Vicky Pattison has said that being “publicly flogged” for her worst moments on reality TV “stays with you for a very long time after you leave the screen”, and that she does not want that for her future children.
The 38-year-old, who first appeared on Geordie Shore in 2011, was speaking at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival on a panel about the dark side of reality TV. She later sat down with the PA news agency to discuss her experiences further.
Fifteen years in the public eye
Pattison has spent 15 years in the public eye, winning I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, competing on Strictly Come Dancing and taking part in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. She is “grateful” for where her career has led, with five million Instagram followers and projects including filming her “Big Fat Geordie Wedding” to her husband Ercan Ramadan.
Despite her success, painful memories still hurt years later. She told the panel how “terrified” she felt about the idea of her future children following in the footsteps of her early career.
A duty to protect others
“It doesn’t matter how many years ago it’s been since I was doing that sort of heavily constructed reality TV. Talking about my experiences and knowing that it is actually the present, the current, that the reality for a lot of young people going in these shows, even now, it’s very sobering, and I do get quite emotional and upset,” she said.
“I’ve had loads of therapy, I’ve done all the work on myself, removed myself from situations that didn’t serve me, people that I knew weren’t good for my mental health. I’ve had the therapy, I’ve had the counselling, but ultimately there are some things that when you think about what you went through or who you let yourself become, they’ll always make us emotional. I’m human like that.”
She spoke about how old clips resurface on social media, giving shows a “second lease of life” through TikTok and repurposed clips. “Seeing these old clips that we consumed as viewers with such gusto that actually now you look back on and think that was really unhealthy and really problematic,” she said.
Making TV she is proud of
“I don’t know about some people, but I feel an element of shame about perpetuating this culture, as a viewer. I suppose you can lament your past mistakes as much as you want. What really proves that you’re sorry is active change, and I’m trying to make TV that I’m proud of and that makes people happy.”
Last year, Pattison hosted Channel 4’s dating show The Honesty Box. She kept in touch with every contributor, regularly checking in and asking if they needed to talk. “I never had that, and it’s really important to me that if I am getting given these opportunities, I will be the person that was never there for me,” she added.
The Loose Women star said some of her “proudest” career moments stem from reality TV, including her docu-series Maybe, Baby? about her fertility journey with Ercan.
Protecting her future children
Pattison was emphatic that she does not want any children she has to endure the level of scrutiny she did. “There’s absolutely no judgement from me about however anybody chooses to raise their children. I’m not even a mother myself. I’ve got no idea how hard and complicated and conflicting it all must be. So I wouldn’t dare to judge anyone else,” she stated.
“I’m a firm believer that my experience with reality TV has been in a very specific way,” she continued, mentioning that some reality TV stars had brilliant experiences. “Mine was so complicated and sometimes dark, and led to a lot of quite a lot of pain. As a parent, my initial thoughts and feelings would be to protect my children from that, would be to hopefully nurture them to forge a different path.”
She does not want her children to be “open to the level of public scrutiny” she faced, where people said they “hated” her after seeing her on TV. “That took me so many years to get over, and I’m not even sure if I have. To be hated, to be seen for your worst things, to be publicly flogged for your worst moments is something that stays with you for a very long time after you leave the screen,” she shared.
“So I don’t want that for my kids. I want her to go and be a beautician or, I don’t know, a dog trainer, whatever she wants to be. But I don’t really want her to deal with that.”
Accountability and regret
Pattison reflected on how younger stars might be “quite naive and innocent”, believing their good intentions will mean they are portrayed authentically. “The longer you are within that world, you understand more about edits and storylines,” she outlined. “I was repeatedly reinforced the idea that I was replaceable. So I think sometimes you can blame youthful ignorance and being excited and a bit of inexperience, but also as you get further down the line, you have to take a certain level of accountability for the way you behave.”
She candidly admitted making “mistakes” in the past on TV, which she was “completely aware” were not right at the time. “I felt so caught up in the machine, the world I was in, trying to impress and trying to be salacious and trying to be dramatic and trying to get the approval of the producers and the powers that be that I completely lost myself,” she recollected. “Dead easy to blame edits and producers. But there is an element of accountability where my behaviour was concerned, and I didn’t always do the right thing.”
While some of her experiences have been “bitter pills to swallow” and left her “with a lot of regret”, Pattison is now focused on making TV that she is proud of and that makes people happy.
