After years of starring in their own TLC series — and later falling in infamy, the Duggar family is at the center of Amazon’s latest documentary, “Shiny, Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.”
Following Josh Duggar’s 2021 conviction for possession of child pornography, it’s a shock to see one of his siblings, Jill Duggar Dillard, and their cousin, Amy, open up not only about Josh’s history but also her family’s experience within the Institute of Basic Life Principles, a fundamentalist organization developed by minister Bill Gothard.
The new deep dive, directed and executive produced by Julia Willoughby Nason and Olivia Crist, offers new insight into the formerly famous TLC household and the “insidious organization” that secretly pulled their strings.
The Duggars were hailed as a conservative Christian family dream with dad Jim Bob Duggar leading the home and his wife, Michelle, and their family of 19 children to support him through his tenure in Arkansas’ State Senate. They ran a strict household with no television allowed — but became a reality TV sensation. All the while, the IBLP secretly lurked in plain sight and the Duggars posed as its main form of publicity.
“Going into any documentary, I have to clear my expectations and go in with a neutral palette because we’re talking to survivors. We’re talking to people that maybe have another point of view. We’re talking to people who are not totally deconstructed in their ideology yet,” Willoughby Nason tells Variety for Doc Dreams, presented by National Geographic.
In “Shiny, Happy People,” Jill not only clears the air as to why she previously spoke on behalf of Josh when his misconduct first made the news (she admits she made her previous statements because she felt “obligated”), but also goes on to explain her estrangement from the rest of her family.
“Doing an interview like this isn’t easy, and I didn’t want to do it,” she admits in the series’ opening scene. “There’s a lot there.. like, do I want to open that can of worms? It’s just hard to go through. There were a lot of families in a similar situation. But it was very different in the sense that my family was on television.”
Jill and Amy were the only members of the Duggar family who spoke in the docuseries. However, Jill’s sister, Jinger shared her experience growing up within the IBLP community in her book, “Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear.”
“We were definitely super grateful to Jill and Amy as well for coming forward and, especially Jill being brave enough to trust us with her story. Understandably, there’s going to be hesitation. Doing this is really daunting, and it puts you in a vulnerable position. It puts you back in front of the camera again,” said Crist.
Outside of the Duggar family, the documentary explores just how far Gothard’s teachings were spread. As various interviews reveal, Gothard’s ministry preached a society that pushed ideas of patriarchy and authoritarianism to the fullest extent. Women’s purity was considered to be under the control of their father until eventually that ownership was passed onto their husbands. It’s a slippery slope that lends toward a culture of abuse, misogyny, and miseducation, survivors of the institute share.
Several women opened up about facing sexual assault while apart of the community as well as the culture that not only excused this behavior, but protected the men who took advantage of those around them.
“There is an epidemic with sex addiction and patriarchy in this country that we do not talk about openly enough. Even if you’re in a very high controlled ideology, like the IBLP or if you are not, our society really looks the other way when it comes to sexual abuse, as we’ve we’ve found out with Me Too,” Willoughby Nason shared. “Thank God we’ve had something like that, but this is just a continuation of it. I think there was, especially with IBLP, it is the archetype for covering up any type of abuse and what is important in this show, is to see that and to then see how in other parts and other cultures, it’s still happening in just different forms.”
The “Fyre Fraud” executive producer revealed she and her collaborator hope that the show inspires more survivors to take the first step forward on their healing journey.
“That same shiny, happy people veneer that is a toxic element that’s not really talking about the core of people’s pain or emotions or strengths. These survivors that came forward in this documentary have so much courage to speak publicly on camera. We hope that it will encourage more people to have the bravery to to express what has happened to them or their intentions for moving on with their life from an abusive system and to help others. It will help others to join forces and, like one of our characters says, there will be people to catch you,” she closed.
“Shiny, Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets” is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
