Woman Claims Reality TV Killed Her Sister

A woman is suing American broadcaster ABC for more than $1 million because one of it’s shows allegedly contributed to her sister’s death.

Deleese Williams claims that when reality TV show Extreme Makeover backed out of making her prettier, her sister killed herself.

With some reality TV shows, the stakes are much higher than others.
For instance, if Charlie Dimmock phoned up at the last minute and told
you that she wouldn’t come round to plonk a pissing cherub in your garden, chances are it wouldn’t be that big a deal.

But Extreme Makeover trades on slightly more powerful feelings than
shabby backyards can elicit. The nub of the show is that they take an
ugly person and chop them about, pump them full of silicon and turn
them into - if not an actual beautiful person - a rough approximation
of one.

But it was different with Deleese Williams. According to the legal action, "Deleese
Williams is considered ugly," with droopy eyes, small breasts and
crooked teeth. She signed up to Extreme Makeover, who promised her "a Hollywood smile like Cindy Crawford".

But
to make the transformation even more miraculous, the show often uses
the device of getting the makeover victim’s loved ones to basically
slag them off and call them ugly. That way, after all the surgery, when
the family cries tears of joy, the whole shebang seems more
heartwarming.

With Deleese, though, it was different. The suit
claims that the production team manipulated her sister, Kellie McGee,
into saying hurtful things about Deleese’s appearance. But then, hours
before Deleese was to undergo surgery, a producer told her that the jaw
surgery she was due to have would take too long to heal, and cancelled
her appearance on the show.

According to the suit, Deleese
returned home to Kellie who - distraught that she had made cruel
comments about her sister’s appearance - eventually killed herself.

It’s
not the first time a reality TV show has been linked to a death. A
contestant on The Contender shot himself earlier in the year, a Swedish
contestant on a Survivor-style show stepped in front of a train after
being voted off in 1997, and a guest on The Jenny Jones Show was
murdered by the man he revealed his homosexual ’secret crush’ to in 1995.

Read more:

TV show sued after sister’s death - BBC

[story by Stuart Heritage]