Jillian Michaels stands by her decision not to participate in Netflix’s new documentary about The Biggest Loser.
“Zero regrets about not doing it because I would have simply lent credibility to something that is an egregious lie,” Michaels, 51, told Fox News in an interview published Monday, August 25.
The celebrity fitness trainer starred on The Biggest Loser intermittently between 2004 and 2014. The reality competition ran for 18 seasons and ended in 2020. Earlier this month, Netflix released the three-part docuseries Fit For TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, which depicted Michaels as behaving harshly toward contestants and supplying them with caffeine pills to lose weight.
Michaels addressed whether she would take legal action against Netflix, her fellow Biggest Loser trainer Bob Harper or the show’s doctor-in-residence, Dr. Robert Huizenga. (She previously claimed in an August 19 interview with TMZ that she was meeting with attorney Bryan Freedman about her legal options. Us Weekly reached out to Freedman.)
“To be totally honest with you, at the moment I’m choosing my battles because there are a lot to fight,” she said in her Fox News interview. “I will absolutely take on one of these. The question is, you can’t fight 10 Goliaths at the same time. So, I have to determine what I want my legacy to be and that is going to be a result of which fight I pick.”
Michaels said that she’s talking with the original executive producers of The Biggest Loser about potentially making their own documentary.
“I might do that,” she said. “There is talk of that. I might take that path instead, and I think I don’t know that I am necessarily going to need to sue because it’s very timely. It’s very expensive.”
She claimed that the producers are “very upset” by Fit For TV and called the docuseries “literally just lie upon lie.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Netflix and Harper for comment.
Michaels broke her silence on Fit For TV last week, alleging in an Instagram post that “Dr. Huizenga did approve caffeine pills on many seasons of Biggest Loser. Bob Harper not only knew about the caffeine pills the ‘stackers fat burner’ were actually his suggestion. I wanted to use my brand instead because they were cleaner and had no more than 200mg of caffeine (equivalent to a strong cup of coffee).”
She also alleged that caffeine was “NEVER banned” on The Biggest Loser.
“Wild how some folks still lie like it’s 1985 before texts and email were a thing,” she added. “And, the last image is my second to last text ever to Bob Harper. Take from it what you will.”
According to Michaels, her text to Harper, 60, allegedly stated, “I really think it’s s***ty of you to not even respond to my texts. It’s this kind of thing that always makes me so disappointed [in] our relationship.”
In Fit For TV, Harper said that he and Michaels “were really close on television,” but not so much in reality. When Harper had a massive heart attack in February 2017, Michaels allegedly didn’t reach out to him directly. “That to me, spoke volumes,” he said in the docuseries.
