In Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV , Pulitzer-winning television critic Emily Nussbaum says female contestants were chosen based on how likely they were to have a meltdown on camera, and were plied with booze to encourage unfiltered behavior.
Adding to the chaos on set, she writes, is that the show's creator Mike Fleiss and executive producer Lisa Levenson - both of them married - were having a barely concealed affair.
She quotes casting director Marki Costello as saying that no woman was too off-kilter to cast as a bachelorette: 'Unstable and pretty? That's gold.'
She writes: 'Costello created whiteboards with photos and mini-bios, with bullet points suggesting qualities that might make the women crack — "Daddy's Girl," "Recovering Anorexic," "Just Got Dumped."
Alex Michel was the first bachelor. According to the book, the women were goaded into humiliating themselves in an attempt to impress him
'From Costello's account, Fleiss didn't care as much about those backstories as the other top brass: He just wanted "petite blondes with big tits." (Fleiss denied he cared about cup size, just "beautiful blondes.")'
And alcohol proved to be a crucial ingredient to the show's success. Nussbaum recounts how, on the first day of filming, the women were deliberately plied with free drinks - and the results got messy.
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