Dirty Secrets About MTV’s Catfish

#1 Catfish is not just out to expose people lying about their bodies.

Like all other reality shows, it’s super contrived, but maybe not in the ways you might think.

#2 The liars get cast first.

As you might have surmised by now based on production logistics alone, this happens most of the time. MTV’s casting application first asks, “Do you have a secret or something to confess to your online partner? Have you made any fake online profiles?” before it asks if you feel like your online crush is lying to you. “It’s often the catfish we hear from first because they’re looking to unburden themselves,” Eisen explained. “It’s not always the case, but it probably happens more than people realize.” Take for example the season two episode “Mike & Kristen,” which began with Nev and Max receiving a letter from Mike (subject line: “Separated by less than 40 miles”), asking for their help to connect him with the girl he’d met on Facebook and spent the last three and a half years falling in love with. In fact, it was Kristen who wrote in asking to get on the show. To recall: Kristen was revealed later in the episode to have been involved in a car accident that left her physically handicapped, kicked out of school, and so depressed that she gained 130 pounds. Mike had been there for her after the accident, though he thought she looked like someone else, and she wanted to come clean. The first thing she said to Mike when he showed up to her door with Nev and Max wasn’t a surprised “Hi ... ” but an “I’m sorry.” Producers haven’t “felt compelled” to construct an episode that starts with the POV of the catfish just yet, but reserve the right to do so in the future. Eisen said that from a storytelling perspective, it ultimately doesn’t matter whom producers hear from first — the hopeful or the catfish — “because we’re not doing an ambush show.”

#3 Dating mysteries

From the creators of Catfish: The TV Show, the series that investigates online dating mysteries, comes the new show MTV Suspect. One might be tempted to think of this title in the noun format, as in someone is a ‘suspect,’ but this series is actually centered on the verb notion of the word, as in you ‘suspect’ someone of something.

#4 ‘What exactly happens on MTV Suspect?’

Every episode features Nev Schulman, also the host of Catfish, and his co-host, iO Tillett Wright, as they work with a Truth Seeker, someone who wants to uncover the unknown element that is keeping them from an honest relationship with a friend or loved one. Delving into everything from secret identities, hidden addictions, to a host of other issues that could have devastating consequences, the pair hopes to help bring the truth to the surface in order for the interested parties to reach a new level of communication and understanding.

#5 Metzler said

“We go much broader in Suspect. Any secret or issue that’s happening in someone’s life can be part of our show and we’ll find out a way to tell that story.”

Those stories include topics like participating in porn, suffering from an eating disorder, secret pregnancies, and gender identity questions. Metzler says that the team behind Suspect feels that “Young people today have a lot of tricky issues affecting them every day and we wanted to find a compelling way to bring those issues out into the open and make people more comfortable with who they are and what’s going on in their life.”

#6 The MTV Producers Already Know

The leaked information from the participants forced MTV senior vice president of news and documentaries, Marshell Eisen, to admit that certain parts of the show are manufactured by the producers but still claims that the anxiety suffered by the catfish and catfishee are still very real.

#7 Season 2’s Framel Only Did The Show To Pay Bills

In a YouTube video uploaded by Framel, he claims that he only did the show to get out of bankruptcy and buy himself a new car. He also stated in his own words that much of show was set up for entertainment purposes, and nothing was quite as it seems. So with that in mind, it seems that Framel was directed, and told what to do and how to behave during the episode.

#8 Catfish was criticized

The film Catfish was criticized and its authenticity questioned. Executive producer Tom Forman stresses that the TV version won't just tell "stories of deception. We've also stumbled into some love stories. We found people who are exactly who they say they are. We are putting those on television, too. We find people who are willing to get past an initial deception and really do make a connection at the end — in person and in real life. That's been really heartwarming. So I think, when we set out, we really don't know how it's going to end: good, bad, or in the middle somewhere".

#9 Some Participants’ Relationships Are Wrongly Portrayed To Be Romantic

One female participant claimed in an interview that she knew that her male victim (the catfisheee) wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship with a woman, despite the show portraying it that way. According to the catfisher, she always knew that her co-star was gay, but once the show started the male participant felt pressured into performing for the camera and backtracked several times leading to a confusing conclusion to the episode.

#10 One Of The Highest Rated Episodes Featuring Artis And Justin Was A Set-Up

During the episode, Justin claimed he was an “online dating vigilante. The climax of the show was incredibly over the top and obviously staged, leading viewers to instantly doubt that anything that transpired on screen was genuine.

Both Justin and Artis later uploaded videos to YouTube claiming that show was a set-up from the get-go, and that they were both employed as actors. Apparently, they were given false hope by MTV that they would get their own show as a result of the episode.

#11 The Catfishers Always Expect The Knock On The Door

The moment where Nev and Max show up on the doorstep of the catfish is arguably the shows biggest and most important moment to the fans.

The producers always meet the catfish prior to filming, and all those involved sign a waiver. So it goes without saying that they are absolutely aware and prepared (and mic’ed up) for Nev and Max’s “surprise” visit. It’s disappointing to fans that much of the show’s most climactic moment is so heavily staged.

#12 Encountered a lot of skeptics who think the show is fake

Over the many seasons, Catfish‘s hosts Nev Schulman and Max Joseph have encountered a lot of skeptics who think the show is fake.

MTV senior vice president of docs and news, Marshall Eisen, stated. “It’s a total surprise to them what’s going to happen. Sometimes they get really flustered by what they see.”

#13 Nev and Max are kept in the dark more than anyone else involved.

Beyond the producers overseeing each episode, Nev, Max, and most of the crew have no idea where each story will take them. Producers, of course, have mapped out the beginning and ending, but as far as getting from A to Z, Nev and Max do the real legwork to connect the deceived with the deceiver. In last week’s episode, “Antwane & Tony,” said legwork led them down the wrong path. (To be fair, they were dealing with an expert catfisher: Carmen wrote in asking them to help her cousin Antwane meet his mystery man Tony; in fact, Carmen had been pretending to be Tony for years as part of an elaborate revenge scheme.) “Our whole mantra for the guys is, ‘If you can’t figure it out, just go with it and see where it takes you,'” Eisen said. In “Antwane & Tony,” “they’re completely wrong and they lead the hopeful into a situation they didn’t see coming, and they feel really bad about it. It’s a total surprise to them what’s going to happen. Sometimes they get really flustered by what they see.” And boy, did they let Carmen have it.

#14 Antoinette And T-Lights Catfished The Show

Yet despite the happy ending, Antoinette later revealed on Instagram that both herself and T-Lights actually catfished the show, and the whole thing was a set-up in order to try and further the rapper’s career. However, she also revealed that the cafe/restaurant that the show claimed was her place of work was completely fake, and she had never worked there a day in her life.

#15 The stories have gotten pretty dark.

Most of the requests to appear on the show continue to come from people who want to figure out (or make a confession about) their online romances, and the prevailing theme of those stories continues to be people not feeling great about how they look. This season, MTV wanted to get away from some of that and didn’t have to look far to do it. “When we saw that was repeating itself, we definitely tried to diversify, and there were plenty of other stories to tell,” Eisen said. So far this season, the strategy has resulted in two episodes about mean-spirited, “I’m just doing this for fun”–style fraud. “We talk about whether or not we’re promoting this bad behavior,” Eisen said.

#16 Catfish Jerez Nehemiah Stone-Coleman Guilty Of Making Terror Threats

Jerez Nehemiah Stone-Coleman was exposed on Catfish when he posed as a music producer under Kanye West’s label. In the episode, he scammed a woman he met on Twitter into hiring limousines and security for press appearances. The con left the woman Lucille out-of-pocket, and Nev and Max tracked him down and confronted him about the scam.

It was one of the better episodes that took the show into a new direction, but it came to light that Coleman made repeated false bomb threats and made several threats against President Obama’s life between December 2014 and May 2015.

While MTV producers can’t see into the future and had no idea just how unhinged and dangerous Coleman is, it does bring into question the validity of their vetting process. Psychologists are meant to gauge if a participant is a danger to the team or the other cast members, and with a guy like Coleman, it’s worrying that they could have missed what a danger he could have been.

#17 MTV sends therapists to meet with everyone after production wraps.

Sociopaths or not, everyone who appears on the show, as Joseph told us, speaks with a therapist after filming is over.

#18 “We want to make sure that a professional is there in case the person needs it,” Eisen said.

“Fortunately we haven't had any issues after the show has aired, but we need to make sure that people are taken care of if they need to be.”