‘My Big Fat Fabulous Life’: Fans Think Whitney Way Thore’s Broken Engagement was Staged

Whitney Way Thore took to Instagram last week to announce her split from Chase Severino. The actual split surprised precisely no one, but the way she announced it has raised some serious questions. Whitney’s cool, calm and collected post appears to be a severe deviation from her persona on My Big Fat Fabulous Life, and now some fans are questioning whether the engagement or the entire relationship was faked. Chase’s followup post did little to shore up fan’s confidence in the relationship’s legitimacy.

Whitney Way Thore dropped a bombshell of information on fans in a completely unemotional way

Whitney took to Instagram to share the news that she and Chase had ended their engagement. In the message, she informed fans that they had decided to go their separate ways and announced that Chase had connected with a former flame and fathered a child. She told her fans that his baby is due in October. Chase followed up Whitney’s post by confirming he would soon be a father and noted that the mother of his child wanted to remain anonymous. He did not offer additional details but suggested fans check out Whitney’s post for more information.

Whitney’s split announcement was subdued and seemed pretty unemotional for a situation that looks like it would be rife with emotion. That very subdued post is what has fans questioning the validity of the relationship in the first place. Now, the evidence seems to be mounting that the entire relationship may have been concocted for My Big Fat Fabulous Life.  

Evidence is mounting that Whitney and Chase’s relationship may have been faked

A Reddit user who claims to have been on the same flight as Whitney and Chase after their engagement in Paris spilled some serious tea on the show’s subreddit. The user alleges that she noticed Whitney and Chase were not seated together on the plane and appeared to go their separate ways once they departed, too. The user claims that Whitney was sitting in first class while Chase sat in economy.

There are plenty of reasonable explanations for the separate seating, but the fact that the duo didn’t reconnect after disembarking raises some questions for fans. Was the entire relationship fake from the beginning? Fans think so. They note that neither Whitney nor Chase seemed particularly invested in the relationship, and many of the photos that appeared on social media during their courtship looked staged.

Chase’s impending fatherhood may have ruined TLC’s plans

So why the sudden announcement? Fans strongly believe that Chase’s impending fatherhood threw TLC’s storyline out the window. Many think that the network behind My Big Fat Fabulous Life intended to have a filmed breakup that was a lot more emotionally charged than what was seen on Instagram, but Chase’s upcoming baby moved up the timeline.  

How TLC will deal with Whitney and her alleged heartbreak going forward remains to be seen. Season 7 of the series aired its final episode on March 31, 2020. Season 8 will likely follow the same programming schedule as previous seasons and premier in January 2021.