Was there beef on The Biggest Loser? With the new documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser out on Netflix, the dark side of the NBC weight loss competition show is explored. One of those includes an alleged rift between two of the OG coaches: Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper.
The Biggest Loser premiered in 2004 on NBC, focusing on overweight and obese individuals trying to lose weight. Whoever had the most progress on the show won $250,000. However, despite contestants losing a significant amount of weight in a short period during the reality show, numerous controversies arose from Jillian Michaels giving her trainees caffeine pills to the unhealthy habits that followed.
Doing the show “was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Bob Harper told The Guardian. On TV, Jillian and Bob looked like they got along well. But what happened behind the scenes?
Here’s what they’ve said about each other after Jillian Michaels left The Biggest Loser.
Jillian Michaels left The Biggest Loser in 2014 after Season 15. “There were some fundamental differences [with Loser‘s producers] that have existed for a while,” Michaels explained, saying she didn’t like the way she was portrayed in the last two seasons of the show. “You saw none of the relationships, none of the bonds that I build with my clients,” she said in an interview with People.
Bob Harper suffered a heart attack at the age of 52 on February 12, 2017. “I was in the gym, the next thing I knew I woke up in a hospital two days later being told that I had a heart attack and that I immediately went into cardiac arrest. Talk about a life-changing experience,” he later told Better by Today.
“I’ve always been a person that was so driven and type A and I have my routine, which I love, and when all of that was taken away from me and my whole identity of fitness was taken away, I went through an identity crisis,” he told the outlet. “I didn’t know who I was and it became a journey for me. I was going through this new life of mine and having to rediscover different sides of me. It was really hard. It was really emotional; I went through a lot of depression because of it.”
In 2020, Jillian Michaels told E!’s Daily Pop about how she felt about Bob’s “Knowing a little bit about Bob, I know that he does have a family history of it,” she said. I was there when he lost his mother to a heart attack, with him the night that she died. So there is a family history. I do also think that, you know, you’re in the middle of a CrossFit workout and you’re eating Paleo, it’s not going to help. Personally, I’m not pro-Paleo. Everyone can just go crazy on me.”
“From what I remember of Bob, he’s looking at it, and he’s like, ‘Well I can [do it]!’ He’s not thinking about it that way. He, personally, is like, ‘I love this challenge,’” she shared.
Bob Harper revealed to Us Weekly that he wasn’t in touch with his fellow coach “at all” in 2020.
“I’m good,” he told the outlet. “I’ve got a couple of people from the past but not many. It’s nice that there are fresh eyes on the show but there are also my OG eyes that are there that can help contestants, hopefully!”
“Imagine going into your office and you don’t have the things that you need to do your job perfectly. Your computer’s gone and they’ve given you a typewriter. It’s not gonna work,” the coach continued. “Fresh eyes don’t really know the things that I know. That’s not me being a know-it-all, I’m just the person who’s a constant sponge. I love to learn things.”
In an interview with The Guardian, Bob Harper revealed that Jillian Michaels did not contact him when he had his heart attack, though many former contestants and crew did. “We weren’t besties, but we were partners on a television show for a very long time,” he says, so it “spoke volumes to me” that she didn’t get in touch.
He added, “I would not expect Jillian Michaels to do anything other than what she wants to do.”
Jillian Michaels posted an Instagram post of her receipts to the Biggest Loser producers about caffeine and her relationship with Bob Harper.
Per the screenshot posted to Instagram Aug. 19, she told Harper in her second to last text message to him, “I really think it’s s–ty of you to not even respond to my texts. It’s this kind of thing that always makes me so disappointed my [sic] our relationship.”
