The controversies surrounding former 19 Kids and Counting cast member Josh Duggar remain some of the most disturbing in all of reality TV. Years before he was arrested on child pornography charges (that he was later convicted of), he was accused of molesting several of his younger sisters as a teenager, which sparked TLC to cancel the Duggar family’s initial series. Amazon Studios’ new docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets dives back into that scandalous time while also highlighting the abusive practices of the Institute in Basic Life Principles. At the time, the family went into face-saving mode, and daughter Jill Duggar Dillard talked out her regrets about being interviewed by Megyn Kelly at the time in defense of her brother.
Back in 2015, Megyn Kelly was two years away from leaving Fox News for NBC, and she welcomed Jill and Jessa Duggar onto The Kelly File to talk about and defend their brother. Looking back, it’s likely not a decision that Jill would make the same way if she had it to do over again, and her husband Derick Dillard bluntly called it a no-win situation in the docuseries, saying (via L.A. Times):
[Jill was] basically being called on to carry out a suicide mission.
While Jill and Jessa's interview with Megyn Kelly wasn't nearly as notorious as the one had with parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, it still caused quite a stir for several of the comments made therein, such as both women saying they didn't view Josh as a child molester for his private actions, and that they didn't feel Josh to be a hypocrite for his holier-than-thou public behavior.
Speaking in Shiny Happy People, Jill Duggar Dillard says there was pressure from others to take the interviews with a defiant stance, so that TLC might decide to stick with 19 Kids in some capacity. (The network later brought some of the family back for Counting On, which itself was canceled ahead of Josh Duggar's child pornography trial.) In Jill's words:
In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done the Megyn Kelly stuff. I felt like I was in a place again of like bearing the burden and the weight of just — even though you volunteer, it’s like you feel obligated to help.
To the point of volunteering, Jill Duggar Dillard (who'd just had her first child at 24 just two months before the Kelly interview) did make a point of saying with her sister that they wanted the interview to happen, and that it wasn't something that they were coerced into by producers. But it sounds like there was still quite a bit of pressure being put on them to do it, even if it wasn't a requirement, so to speak. She continued:
It’s not something that I’m proud of. If I hadn’t felt obligated to like, one, do it for the sake of the show and two, do it for the sake of my parents, I wouldn’t have done it.
Jill and Derick Dillard started distancing themselves from the rest of the Duggar clan in the years after dropping out of Counting On in 2017, with the daughter's behavior adapting more to traditional life outside the IBLP, by way of clothing choices, drinking a bit of alcohol and more.
The Kelly File interview can be watched below.
Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets can be streamed starting on Friday, June 2, with an Amazon Prime subscription.
