The 22 greatest reality TV villains of all time
From competition show schemers like Survivor's Richard Hatch to Housewives drama queens like Lisa Rinna, these are the most unforgettable "real" villains
TV Features Christina Izzo
Contrary to what some may believe, there is a distinct talent to being a reality star. The appeal of reality TV is that you’re watching, at least in theory, real people go about their situation. These aren’t actors—any of us could potentially be on a reality show. But, through continued exposure (and a healthy dose of producing and editing) certain story tropes emerge, and people begin to fall into the categories of heroes and villains.
Offering your life up and being willing to become a villain is a skill apart from being on reality TV. While the people we think of as reality antagonists may be noted for their egos or their aggression or their general disconnect from reality, there has to be some humility, too. At best, these stars aren’t playing characters so much as caricatured versions of themselves. They have given their names over to villainy, more than any fictional character ever could. Here, in alphabetical order, we look at some of the best who have ever done just that.
85 Comments
Everyone involved in Reality TV is a villain.They’re all scabbing cunts.
I mean ..even without the strikes , it is the lowest form of entertainment
Lower than a geek show at a carnival?
Correct answer
There’s a decent argument to be made for the audience as part of the ‘involved’ comment.
They’re just doing what corporate consumerist culture demands of them and their egoe. It’s the people who watch it that I side-eye. And this is one of those times that if someone says “don’t criticise something you haven’t seen” I’m going to laugh out loud.
Glad to see Hatch here; that first season of Survivor was as close to “must see TV” as there was around back then, and all of my friends were agreed: we hated how Hatch played, but all agreed he should win.That’s the mark of a successful “villain”!
So fitting that he decided to not pay taxes on the winnings. I mean that’s a pretty easy thing for the IRS to overlook, winner on a high-profile, prime time, major network game show.Abby Lee Miller? Also not surprising.
There are a bunch of examples of reality stars getting busted for tax evasion (three are on this list). Recently that Chrisly guy and his “wife” where convicted of tax evasion and real estate frauds. When some of these ppl get a sudden windfall of money, they try to hide it from the IRS. Like you said, it’s so obvious and dumb.
I really did always wonder where the Chrisleys got their money. I’m sure the show paid well but none of them ever actually did anything. Turns out they were borrowing against real estate assets using deliberately inflated appraisals. Now how could that ever go wrong??Also, nice work with the scare quotes around “wife.”
Thanks lol. I only saw a couple episodes, but the best part was how unspoken the obviously “queer” nature of their relationship was.
My wife loves that fucking show so I’ve seen more episodes than is healthy. One of the running themes is many nights as they’re wrapping up the episode he makes some suggestive comment and she shuts him down. Fooling exactly no one.
“Hey there uuh, honey pie. How about a little uhhh, of that hot hanky panky?”
That sounded like if Hank Hill was single.
Young single Hank would have been a great flashback episode.
I was in high school when Survivor aired and the first two seasons at least were appointment television for the whole family. When Sue gave that speech about snakes and rats, I remember thinking that would show up on “wildest TV moments” lists forever. I was wrong there, but at the time it was just a graphic admission of someone getting fucked over and rewarding the person doing the fucking for playing the game well. Kelly, who IIRC won more challenges but lost the social aspect of the show bad, as the first case study on how to cement yourself coming in second at best.I never really viewed Hatch as a villain so much as someone who figured out the game ahead of everyone else, which required him to do “villainous” things to survive. I had stopped watching Survivor by this point, but I think there was a guy who lied about his grandma being alive to win some challenge and one guy who reneged on a promise to gift a car to another contestant in exchange for winning a challenge. Those guys are pretty villainous.
I’m sure most don’t really care, but Jonny Fairplay (Pearl Islands) told the lie about the dead grandma to go on a reward and gather sympathy among other players. Dreamz (Fiji) was given a car but then reneged on giving up immunity.
Thank you. I heard about those incidents much after I stopped watching, so I am sure I read about them on some news site and then they drifted out of my mind.
Agree Johnny Fairplay was the worst! At least with Hatch, you could root for him because he was playing a good game.
We still regularly say “mani-puh-lative” in my house
Hatch basically sexually assaulted Sue in the later season where they both appeared (All-Stars) by deliberately brushing up against her when he was naked. She was so disgusted and disturbed, she dropped out. He’s vile.
Yeesh, I didn’t know that.
Yeah, like—he brushed up against her with his junk, it was nothing innocent. Deliberately touched her while still pushing his “hey, I’m just a free spirit who likes to walk around naked!” shtick.
Oh yeah, Jonny Fairplay. I’m genuinely surprised he’s not on here.
IMO, nobody can ever replicate that season because it was as “organic” as a major network TV show can be. They tried to make a show about people trying to learn how to survive in the wilderness and accidentally made a show about cutthroat politics. I remember arguing whether or not it was “cheating” to make an alliance instead of voting off the least helpful person. It was totally unexpected and new, and I’m sure it caught the contestants off guard, too.From then on, every reallity show started doing that on purpose.
Equally glad not to see Boston Rob here when I never considered him a true villain.I always liked him.
That’s how a good villain gets ya
Later, the troll in the trilby would come along to be the biggest Survivor villain of them all.
I feel like Hatch has nothing on some of the Survivor ‘villains’ that came in later years, especiallly Russell Hantz
Remember in all stars though, he literally rubbed his penis against Susan (I think?) during a challenge. Sexual assault right there on national network TV. Really disgusting.
I thought that was Steven Tyler in the thumbnail-sized marquee image.
I thought, “That looks like the mom that Britta tells Jeff he has to bang to get back at the Schmitty kid in that episode [‘The Art of Discourse’] of Community.” Then I looked up the episode on the Community Wiki and it IS the mom that Britta tells Jeff he has to bang to get back the Schmitty kid. I didn’t realize she was played by a reality TV star. (I had no idea who Lisa Rinna is until I looked her up on IMDB just now).
Honestly I thought it was as well .. or some sort of Tyler effigy constructed from straw and horse leather.
Just curious: why was September considered “Villains Month”?
The funniest fucking thing was that they tried doing Hip-Hop week the same week Presidential Hopeless Vivek Ramaswamy rapped on the campaign trail at the Iowa Sate Fair, and the AV Club quietly shelved the whole thing.
Clicks!
and to make people engage , even about reality TV , which is the explosive diarrhea of TV programming.
Well it would have been in October but that’s turkey month, November is Jesus month…
I’m not even that big of a Big Brother fan but a lack of “Evil” Dr. Will here feels weird. He’s just as much as an early template of the think-they’re-too-clever “I’m not here to make friends I’m here to win” archetype that has permeated competition reality shows for decades now and he’s parlayed his win into a decent-ish post reality show entertainment career (apparently he was in Book of Boba Fett?)
Just dropped down to the comments to say the same thing — this is a baffling omission. Since there are a few pairs on this list, I’d go as far to say Dr. Will & Mike Boogie together.
The #0 greatest reality TV villain of all time? David Zaslav!
Good call on Tyra. Beyond the problematic examples you point out, she was always keen to remind contestants that anything they could do, she could do better. To the extent that at the judging panel after each themed photoshoot, there would be a giant photo of Tyra from her heyday in a similar setting to make sure they knew the pecking order.
The woman was a nightmare. I need a Netflix docu-series about the terror she unleashed in the early 2000s between Top Model and her talk show – remember when she pretended to have rabies and she barked at the audience with fake foam falling out of her mouth!?
Puck was a real piece of shit. I remember watching that live (which shows my age).
He’s the first and only “villain” that came to mind when I saw this list. I got halfway through and didn’t see his name yet and was ready to jump into the comments. That was appointment television when I was in college dorm. The whole floor got together to watch every week. I think its the last reality show I watched too…
Poor Pedro.
I remember MTV commerating his death as if the freaking Pope had died. He was a hero.
It was the OG reality show. And Puck is the OG king of Reality Villans. It was crazy to watch that spitting incident again. The show producer totally caves in to Puck after telling him he’s kicked off the show. The others rally around Puck, and minutes after telling him he’s going home, he reverses and is like “ahh sucks, nevermind you can stay.” Wow
OMG, I think he even ate one of his scabs once.What’s even more revolting is that his season was in the early days of reality TV, so it wasn’t scripted like today’s are. He really was that fucking disgusting.
He did eat his scab. I will never forget that.
I eat my scabs and boogers… in private. That’s not what made Puck such an asshole.
Absolutely. Puck was a tremendous asshole, who really knew how to fuck with an entire group of ppl. He systematically went after each participant in their own way. The producers had never encountered a participant like this before and clearly had no idea how to handle him.
IIRC, he was eventually kicked off for spitting in a guy’s face. He somehow manages to give scumbags a bad name.
I had to look it up. He was kicked off after he fucked with pretty much everyone, particularly homophobia towards Pedro.
That Puck spitting on David incident clip in they included here is amazing to see now for many reasons. I was like 10 at the time and I was glued to Season 3 real world but ive forgotten most of it now. It’s very interesting to see how all the other folks immediately took Pucks side and basically gaslight David as if he was crazy for be disrespected like that. He was absolutely right, if he had fucking spit in someone’s face on camera, his black ass would be dragged off the show in handcuffs and probably facing some kind of assault charge. “Why are you all still taking this sick motherfuckers back?!”…. well said David. 👏 It was also crazy to see how the show’s producer totally caved to Pucks side as well after telling him he’s off the show. minutes later he’s like “nevermind that Puck, let’s just forget it and move on”. Wow.
Yup. The girl in the clip saying she didn’t want to see Puck leave really pissed me off. Jeebus Christ girl. This asshole eats his scabs, spits on people, has poor hygiene, and has zero respect for other people. And you’re STILL like “nooooo, not Puck. I don’t want to see him go”.
This incident probably occurred early in the season. Puck was still in good standing with the rest off the group. The cast wasn’t bothered by him until he started fucking with each of them. Those early seasons of TRW were pretty guilty of tokenism as each season seemed to deliberately limited the number of black cast members to one, maybe two black participants. Remeber The Chapelle Show used that as the basis for a hilarious classic sketch.
I do not. Now I’m off to look up the Chapelle episode you’re referencing.
“What I we put one white person in a house full of crazy black people and see how they do?”
I know. Kind of makes me want to revisit that season because I was also just 13 years of age.
Me too. I wish it was available somewhere streaming. Probably gunna have to find it on some ancient torrent.
And did they ever apologize to David after they finally kicked Puck out? I don’t remember but doubt it.
I don’t recall.
Yeah he was. I saw his name on here and internally recoiled. I hadn’t thought about him in hears but the visceral disgust all came flooding back.
Same feelings here. Yuck.
I haven’t watched enough Real World or their spinoffs, but I was always under the impression that Wes was a very hated villain.
So we are just talking about in-show villains here I guess. So not the reality show guy who tried to cover up his son’s sex crimes or the reality show guy who tried to overthrow the US government.
The article addresses that very point in the opening paragraph…
Gordon Ramsay is not a villain! I don’t have anything of value to add here, just protesting. I love him.
Yup. He’s cool. He’s just playing a mean character for the American audiences, and the contestants know what they’re signing up for. He’s chill irl.
I love him too. I’m no GR expert–haven’t watched all his shows–but he’s so kind to the kid chefs. And he took down that crazy baking woman and her terrible husband who were stealing their server’s tips.
Those nutjobs in AZ! Yes!
Well and unlike a lot of reality show stars, he genuinely is an expert in his field. A respected one, to boot. Cooking is still his main thing, with TV being second.
I feel like Trump should be on this list — but it also feels right to leave him off. (“Remember me dammit! I’m the guy who gave you covfefe! And kids in cages!”)
I dont watch “reality TV” , so I’m avoiding the article but looking at that picture and the middle image ..what show was Steven Tyler of Aerosmith on and why was he a villain?
Same. Don’t ask; you’ll get sucked in if you’re not careful.
I watch one reality show: Survivor, so I can’t speak to almost all of this list, but I’m surprised that Johnny Fairplay isn’t on this list, unless I overlooked him.
I can’t believe Dr Will didn’t make the list, or anyone from Big Brother. Those people suck.
Where the hell is Evel Dick Donato from Big Brother 8? one of the truly great villains of all time
Not really relevant, but Lisa Rinna is right about Gigi Hadid. All the Hadids’ Lyme diagnoses are from the same infamously sketchy clinic. Chronic Lyme is a whole rabbit hole.
Indeed. Chronic Lyme is basically self diagnosed BS that crazy women claim for attention and excuses. Don’t get me started on fiber myalgia and morgellans.
Tiffany HBIC Pollard has given exemplary reality television in the many series she’s appeared in. Her rant a few years ago on Big Brother is iconic.
You need to replace Jill Zarin with Ramona Singer. She is an odious creature.
“she was known to bark at single-digit-aged students”Sounds like the other villain here is the kids’ parents. Were they just standing there watching while all this happened?
1. Never really saw Jill Zarin as a villain. Frankel came off way more mean-spirited and nasty.2. Puck is waaaay too low. The writer must be too young to have experienced his nonsense ‘in real time’. 3. Omarosa also too low.4. I have watched way too much reality TV. I even watched MILF Manor.