’90 Day Fiancé’: Geoffrey Paschel and Danielle Jbali on If TLC Hires Actors, Producers Steer the Storylines
TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé is known for its dramatics. Cheating, catfishing, and lying are all regular components of the series. Sometimes the shows are so dramatic that viewers can’t help but wonder if certain parts are staged, or if TLC hires actors.
Does TLC hire actors for ’90 Day Fiancé’?
In season 4 of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days, viewers initially thought that TLC hired a woman to play Lana, David Murphey’s long-time girlfriend. But as the episode went on, it became clear that Lana was, indeed, a real person. That was tangible discomfort she was feeling on camera.
It also came out that Geoffrey Paschel and the woman Varya Malina walked in on him with, Mary Wallace, have acting experience. Since their storyline was particularly dramatic, fans started to question if they staged the whole thing. Particularly, many people didn’t buy when Varya found Geoffrey with Mary in his home.
But Geoffrey swears the interaction was real.
“This was a complete surprise. I hear people say, ‘Oh this is so staged. This is so fake.’ Completely. I was caught in the moment. You saw my sh*t-eating grin on. I didn’t know what to do. It felt like my heart went down to my toes. But it was completely in that moment,” Geoffrey said in an interview with The Domenick Nati Show on May 19.
90 Day Fiancé alum Danielle Jbali did an interview with The Domenick Nati Show on June 16, and she doesn’t think TLC is “necessarily hiring actors.” But she does think the network may be casting people that already “have a following.”
“I know the process that I went through. I had to submit an email telling about our story and gave pictures and stuff like that. You do like four or five Skype interviews and then they choose which couples. And I just think they’re picking some couples that do have a following from other things that they’re doing,” she said.
’90 Day Fiancé’ stars Geoffrey and Danielle on producer involvement
As far as Danielle’s experience with the show, she’s never had a 90 Day Fiancé producer tell her how to act.
“The producer will ask a question to lead the conversation and wherever the conversation goes, that’s where it goes,” she said.
Geoffrey echoed a similar sentiment in his interview.
“They’ll sit there for eight or ten hours with that camera, you know, nodding off, trying to get the material they want and I don’t feel like they steered me in any direction,” he said.
Geoffrey said he only had to do retakes when “the lighting wasn’t right or something.” But he never had to re-do his more dramatic moments.
“A lot of the retakes weren’t anything that really mattered. When I proposed to her and stuff, that was all in one take. The walk up to there was maybe not in one take because they had to keep bouncing over each other. But it was all real,” he said.
Read more: ’90 Day Fiancé’: Danielle Jbali Says Sex With Mohamed Jbali ‘Was OK’
