As a new Netflix documentary looks back at the hugely successful – and highly controversial – TV weight-loss competition, its longest-serving trainer tells all
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n Netflix’s new documentary about The Biggest Loser, Joelle Gwynn, a contestant on the televised weight-loss competition, has a message for her former fitness trainer: ‘Fuck you, Bob Harper.’ Gwynn was a contestant on the US show in 2008, and she has just watched a clip of Harper screaming at her to “shut the fuck up” after she failed to run on a treadmill for the specified time. “Oh, and your little dog too,” she adds.
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.
The show was undeniably the making of Harper, who went from being a farmer’s son who dropped out of university because he couldn’t afford it, to an American household name who appeared on The Traitors US and RuPaul’s Drag Race. He is “really proud” of the years he worked on “Loser”, as he refers to it, and has little time for its critics.
