Since its debut in 2014, TLC's 90 Day Fiancé has become one of the network's most popular shows,
generating big ratings and spawning numerous spinoffs. But despite the popularity of the
series, there is still a lot of information about the show that people wrongly assume.
Given what we read about the massive salaries of television stars, it would make sense that TLC's
90 Day Fiancé personalities are well paid for being on the show. This, however, is not the case.
A source told Radar Online that the participants on the show make $1,000-$1,500 per episode,
a far cry from what the cast of say, Modern Family is making. According to the source, couples who go
on to appear in the spinoff 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? do receive a slightly bigger payday,
but not much. The couples' family members and friends who appear on the show, on the other hand,
are paid significantly less. For them, one day of filming on the show results in a $250 paycheck.
"Where's the rest of it?"
While their reality TV fame may not be bringing them riches,
some of the show's cast have taken other measures to bring in some cash. Star Danielle Jbali,
for example, launched a GoFundMe fundraising effort that ultimately raised only $658.
While the American members of the 90 Day Fiancé cast are paid,
this is not the case for their foreign fiancés.
In fact, Luis Mendez revealed in a now-deleted Instagram post that he
wasn't paid a dime during his time on the series.
"They only use the immigrant people ... they don't pay to
us in the first 90 days and they destroy our lives with bad fame."
Producer of 90 Day Fiancé Matt Sharp confirmed that the foreign
participants on the show aren't paid, and he revealed the simple reason why:
Since they're visiting the U.S. on a 90-day visa, they don't yet have work permits.
Sharp declared that it would be against the law to pay them until they got their green card.
Many viewers believe that so-called reality TV
is entirely unscripted, but that isn't always the case.
"Well what's my first line? Just tell me my first line!"
Producers will make suggestions, supposedly spontaneous scenes are sometimes reshot,
and dialogue can even be fed to people who appear on the shows.
That appeared to be the case in a scene from Season 5 of 90 Day Fiancé involving
David Toborowsky and his now-wife, Annie Suwan, when family friend Chris Thieneman asked Suwan -
"I like Thai massage, is that something you'd be cool to
volunteer to give me a massage or something by the pool?"
While the request was undeniably creepy, Thieneman and wife Nikki Cooper alleged
the whole thing was bogus, with Cooper writing in a private Facebook conversation -
"Yes, the awkward scene of Chris asking for a massage was SCRIPTED, [...] The producer asked him
to say it [and] Chris had to say it more than once because it didn't come off as natural. We were fed
our lines while sitting at the table, which is why no one reacted. WE ALL KNEW WHAT TO EXPECT."
The couples on 90 Day Fiancé come together in a variety of ways,
meeting during a vacation or, in several cases, via online dating sites.
In their casting tape for the show, Season 4's Jorge Nava
and Anfisa Arkhipchenko stated that they met through Facebook. Arkhipchenko explained that -
"He was liking my pictures, he was messaging me, [...] First,
it was annoying. I didn't pay much attention because I get quite a lot of messages like that.
I think he told me that he loved me like in a week after we started talking online."
In 2017, however, YouTube personality and comedian Stevie Ryan, who has since passed away,
issued a tweet claiming that the two reality TV stars didn't actually meet on Facebook like
they'd said, claiming instead that they'd met on an adult cam site, with a photo as evidence.
Starcasm followed up on the claim, pointing out that a simple Google
search for Arkhipchenko's name and a particular adult site led to the discovery of a long video
featuring revealing footage connected to an account with Anfisa's first and last name.
"I want to be a model.”
“You want to be a model?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of model”
“I don't know…like bikini model.”
“Bikini model?"
Now that 90 Day Fiancé has become a massive hit for TLC,
some viewers might be surprised to learn that the show almost had a very different title.
"So what do we call this thing?"
Series producer Matt Sharp revealed the original title of 90 Day Fiancé was quote -
"something like International Love, [...] all of the female networks looked at the
pitch and thought it felt too male, and all the male networks thought it felt too female."
According to Sharp, he and his fellow producers then began revamping the show to make it skew
more toward male viewers, and they cooked up the new title of Bachelor Wars: Russia.
When that didn't work, Sharp then learned about the K-1 visa process and the 90-day time limit,
ultimately coming up with the concept and title for 90 Day Fiancé.
Given that 90 Day Fiancé chronicles the romantic journeys of American singles and
their international loves, it would be natural to assume that the people featured on the show have
no prior experience in front of the camera. While that's the case with most of the show's couples,
there are at least two participants who'd already appeared on reality shows.
Molly Hopkins, whose tumultuous and ultimately failed relationship with fiancé Luis Mendez
played out during 90 Day Fiancé's fifth season, had previously starred alongside her business
partner on Lifetime's Double Divas about their Atlanta based lingerie boutique.
"I don't care where I'm at, if some girl comes flopping by and it looks like her
boobs look like they're gonna fly out, then I'm like 'oh god, I can help her'."
Meanwhile, Starcasm did some digging and discovered that 90 Day Fiancé: Before the
90 Days' Darcey [DAR-see] Silva had appeared on an episode of Million Dollar Matchmaker.
Silva was briefly seen being interviewed by the show's matchmaker Patti Stanger,
but wasn't selected to date that episode's millionaire bachelor.
There's no denying that the most memorable couples to emerge from TLC's 90 Day Fiancé are the ones
whose relationships imploded. When asked to recall the couples who made an impression,
fans of the show will no doubt point to Molly Hopkins and Luis Mendez,
whose relationship crashed and burned in full view of the cameras -
"It's my day off. You said you would be here. Listen to me
listen to me… Oh my god. It's my f***** day off!"
- and Danielle and Mohamed Jbali, whose angry battles made for compelling television
and marked them as one of the worst 90 Day Fiancé couples. Given all that drama, it shouldn't be
surprising that those types of relationships are the ones that tend to receive the most attention.
"It's not fair what you're doing...waiting til the day of the wedding to decide."
However, the 90 Day Fiancé couples that have split up are in the minority. In fact,
far more have gone on to get married and stay
wed with the show's divorce rate allegedly at less than 10 percent.
The success of 90 Day Fiancé has led TLC to go back to the same well again...
and again and again. It all began when the network announced plans for a spinoff, 90 Day Fiancé:
Happily Ever After?, following the couples' lives after the end of the 90-day K-1 period.
This was followed by four more spinoffs: 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days,
which debuted in 2017; 90 Day Fiancé: Pillow Talk, which arrived in 2019; 90 Day Fiancé:
The Other Way, debuting in June 2019; and The Family Chantel, premiering in August 2019,
following the turbulent family life of Pedro and Chantel Jimeno and their battling families.
One might assume that five spinoffs is more than enough - but one would be wrong. In December 2019,
TLC unveiled 90 Day Fiancé: Just Landed on its TLC Go streaming app.
Then, in early April 2020, TLC decided to capitalize on the oddity that is
social distancing and announced yet another spinoff, - 90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined.
Throughout six seasons of 90 Day Fiancé and its myriad spinoffs,
a same-sex couple had never been featured. However, the fourth season of 90 Day Fiancé:
Before the 90 Days changed that. A trailer for the season introduced fiancées Stephanie and Erika.
The pair met online and developed an intense relationship, but one big problem looms:
Erika hasn't yet come out to her family, who have no clue about her sexual orientation.
There's one more complication, and it's a doozy. Stephanie also has a rare bone
marrow disorder and is only allowed to travel if she receives clearance from her doctors.
"When traveling I have to take crazy precautions that normal people
don't have to take because I have aplastic anemia which affects my immune system."
Imagine being a woman engaged to a foreigner 20 years your junior who was allegedly only
interested in you as a means to enter the country and obtain a green card. Then imagine the whole
humiliating thing taking place in front of TV cameras and broadcast on television.
"You really now speak about this on camera? Hmm? Yes. You have the period now."
While being used in such a cold manner in front of millions of viewers might
make some people want to retreat, that's not the case with 90 Day Fiancé's Molly Hopkins,
who revealed why she allowed the show to document her subsequent divorce -
"So you guys are legally married and he's gone?"
and why she'd do it all over again, saying -
"Everyone wants love, everyone wants to find someone. I have a great business,
I love my kids, but do I want someone to spend the rest of this journey with? Absolutely."
The process of immigrating to the U.S. via a 90-day K-1 visa can be complicated,
and viewers might presume that producers on the show take care of all that red tape on
behalf of the show's participants so they can focus on delivering drama to viewers.
"What's the news? Azan got his interview date"
That, however, isn't the case, with one of the show's producers revealing that
the couples selected have already managed to get themselves through the complexities.
"When he was telling me all that information, I felt like
getting married here in the states is not something easy"
Show producer Matt Sharp also insisted that all the couples on 90 Day Fiancé had met well before
being cast on the show and that phony couples are not created for the purposes of reality TV.
"We don't put people together, [...] Everyone we feature on the show,
they found themselves organically."
Evelyn Cormier and David Vázquez Zermeño are one of 90 Day Fiancé's success stories.
They eventually got married and Cormier went on to showcase her phenomenal singing voice
as a finalist on American Idol. While the couple's eight year age gap is not unusual,
a closer look at the timeline of their relationship has raised some eyebrows.
According to Starcasm, flirty social media exchanges between the then-future spouses
were discovered, dating back to late 2014. She would have reportedly just turned 15
years old at the time, while Zermeño was 24. In an episode that aired in 2017,
Cormier is seen discussing her desire to get married with a friend, who felt she was rushing
into things considering the couple hadn't even celebrated their first anniversary yet,
which would likely lead viewers to presume that the pair met in 2016. The social media screenshots
shared by Starcasm, however, would indicate their relationship extends back a couple years earlier.
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