inner workings of the household and their non secular beliefs weren’t intently examined sooner.

“Loads of issues have been swept beneath the rug that ought to have been seemed into,” stated Willoughby Nason. “I believe when you watch the present, you recognize … there’s so much that ought to have been seemed into that wasn’t.”

Join Us Weekly’s free, daily newsletter and by no means miss breaking information or unique tales about your favourite celebrities, TV exhibits and extra!

All 4 episodes of Shiny Completely happy Folks: Duggar Household Secrets and techniques will premiere June 2 on Prime Video.