Bustle

With the knowledge that you’re signing your life away. “You absolve the production company and everybody connected to it from anything that happens to you, whether they kill you or you kill yourself,” says entertainment lawyer Paul Menes. “You become a total captive of the show.” If you want a shot at fame, you’ll just have to accept. But with a few years of all-star status, plus a good lawyer, you might be able to negotiate a sweeter deal for later TV endeavors. (Read more)

While shows vary, Loni Fagel (MA, MEd, LPCC) says evaluators may ask how you handle conflict, stress, surprise, and jealousy. “Think of it like scenarios they might ask on a job interview,” she says. They may cover trauma, substance abuse, and other topics in that vein, but the evaluation isn’t about weeding out, say, everyone who’s ever had anxiety or depression. “The diagnosis should not matter as much as: Has this person had treatment? Are they on medication? Do they have support?” (Read more)

Before filming, leave a few weeks for Botox and filler to fully settle. If you have two months, liposuction around the face and neck or a breast augmentation could be the move, according to Dr. Sean Doherty (M.D.). A little longer, and you could get a blepharoplasty or body liposuction, which take around three months to fully recover from. Six months, and you could go for a tummy tuck, rhinoplasty, or abdominal contouring, according to Dr. Rian Maercks (M.D.). (Read more)

“You don’t lose your mind by just building community with each other,” says Love Island USA’s Amaya “Papaya” Espinal. “You’ll be surprised. OK, now I have to talk to you: ‘Do you see how this cloud looks? It looks like a star.’” You might even relish the break. Going phone-free for The Traitors “was the first time that I’ve ever really unplugged,” Phaedra Parks says. “And that was a joy to me because I’m usually on it every single moment of the day except for when I’m sleeping.” (Read more)

Talking in the present tense about past events gets easier when you remember the purpose of these interviews. “You represent everything that’s cut out,” RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars winner Trixie Mattel says. “You’re gluing what happened yesterday to what’s happening today and reminding the audience what the stakes are.” The golden rule? “Nothing is more interesting than what actually happened, so you can’t retell history in the interview chair,” Mattel says. “The audience hates delusion.” (Read more)

Soft ice and hard ice refer to how much you can talk during downtime from filming. The former means you can chat with castmates as long as it’s not about key storylines. The latter means no talking at all; save everything for the cameras. “They’re trying to protect you by making sure you have that genuine moment on camera,” Trixie Mattel says. “I hate on shows when they’re having a conversation that feels shoehorned because they obviously talked about it on the phone the night before.” (Read more)

Sent home early? No problem. “There’s this window of time where you have borrowed fans,” Trixie Mattel says. Your job is to make them permanent. “And the best way to do that is to provide something beyond the show, whether it’s music, comedy, content.” Also: start early. “I was pre-filming YouTube videos, I had TikToks lined up, tweets drafted for each episode,” says Kori King. “I was literally planning out my entire social media for the six months ahead.” (Read more)

“Having people hate me online was a heavy thing,” says The Valley’s Janet Caperna. But this season, viewers are digging the calmer, cooler, and more contrite Caperna. “You want to be self-aware: ‘OK, if 100 people are saying I did something wrong, I should probably listen, take that in, rewatch myself.’” Yet the best way to come across better on TV is less about them, more about you. “I was back to being me and not a pregnant or postpartum version of myself,” she says. “I was back in my own skin.” (Read more)

“I do have a notes app where I will write down maybe three bullet points after each episode — little things in the back of my mind I wish I could address if given the opportunity,” says The Valley’s Janet Caperna. But don’t go overboard: “As soon as you sit down on those couches at the reunion, you forget everything you wrote down,” she adds. If you can, “get everything off your chest as quickly as possible. It’s a long day, and everybody wants to make sure they get their two cents in.” (Read more)

“You have to make it entertaining for yourself,” says Kori King, who didn’t make it far on RuPaul’s Drag Race but became one of her season’s breakout stars (and signed with CAA) thanks to the off-the-wall characters and impersonations she inhabits in her viral Cameos. “How are you going to bring joy to it? If you want to put on a funny outfit and a stick on mustache and do the Cameo like that, there you go. If you want to have a glass of wine and go to town, that’s what you have to do.” (Read more)

After Harry Jowsey went on Too Hot to Handle, he was overwhelmed by DMs from people “wanting to have a good time,” as he puts it. So he mostly ignored them, other than an occasional vibe check. He’s since grown more open to writing back to fans who seem normal. “If it feels meaningful, if it feels appropriate to respond, I will,” he says. But sussing out a stranger’s intentions is never foolproof, so use your best judgment. “If people say mean stuff, obviously I’m not responding.” (Read more)

“There’s a lot of money in podcasting,” says The Valley’s Janet Caperna, who co-hosts This Side of the Hill. “When we got our first check for our podcast, it was a really fun day.” And while it takes some work — “You really need to produce it a little bit” — a podcast can offer viewers a fuller picture. “We wanted to not talk about Bravo stuff,” Caperna says. “We get a lot of people who watch the show and then listen to our podcast like, ‘Oh my gosh, I saw a side of you that I didn’t know before.’” (Read more)

“Honey, if you’re not disciplined and you’re not willing to work hard, Dancing With The Stars is the worst move you can make,” says The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Phaedra Parks, who competed on the show’s 33rd season in 2024. “It was the best experience because I pushed myself to limits that I probably would have never pushed myself to — but it is definitely the hardest show I have ever done in my life. It’s much harder than the physical challenges on Traitors.” (Read more)