‘I was in tears, angry, emotional’: do reality TV shows use sleep deprivation to trigger meltdowns and showdowns?

Reality TV was once a lawless place – and then it was linked to 40 deaths in 30 years. Gradually, painfully, some semblance of order has been imposed on the wild west of unscripted television. Contestants no longer eat live spiders on I’m a Celebrity, while Love Islanders are limited to two tipples a night. Most importantly, since Britain’s Got Talent singer Susan Boyle was admitted to the Priory for exhaustion in 2009, it is now standard practice for reality TV hopefuls to undergo psychological examinations. Which sounds great – until you realise that the stress and exhaustion are built-in.

Sleep deprivation is the hidden reality of reality TV. Contestants on Netflix’s new competition Squid Game: The Challenge are currently seeking compensation after allegedly experiencing hypothermia and nerve damage while filming in freezing temperatures. Comparatively, the show’s sleeping conditions might sound dreamy: participant Melissa Rimsza says hundreds of players slept in a windowless warehouse full of bunkbeds, with its fluorescent lights dimmed.

“I put some underwear over my eyes to block out the light,” says Rimsza, a 22-year-old student from Arizona. She found a group of people who claimed not to snore and slept in a corner with them. “And of course,” she says, “somebody was lying.” Although the production team mandated eight hours of sleep, Rimsza woke frequently when bedposts creaked or contestants got up early to jog around the room. The microphone propped next to her pillow made it difficult to relax and, after nine days without proper sleep, she began to feel nauseous. “We were just so exhausted,” she says. “They don’t show this a ton, but people were really, really tired.”

When we watch a contestant spitting, crying or screaming, we simply think that’s who they are. Few of us assume they’re sleep-deprived. While poor sleeping conditions are explicitly part of some endurance shows, such as I’m a Celebrity, viewers don’t imagine that dating contestants are similarly fatigued. Jeremy Hartwell, who appeared on season two of Netflix’s Love Is Blind, is currently suing producers for “inhumane working conditions”. Hartwell alleges that he was deprived of food and plied with alcohol. He also says he experienced sleep deprivation.

“They implemented what was called ‘night-dating’,” says Hartwell. “We didn’t have clocks or anything, so it’s hard to know exactly when it happened. But, typically, the night dates would last until about 2am.” The 38-year-old, who lives in Chicago, says these dates were optional but producers recommended them to anyone who wanted to succeed. He estimates that between getting back to his hotel room at 3am and being expected in the lobby at 7.15am, he got two to three hours of sleep a night.

Nick Thompson, a fellow season two contestant, also struggled with this schedule. “People say, ‘Oh, you signed up for it.’ But until four days go by, and you’ve had maybe two, three hours of solid good sleep, you really don’t understand.” Thompson, 38, developed a migraine a few days into filming and vomited. He also felt emotionally “vulnerable” and irritable. The marketing executive, also Chicago-based, is troubled by how production staff “manipulated” him when he was tired: “Asking people the same questions over and over, telling them how to rephrase stuff when they’re exhausted – it was really messed up.”

Hartwell believes production companies deliberately deprive contestants of sleep to make better TV. “I would start bursting into tears for no reason,” he recalls. “All these reality TV shows find some way to implement sleep deprivation. You’ve got to question why that’s happening.”

This sentiment is shared by Alex Hobern, 31, who won the first series of Channel 4’s The Circle in 2018. “I feel like the sleep deprivation is intentional,” says Hobern, who lives in London and runs social media business Flint Social. Like many contestants, Hobern was not permitted to know the time when filming, but he knew night had fallen when the production crew swapped shifts and “the voice in the ceiling” changed.

Although the oven clock in his on-set apartment didn’t tell the right time, Hobern once looked at the watch of a show psychologist and compared it to his oven so he could always work out the time. He estimated filming went way past midnight, meaning he often didn’t get to sleep until 4am. “I felt knackered,” he says. “I would consider myself a very level-headed person but within a week or two of being in there, somebody calling me something on a group chat was suddenly the worst thing in the world and would make me angry.”

What do the experts think? “Sleep-deprived people exhibit less emotional self-control,” says neuroscientist Els van der Helm, a professor at IE Business School in Madrid. A 2007 study, published in Current Biology, found that the amygdala, the emotion-processing centre of the brain, is 60% more reactive in people who haven’t slept, meaning they react more strongly to negative stimuli. Van der Helm calls this: “All gas, no brakes.”

One of Van der Helm’s papers, published in 2010, found that sleep-deprived people are less able to interpret other’s emotions. “They can show less empathy,” she says. “They also trust other people less.” The academic points out that 17 hours without sleep equates to a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.05% – the legal driving limit in most European countries.

Hartwell says he’s been “a very emotionally stable, emotionally controlled, person” for his entire life. Yet towards the end of his time on Love Is Blind, he says: “I was breaking into tears, crying, angry – just so emotional at the slightest thing.”

Sleep deprivation can also affect physical health. While the 20th series of Big Brother ramped up this November, evicted contestant Kerry Riches spoke out about being exhausted on the show. “I massively underestimated the sleep situation,” says the 40-year-old former NHS worker. “I thought we’d get some – and we did, but very little.” Essex-based Riches has multiple sclerosis and sometimes didn’t get to bed until 5.30am. Her illness flared up and she temporarily lost vision in one eye. Yet Riches takes responsibility for her sleep schedule, because she didn’t want to be a “fun sponge” and ask other contestants to keep quiet. Nor did she ask production for a separate room to sleep in.

In 2022, sleep researchers posited the “mind after midnight” hypothesis, arguing that people engage in more maladaptive behaviours such as self-harm, crime and substance abuse at night. “Even a healthy individual, without any history of psychiatric disorders, tends to feel more anxious and more depressed [when sleep deprived],” says Van der Helm, adding that daylight can boost our mood and brain activity. Yet access to this can be restricted on reality TV. Love Is Blind’s Thompson says he only saw the sun on his bathroom breaks. The Circle’s Hobern had just 20 minutes outside a day.

Would reality TV even work if everyone was well rested? Reece Donnelly, a contestant on the most recent series of The Apprentice, says he could be woken for filming at 4am and sometimes not get to bed until midnight. “The art of that show,” says the 27-year-old theatre school owner from Glasgow, “and what I know now from watching it back, is – people were never thick, but their brains were like mush. Half of the arguments that happened on my season probably wouldn’t have happened if people had been really well rested.”

Some contestants are more philosophical. Squid Game’s Rimsza points out that she was able to leave at any time. Matthew MacNabb, who appeared on the seventh series of Love Island in 2021, believes sleep deprivation is a “necessary evil” that can make shows better. “A natural part of reality TV is to get you uncomfortable,” says MacNabb, who is 28, lives in Dublin and is building his own wellbeing platform. He believes he handled sleep deprivation on the show well. “At the end of the day,” he says, “if you’re going into reality TV, I just think you have to be aware of the consequences.”

In 2020, Ofcom added two new provisions to its Broadcasting Code, to better protect participants. The regulatory body now says productions should take “due care over the welfare” of contributors, but does not specifically mention working hours or sleep. Like The Circle winner Hobern, Love is Blind’s Thompson recalls watching TV crews switch over for the night – these employees could not legally work such long shifts, yet contestants continued to be filmed.

Studio Lambert, the company behind The Circle and Squid Game: The Challenge, declined to comment. Asked about Love Island, a spokesperson for ITV said: “Our contributors are monitored 24 hours a day by producers, medical teams and psych teams whose priority is the welfare of those living in the Villa. As part of our extensive duty of care protocols, we use sleep logs to ensure that those participating in the show get the right amount of rest.

“Sleep logs are one of many welfare practices in place to ensure we can keep across the amount of rest the islanders are getting on a daily and weekly basis. All of this forms Love Island’s very robust duty of care protocols that are widely documented and discussed online.”

Big Brother production company Banijay Group declined to comment, while Kinetic Content, makers of Love Is Blind, did not respond before this article’s deadline. A spokesperson for The Apprentice said: “The Apprentice has thorough and robust duty of care protocols in place, including an experienced network of support for candidates and their health and welfare. The filming schedule is carefully considered and reviewed each series, and always includes regular breaks and rest days for the wellbeing of the candidates and crew.

“We are always transparent about the timetable, both off and on screen, and the care of everyone involved in making the show is of the utmost importance. The candidates are the beating heart of The Apprentice – it would not be in our, or our candidate’s, interest to sleep-deprive them and we always ensure they are well looked after so they can get the most out of the process.”

For now, welfare experts are divided on whether anything needs to change. Psychologist Jo Hemmings, who has provided duty of care on programmes such as Big Brother, says: “It’s a really difficult issue, because you can’t legislate the amount of sleep somebody gets. And quality of sleep is very difficult to monitor.” Hemmings says when she interviews contestants prior to shows, she asks about their sleeping habits, warns them about the environment they’ll be in, and gives them sleeping tips.

Fiona Fletcher, who runs her own company, Film and TV Welfare, has not worked on any of the shows in this article, but believes that “there is still a long way to go to ensure all-encompassing mental health and duty of care”. She adds: “Producers should be able to create compelling content without compromising on ethics. However, many companies don’t have sufficient funding or training to implement comprehensive mental health and welfare procedures – and this role can often fall to inexperienced crew.” Fletcher believes “a more rigorous approach” is needed.

Van der Helm goes further. “I can get really worked up when I hear about these things,” she says. “I think it’s really putting people in a very vulnerable place.”

The Circle’s Hobern now finds it very hard to enjoy watching reality TV. “It brings back those bad memories,” he says. While his wife might say someone on a show is being overdramatic, Hobern knows the reality. “He’s been in there two weeks, had about four hours sleep a night and eaten nothing. That’s why he’s shaking and crying over something that’s not even serious.”