Reality TV: Confessions from the Inside

Sol Dean is a reality TV personality, model, and content creator who won over audiences as the unapologetically authentic bombshell on Love Island USA. Known for her confidence, humor, and refreshing honesty, Sol has built a loyal community drawn to her genuine personality and relatable take on beauty, fashion, and lifestyle. Based in Los Angeles, she also shares her passions for wellness, fitness, pottery, music, singing, and songwriting.

Jeff Jenkins is president of Jeff Jenkins Productions (JJP), a full-service content company and joint venture launched in 2018 by Jenkins and producer 3 Ball Entertainment. Focusing on docu-series and unscripted formats, including celebrity-driven projects, JJP’s production and development slate includes series and specials with high-profile talent from music and sports, as well as projects centered around previously unknown faces and families.

A twenty-year industry veteran, Jenkins previously was co-president of Bunim/Murray, overseeing development, sale, and executive production on an array of unscripted hits, including E!’s Kardashians franchise – encompassing flagship series Keeping Up With the Kardashians and all of its spinoffs; the award-winning I Am Cait and others – as well as Total Divas, Total Bellas, Mariah’s World, Stewarts & Hamiltons, and Mrs. Eastwood & Company. He also served as executive producer on all five seasons of The Simple Life for Fox and E!, Living Lohan, Dr. Steve-O, and more recently, Bling Empire, The McBee Dynasty, and the Hulu hit series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

John Polly is a Co-Executive Producer for RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show he’s worked on since 2012. He’s produced fourteen regular seasons of the Emmy-winning series, as well as twelve seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars. He’s also worked as an Executive Producer on several other Drag Race-related projects, and served as a producer on other World of Wonder series such as Life With La Toya for OWN and The Trixie & Katya Show for Vice.

Before working in television, John worked in queer media and journalism for twenty years, editing magazines and overseeing online editorial projects for LOGO/MTV Networks and independent LGBT media. Originally from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, John currently lives in Los Angeles.

Award-winning producer JD Roth has built a television empire, creating some of the industry’s most successful and compelling entertainment programming. A reality television pioneer, Roth founded production company 3 Ball Productions in 2001, virtually inventing and championing “transformation television”: programming that celebrates the ability of people to make real changes and improve their lives. Nowhere has this been more crystallized than in the arena of “weight loss” on TV, a genre JD first introduced to TV audiences with the creation of The Biggest Loser on NBC. JD’s passion for transformation became the foundation of his company’s brand, reflected not just in other successful weight-loss shows including ABC’s long-running Extreme Weight Loss, but also in series like Bar Rescue for Paramount, My Cat from Hell for Animal Planet, and Master Chef for FOX.

Previous hits also include the groundbreaking For Love or Money and Age of Love for NBC; I Used to be Fat for MTV; Flying Wild Alaska for Discovery; Breaking Bonaduce and The Pickup Artist for VH1; Unan1mous for FOX; and Endurance, which ran for seven seasons and was nominated for four Emmy Awards. After JD sold 3 Ball Entertainment to Warner Brothers, he formed a new company called GoodStory Entertainment, specializing in unscripted television. He has since created and executive produced several series including Karma for HBO Max, Metal Shop Masters for Netflix, Demi Lovato: Unidentified for NBC and Peacock+, and Buying Back the Block for HGTV. JD is currently a professor at USC Film School teaching development and production in unscripted television.

Hunter Hargraves is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Fullerton. He is the author of Uncomfortable Television (Duke University Press, 2023), the editor of a special issue of the journal Television & New Media on “Pandemic TV,” and many other journal articles, book chapters, and short-form essays on contemporary television, including reality TV.