Cousins Jill (Duggar) Dillard and Amy (Duggar) King had the production team’s full support when sharing their truth for Prime Video’s Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets docuseries.
The four-part limited series, which premiered Friday, explores the many scandals surrounding the Duggar family and their radical religious organization, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP).
Cori Shepherd, one of the docuseries producers, exclusively tells outlet that making sure Jill, 32, and Amy, 36, were “comfortable” throughout filming was of the utmost importance.
“I think one of the things that our company is really known for is giving survivors a voice. We did that with . [Fellow Shiny Happy People producer] Blye [Faust] did it so beautifully with , of course. And I’ve done it as well on other projects,” Shepherd says. “I think that’s really what motivates us. … Everybody has a voice. This is amplifying the voices, giving them the platform. That’s what I thought was important.”
“We made [that intention] clear” to Jill and Amy throughout the filming process, Shepherd notes.
“That’s what we were here for. They could talk about what they were comfortable speaking about,” she continues. “We weren’t going to be super invasive and really work hard on trauma-informed interviewing so that we weren’t at any point being hurtful to people who had already been through so much.”
Faust also shares that the Shiny Happy People team “reached out to a number of family members and the ones who came on were Amy, Jill, and Deanna Duggar, Jim Bob’s sister, who was great.”
“We really wanted to make sure we gave everybody the opportunity to speak their piece if they wanted to come on the record,” Faust adds. “The three that you see in there are the ones who are willing to come on the record.”
Both Jill and Amy are emotional throughout the docuseries as they recount their experiences. Jill, in particular, opened up about the aftermath of her brother Josh Duggar’s sexual abuse scandal.
Josh, 35, admitted to molesting at least five young girls — including younger sisters Jill Jessa (Duggar) Seewald — when he was between the ages of 12 and 15.
Years after the incidents, both women — who were then starring on the family’s TLC show 19 Kids & Counting (later renamed Counting On) — took part in a Fox News interview with Megyn Kelly, downplaying the severity of the situation.
“In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done the Megyn Kelly stuff,” Jill said in the docuseries while tearing up. “I felt like I was in a place, again, of bearing the burden and the weight.”
As for Amy, she grew distressed while detailing how her cousins were allegedly beaten while growing up.
“They called it encouragement. They literally said, ‘You need to come into the room and we need to give you some encouragement,’” she said through tears. “But it was in the sweetest tone ever of like, ‘Do you need encouragement? I think you need encouragement.’”
Faust says they hope the docuseries has a real impact in creating change.
“There’s a couple of larger things to unpack. One is that systems need to be in place to protect the most vulnerable and those systems mother in as, you know, as consumers of media, whether it’s the producers and creators of media, whether it is political systems, whether it is civic systems,” she explains. “And it feels like really, in this instance, things fell through the cracks on a number of levels. And that’s with regard to the Duggars themselves, but also much bigger — and to the women and children within the Institute in Basic Life Principles, and the larger kind of ideology that they espouse that went out into various different churches and communities in the country.”
Faust adds to outlet, “Our hope is that people really take a look at that and start to ask of themselves, how was this allowed to flourish? And what was all of our roles in it and what do we do? How do we course correct this going forward?”
Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets is now streaming in full on Prime Video.
.jpg "Quranic Quotes")
