NEED TO KNOW
Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels might have appeared close as competing trainers on The Biggest Loser but offscreen, their bond did not stand the test of time.
Ahead of the premiere of Netflix’s Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, Harper opened up to The Guardian about his time on the show as well as his life after, including his 2017 heart attack that “f—– me up.”
And while he says many of his former colleagues from The Biggest Loser reached out, Michaels was not one of them.
“We weren’t besties, but we were partners on a television show for a very long time,” he told the outlet, saying her silence “spoke volumes.”
“I would not expect Jillian Michaels to do anything other than what she wants to do,” he added.
The documentary, which drops on Netflix Aug. 15, 2025, features interviews from Harper as well as former contestants, producers and the show’s doctor Robert Huizenga.
Courtesy of Netflix
While sisters Olivia Ward and Hannah Young, who competed together in season 11, call the show “the best thing that ever happened to us in the trailer,” others had a different experience.
“Why didn’t anyone let me know that I could have just ruined my life,” Suzanne Mendonca, who competed in season 2, says in another clip.
Though the final word in the trailer comes from executive producer David Broome who says: “You tell me one show that’s actually changed people’s lives the way The Biggest Loser has, I’d love to hear it.”
In the years since she last appeared on the show as a trainer on the show in 2013, Michaels has spoken out about her issues with the weight-loss competition that ran for 18 seasons.
Mitchell Haaseth/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
“Nobody should have been eliminated. That was my No. 1 issue with the show,” she told Today in 2021. “But the producers gamified weight loss. It was weight loss on a ticking clock.”
Adding to the show’s faults, she added, was the lack of mental health support for contestants as they worked through emotional and psychological issues.
“The Biggest Loser needed a mental health professional,” she said. “I think there was some random guy they could talk to if they needed, but these people needed deep work. When you have someone that weighs 400 lbs., that’s not just an individual who likes pizza. There’s a whole lot going on there emotionally.”
