Courtesy of Jill Duggar/Instagram
Growing Up Duggar: Jill Reveals Her Family Received ‘Rough Cuts’ of Their Show Before It Aired
Well, this is very interesting! Jill Duggar revealed on Instagram that her family used to see rough cuts of 19 Kids and Counting before the episodes would air. This isn’t totally shocking, but it’s the first real confirmation fans have that the Duggars saw the episodes before they ever hit the small screen.
Jill, 28, shared a screenshot of a text message with her husband, Derick Dillard, that read, “I turned on one of the family shows for the boys to watch and went to put on makeup. Israel came running into the bathroom yelling, ‘Hey Mommy! Mommy! They said the Duggars!’ Haha.” She then captioned a post about it on November 21, “Haha ⬆️ This happened today … 😄 … IDK if Israel remembers watching any episodes before today. Fun fact: Growing up in the Duggar family, we were given the rough cuts of the shows before they aired and were able to edit a little if need be, but since we didn’t have TV ourselves we would usually only watch it on TV when visiting a relative, friend or at a hotel with cable. 🤗”
Jill and Derick, 30 — along with their sons Israel 4, and Samuel — are actually no longer on the spinoff of 19 Kids, Counting On. When someone asked in the comments of the post, “Are you guys going to do Counting On anymore?” she responded, “Thanks. We get asked that a lot … No plans to currently. It just all got to be too much for our little family, so we decided to step away from it all a couple [of] years ago before the birth of our second child. Love our film crew though … great people. ❤️”
That’s actually a different explanation than people who follow the Duggar family may have heard in the past. Fans assumed the reason why Derick and Jill were no longer a part of the TLC series was that he seemed to attack trans advocate and fellow reality star Jazz Jennings in a Twitter rant. “What an oxymoron … a ‘reality’ show which follows a non-reality,” he said of Jazz’s show, I Am Jazz. “‘Transgender’ is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it’s ordained by God.” He later added in an apparent bid to defend his words, “I want to be clear. I have nothing against him. I only have issue with the words and definitions being propagated here.”
That all led TLC to release a statement via Twitter that read, “It’s important for us to let our viewers know that Derick Dillard’s personal statement does not represent the views of TLC.” Finally, when Derick shared more transphobic views on social media later on, the network wrote in another statement, “We want to let our viewers know that Derick Dillard has not participated in Counting On for months and the network has no plans to feature him in the future. We want to reiterate that Derick’s personal statements do not reflect the views of the network. TLC is proud to share the story of Jazz Jennings and her family and will continue to do so.”
It’s not clear what the full story is here. But it is definitely interesting to hear that the Duggars got to see early versions of their show before it ever hit the airwaves — at least, back when Jill was still on it and before this controversy. Do you think she misses being on TV at all?
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