‘There is huge success to be had, but there’s also incredibly dark and tragic things that come from reality TV.’
Vicky Pattison has spent 15 years in the public eye, ever since she made her debut on the small screen in Geordie Shore in 2011.
She quickly became one of the most famous TV stars in the UK, winning I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, competing on Strictly Come Dancing, and undergoing the gruelling test of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Vicky is ‘grateful’ for where her career has led her to today, with a whopping five million followers on Instagram and an array of projects over the years, including filming her ‘Big Fat Geordie Wedding’ to her husband Ercan Ramadan. But that doesn’t stop the painful memories that she suffered from still hurting years later.
At this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival, she spoke on a panel about the dark side of reality TV. The talk was fascinating, and at times extremely emotional, especially when Vicky shared how ‘terrified’ she felt about the idea of her future children following in the footsteps of her early career.
Straight afterwards, Vicky and I sat down to discuss it further. I was in awe of how willing she was to reopen past wounds, despite the subject bringing her to tears. It was clear that she felt a sense of duty in making sure that other people who go on reality TV are protected.
‘It doesn’t matter how many years ago it’s been since I was doing that sort of heavily constructed reality TV. Talking about my experiences and knowing that it is actually the present, the current, that the reality for a lot of young people going in these shows, even now, it’s very sobering, and I do get quite emotional and upset,’ she said.
‘I’ve had loads of therapy, I’ve done all the work on myself, removed myself from situations that didn’t serve me, people that I knew weren’t good for my mental health. I’ve had the therapy, I’ve had the counselling, but ultimately there are some things that when you think about what you went through or who you let yourself become, they’ll always make us emotional. I’m human like that.’
Reality TV has changed a lot over the years. Gone are the days of old school Big Brother, or when audiences used to cackle at bad singers on The X Factor. When uncomfortable clips from years ago resurface on social media, they often make people wonder how they ever found those moments entertaining.
‘This is what I sort of mean about the shows having this second lease of life because of things like TikTok and the clips getting repurposed. Seeing these old clips that we consumed as viewers with such gusto that actually now you look back on and think that was really unhealthy and really problematic,’ Vicky, 38, said.
‘I don’t know about some people, but I feel an element of shame about perpetuating this culture, as a viewer. I suppose you can lament your past mistakes as much as you want. What really proves that you’re sorry is active change, and I’m trying to make TV that I’m proud of and that makes people happy.’
Last year, Vicky was one of the hosts of Channel 4’s dating show The Honesty Box. She kept in touch with every contributor on the programme, regularly checking in and asking if they needed to talk to her about anything.
‘I never had that, and it’s really important to me that if I am getting given these opportunities, I will be the person that was never there for me,’ she added.
The Loose Women star expressed that some of the ‘proudest’ moments of her career have stemmed from reality TV, including when she made her docu-series Maybe, Baby? about her fertility journey with her husband Ercan.
While the children of other celebrities might be starring on reality TV shows, Vicky was emphatic that she doesn’t want any children that she has to endure the level of scrutiny that she did.
‘There’s absolutely no judgement from me about however anybody chooses to raise their children. I’m not even a mother myself. I’ve got no idea how hard and complicated and conflicting it all must be. So I wouldn’t dare to judge anyone else,’ she stated.
‘I’m a firm believer that my experience with reality TV has been in a very specific way,’ she continued, mentioning that some reality TV stars had brilliant experiences.
‘Mine was so complicated and sometimes dark, and led to a lot of quite a lot of pain. As a parent, my initial thoughts and feelings would be to protect my children from that, would be to hopefully nurture them to forge a different path.’
Vicky doesn’t want her children to be ‘open to the level of public scrutiny’ that she was, where she faced people saying that they ‘hated’ her after seeing her on TV.
‘That took me so many years to get over, and I’m not even sure if I have. To be hated, to be seen for your worst things, to be publicly flogged for your worst moments is something that stays with you for a very long time after you leave the screen,’ she shared.
‘So I don’t want that for my kids. I want her to go and be a beautician or, I don’t know, a dog trainer, whatever she wants to be. But I don’t really want her to deal with that.’
The bubbly TV personality has reflected a lot on the time she’s spent in front of the camera. She acknowledged that when stars are younger, they might be ‘quite naive and innocent’ and believe that their good intentions will mean they’ll be portrayed in an authentic way.
‘The longer you are within that world, you understand more about edits and storylines,’ she outlined.
‘I was repeatedly reinforced the idea that I was replaceable. So I think sometimes you can blame youthful ignorance and being excited and a bit of inexperience, but also as you get further down the line, you have to take a certain level of accountability for the way you behave.’
Explaining further, Vicky candidly admitted that she made ‘mistakes’ in the past on TV, which she was ‘completely aware’ weren’t right at the time.
‘I felt so caught up in the machine, the world I was in, trying to impress and trying to be salacious and trying to be dramatic and trying to get the approval of the producers and the powers that be that I completely lost myself,’ she recollected.
‘Dead easy to blame edits and producers. But there is an element of accountability where my behaviour was concerned, and I didn’t always do the right thing.’
While Vicky said that some of her experiences have been ‘bitter pills to swallow’ and left her ‘with a lot of regret’, as someone who’s watched her on TV for years, I can’t help but feel a sense of pride witnessing the positive impact that she’s making.