In Netflix\u2019s new documentary about The Biggest Loser, Joelle Gwynn, a contestant on the televised weight-loss competition, has a message for her former fitness trainer: \u2018Fuck you, Bob Harper.\u2019 Gwynn was a contestant on the US show in 2008, and she has just watched a clip of Harper screaming at her to \u201cshut the fuck up\u201d after she failed to run on a treadmill for the specified time. \u201cOh, and your little dog too,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
The Biggest Loser was a phenomenally successful TV show. It ran for 18 seasons in the US, attracting more than 10 million viewers in its prime and spawning more than 30 international versions, including a UK iteration presented in 2012 by Davina McCall.<\/p>\n
The show was undeniably the making of Harper, who went from being a farmer\u2019s son who dropped out of university because he couldn\u2019t afford it, to an American household name who appeared on The Traitors US and RuPaul\u2019s Drag Race. He is \u201creally proud\u201d of the years he worked on \u201cLoser\u201d, as he refers to it, and has little time for its critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat Joelle, she just does not like me, does she?\u201d he says with a grin when he speaks to me via Zoom, having just finished watching Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, the new documentary in which he also appears. He is calling from his chic, monochrome New York apartment, where his \u201clittle dog\u201d, Ralph (after Ralph Lauren), is darting around behind him. Days away from his 60th birthday, the reality TV star says he has \u201clearned to not take things personally\u201d.<\/p>\n
For the uninitiated, each season of The Biggest Loser was filmed over a 30-week period, and brought together a group of people who wanted to lose weight (and who, like all good reality TV contestants, often had deeply harrowing back stories). Contact with their friends and families was cut off, and they were sent to live on a ranch, put into teams and assigned a trainer (such as Harper), who guided them through an intense workout schedule. Outside the gym, the teams faced \u201cchallenges\u201d and \u201ctemptations\u201d for which they could win prizes or immunity from elimination. Each week, the contestants were weighed, and those who had lost the lowest proportion of their previous body weight risked being sent home. At the end of the season, $250,000 was awarded to the remaining contestant who had lost the most weight.<\/p>\n
Harper in Fit for TV. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n
The rigid format meant that being as thin as possible \u2013 not necessarily as healthy as possible, though contestants were monitored by health professionals \u2013 became the primary goal of the show, and huge emphasis was placed on the way contestants looked, with dolled-up finalists walking on stage alongside sad, washed-out holograms of their pre-show selves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all obsessed with our looks,\u201d Harper says in Fit for TV. \u201cBecause aren\u2019t we?\u201d he says when I ask him about it. \u201cI know that probably sounds really shallow, but I have worked in the fitness business for a long, long time. And yes, I want to be as healthy as I possibly can\u201d, as do \u201call the people that I\u2019ve ever worked with\u201d, but looks are \u201ca huge part of it \u2026 I want to look good when I go to the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harper\u2019s own looks were also important when it came to The Biggest Loser. The roles played by him and Jillian Michaels, the show\u2019s other original trainer, partly involved being eye candy for viewers: thin, ripped examples of what the show deemed to be desirable. Harper has a number of tattoos, which were \u201ca real issue\u201d with the producers, \u201cbecause they didn\u2019t know what the American audience would or would not respond to\u201d. He was made to wear long sleeves to cover them up \u2013 until, Harper says, on one non-shooting day: \u201cI didn\u2019t have a shirt on when I was training and they saw me and they were like, \u2018Oh, he looks great. He can show whatever he wants.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper. Photograph: Richard Hartog\/Los Angeles Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Producers also worried about him talking about being gay on the show. Harper came out at 15, but didn\u2019t discuss it publicly until a conversation he had with a gay contestant was shown on The Biggest Loser in 2013. \u201cEveryone was kind of nervous about that,\u201d he says, but his view was: \u201cWhy would I not talk about it? I\u2019m not ashamed of who I am. I never have been.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in rural Tennessee, Harper says he was \u201cdefinitely different\u201d from his parents and two older sisters, and as a young adult he moved an hour south to Nashville to look for work. The owner of his local gym took him under her wing, and he began teaching fitness classes, which took him to Los Angeles, where his clients included Julia Roberts and Ellen DeGeneres. Thanks to the film stars and Hollywood agents who attended his classes, his name was put forward when producers began discussing The Biggest Loser, and he went on to become the only trainer to appear in all 17 seasons, between 2004 and 2016, as well as the one-season 2020 reboot, in which he was the show\u2019s presenter.<\/p>\n
The Biggest Loser \u201cwas the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d Harper says. Even on \u201cdark days\u201d when there was no filming, the trainer was busy leading \u201cmore sensible, low-pressure workouts\u201d \u2013 those days were \u201cwhen we got all the real work done\u201d, he says. He tired himself out to the point that after one season, he got shingles, and remembers being so hungry on set that he would sometimes eat the snacks that had been provided for the contestants in temptation challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cTemptations\u201d were one aspect of the show with which Harper did not agree. They involved bringing the contestants into rooms full of high-calorie food, which they had to decide whether to eat (which could win them advantages in the competition or the chance for a treat, such as visiting family) or refuse, to prevent weight gain. He tried to push back on these challenges to the producers \u201call the time\u201d, he says, but he and the other trainers \u201cdidn\u2019t have a say in it\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Biggest Loser ran for 18 seasons in the US. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix<\/p>\n
Such challenges, as well as filming techniques such as shaking the camera when a contestant fell over to make it look as if their weight had caused the ground to move, were \u201cdesigned to make you draw conclusions about fat people\u201d, says the author and activist Aubrey Gordon in Fit for TV. When I ask Harper if he thinks the show made fun of fat people, he says he can only speak for himself, but \u201cthat\u2019s something I would never do and have never done\u201d.<\/p>\n
I mention a study that showed an increase in anti-fat attitudes<\/a> after participants had been shown episodes of The Biggest Loser. Harper hasn\u2019t heard of it, but thinks it\u2019s \u201cstupid\u201d. \u201cThe trolls that are out there just want to attack in any way, because people are going to have such a strong opinion when it comes to weight loss,\u201d he says. He is keen to share examples of people who have told him they were inspired by The Biggest Loser: \u201cI really do believe that we did help a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n But even if you buy into the show\u2019s \u201cinspirational\u201d message, the fact remains that most of Loser\u2019s contestants regained weight<\/a> after the competition had ended. When it comes to any kind of diet or fitness regimen, \u201cthe success rate overall is very low,\u201d Harper says. \u201cIt\u2019s really sad, but it\u2019s such a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n He is much happier to talk about the show\u2019s \u201csuccess stories\u201d, like Olivia Ward, who entered season 11 of The Biggest Loser with her sister, Hannah Curlee. She won, with Curlee coming second, and later named her child Harper in honour of the trainer. \u201cI was really touched by that,\u201d Harper says, adding that he and Ward have remained friends: \u201cShe\u2019s flying in for my birthday party next Saturday.\u201d Ward \u201clooks better than ever\u201d, he is quick to tell me. \u201cAnd her sister Hannah, she looks great too.\u201d<\/p>\n By \u201cgreat\u201d, he presumably means \u201cslim\u201d \u2013 and though Harper says he is \u201ca firm believer that healthy bodies come in many shapes and many sizes\u201d, when I ask whether he agrees with Loser\u2019s simplistic categorisation of thin being good and fat being bad, he says: \u201cWell, fat is bad. Let\u2019s not kid anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n The show\u2019s trainers: Jennifer Widerstrom, Harper and Dolvett Quince. Photograph: NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Harper knows as well as anybody that those who look fit may still suffer from unexpected health problems. In 2017, at 51, he had what is known as a \u201cwidowmaker\u201d heart attack<\/a> because of an undiagnosed genetic issue, which left him clinically dead on the floor of his gym for nine minutes. Luckily, there was a doctor present who performed CPR, and Harper made it to hospital in time. If it had happened while he was alone in his apartment, he says: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be here.\u201d<\/p>\n Having the heart attack \u201cfucked me up\u201d, Harper says. He struggled mentally with going from being the man working out in his 50s who could keep up with 20 and 30-year-olds, to \u201ca person that couldn\u2019t walk around a city block\u201d.<\/p>\n Plenty of people from The Biggest Loser got in touch when they heard what had happened \u2013 but not Michaels. \u201cWe weren\u2019t besties, but we were partners on a television show for a very long time,\u201d he says, so it \u201cspoke volumes to me\u201d that she didn\u2019t get in touch. But, he adds: \u201cI would not expect Jillian Michaels to do anything other than what she wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Michaels was always the more headstrong of the show\u2019s original trainers, and she caused controversy in 2013 by giving rule-breaking caffeine pills to her team of contestants. Did Harper ever give his contestants any kind of supplement? \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In any case, the 2013 season marked the beginning of the end for Loser: on top of the furore over the caffeine pills, the show was further criticised when winner Rachel Frederickson appeared in the finale having lost a record-breaking 59.62% of her original body weight, with many viewers believing her weight loss had gone too far.<\/p>\n He and Michaels \u201cwere horrified\u201d when Frederickson appeared on stage for her final weigh-in, Harper says. He thinks her background in competitive swimming led to her extreme approach. \u201cYou talk to any person who\u2019s an athlete. That\u2019s a different breed of person,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd evidently this woman was like, I\u2019m going to win this show and I\u2019m going to do whatever it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet his \u201chorror\u201d at Frederickson\u2019s extreme weight loss doesn\u2019t seem to have led to much reflection on his involvement in the show that encouraged her behaviour. Granted, he wasn\u2019t Frederickson\u2019s assigned trainer. Nor was he season three contestant Kai Hibbard\u2019s, he points out when I ask him how he feels about reports that Hibbard <\/a>later developed an eating disorder.<\/p>\n