Teen Mom Confidential: Secrets & Scandals From MTV's Most Controversial Shows (4 page)

Still, the girls' lives and journeys, in no small way, became symbolic of middle class life in the era of Obama. Scratch the surface of these emotional sagas and everything you need to know about America comes flowing out. “In my experience, freshman and sophomore girls want babies,” says cast member Jamie McKay, who was featured on
16 and Pregnant
during season three. “They watch the show out of envy, when really it's showing them what they don't want.”

When it comes to creating dramatic and polarizing TV, you won't find much better material than a young girl who clearly doesn't have her own life together suddenly ending up responsible for a tiny, hungry, pooping, screaming human being. Or, says Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University: “Pregnancy itself is about as dramatic as it gets. Placing that onto a teenage girl - especially the ones that they choose - how could you not be compelled to watch this?”

Naturally, MTV has tried extra hard to convince people the shows are essentially public service announcements - kind of like the movies about car crashes they show you in high school to discourage drinking and driving. But critics - and there are lots of them - say paparazzi shots of girls shopping, partying and spending their
Teen Mom
paychecks on boob jobs send the opposite message and are actually encouraging some impressionable teens to get knocked up.

“There are...kids now who think it is cool now to be a teen mom,” notes actress and reality star Tamara Mowry. “[They think] 'They are on covers of magazines. They're famous... so why don't I have a baby? If they can do it, I can do it.'”

At one point in 2011, Chelsea Houska's housemate Megan Nelson was pregnant - at the same time as three of Jenelle's best friends. Though Keely Sanders, Amber Painter and Lauren Pruitt all supposedly lectured Jenelle about becoming a teen mom at first, their loyal and trusted pal Kristina Collins told
In Touch
magazine: “I think all the girls idolized Jenelle. Lauren has even mentioned how cool it would be if she got her own spin-off show.”

Megan, who became an unwed mother herself in July 2011, claimed that her pregnancy was a complete surprise. But her friends were quick to call bullshit on that. “[Megan] purposely got pregnant in order to become a regular on the show,” one squealed to the tabloid. An MTV spokesperson later told the
New York Post
“none of the friends of the girls on the show have reached out to producers to get their own shows or get on [TV].”

Whitney Purvis - one of the teens featured on season one of
16 and Pregnant
- may need some extra convincing of that. In fact, she's stated that she, too, sometimes meets people who “are wanting to get pregnant just to be on the show.” Whitney hasn't given any interviews since getting arrested in March 2012 for stealing a pregnancy test from Walmart (and using it in the store's bathroom!) but she did talk to
ABC News
not long after her episode aired. “I meet people who are changing their life just for what I did,” she said. Then the big bombshell: “There's actually two girls who got pregnant just for that and they went to the same school and MTV had to wind up picking either one of them...so they picked one of them and then the other one, you know, is just sitting there!”

Whitney - like other girls featured on
16 and Pregnant
- was compensated $5,000 for her appearance, which MTV reserves the right to show an unlimited number of times anywhere in the world.

Details about financial compensation have been shrouded in mystery for years. Confidentiality agreements forbid most participants from discussing how much they get paid. While there have been many reports that
Teen Mom
cast members earn a cool $65,000 per season, our sources - including several of the girls themselves - say it is actually much less.

Here's what else we know:

Who gets paid and who doesn't?
For
16 and Pregnant
,
only the female stars and their baby's father are compensated. (As part of her deal, each girl is also required to appear on the “Life After Labor” finale special. MTV pays for travel.) For the
T
een Mom
shows, only recurring cast members - boyfriends, mothers, husbands, etc. that appear for multiple episodes - take home a check. According to one show insider, the baby-daddies (along with Jenelle's mother, Barbara) make the same amount for each episode they are in. If they do not appear, they do not get paid.

Our sources say most secondary cast members (which includes friends, family members and boyfriends) get paid about $2,000 a season. And everyone appearing on camera is required to sign non-disclosure agreements. Compensation for secondary personalities is completely negotiable. Some friends and family members have stopped filming, or refused to participate altogether, in order to secure better deals. Jeremy Calvert, the man that eventually married
Teen Mom 2
star Leah Messer, hated dealing with the camera crew and didn't want to be on the show. So producers had to offer him a lot more money than usual to appear.

It's simple economics, really. The more intricate someone is to the storyline, the more they will get paid. Gary Head, who was Jenelle's boyfriend during the fourth season of
Teen Mom 2
was paid only $1,500 for appearing on several episodes, while Kieffer Delp negotiated for significantly more. Another perk: the network will pick up the bill whenever the main subject and her friends or family are filmed dining out - (“But only up to $20 per person,” one cast member says) - or if they are participating in an outing set up by the show for filming purposes.

“Most of our friends hate filming,” one insider says. “MTV sets all of those scenes up with our friends so in turn they have to pay them to film, almost like a bribe.”
Do all the Teen Mom girls make the same amount?
Sources say the girls from all three
Teen Mom
franchises each earned a base salary of $10,000 in their first season. They were guaranteed pay bumps to at least $25,000 in season two. During a court proceeding in December 2010, Amber revealed that she took home $140,000 for six months of work, but it does not appear that came exclusively in the form of a paycheck. “We definitely don't make nearly as much as most websites and magazines say we do,” one of the girls insists. “It isn't even enough to pay one month of my bills.”

Do the girls get paid when stories about them appear in magazines?
Sometimes. Recurring cast members (friends and family) are forbidden to talk to the press without approval from MTV. Many of the articles that appear in supermarket tabloids are actually placed by the network for promotional purposes, and thus, there is no exchange of money. To supplement their income, some girls have sold stories or photos to the media through a friend or relative. Leah and Jeremy reportedly picked up around $10,000 for selling her wedding photos (without the consent on MTV) to
Us Weekly
in 2012.

Do the girls get bonuses?
Yes. Cash bonuses are sometimes awarded for high ratings - but most girls say they are rare. More often they receive items such as restaurant gift cards.

Does MTV buy the girls houses and cars to keep them on the show?
No. All of our sources tell us that these rumors are completely false, and that MTV has never made any big-ticket purchases. But several of the
Teen Mom
girls have used their TV money to splurge. Other things that are never covered by producers: any sort of grooming services, such as manicures, hair styling, plastic surgery or tanning. The girls pay for those things on their own.

Do the babies make any money from appearing on the show?
Yes. The babies on all of the
Teen Mom
shows (except
16 and Pregnant
) each have trust funds set up by MTV, which they can access when they turn 18.

What does MTV pay for when the show's stars have to travel for show-related work?
Insiders say the show will reimburse its stars up to $75 a day for food and expenses when they are required to travel for show-related work. Their hotel expenses and airfare are also covered, as are the travel costs for some family members or friends that will appear on the reunion shows, or come to help babysit the star's child while they are working.

Does the show provide medical insurance and benefits to the cast?
No. The girls are not considered employees, and therefore are not given the benefits you would get at a regular job, such as medical insurance or a 401(k) plan. Each cast member receives a 1099 form and is responsible for paying her own taxes at the end of the year, as no money is withheld from their checks. On occasion, this has caused the stars of the show to run into trouble with the IRS. In March 2013,
Kail Lowry
revealed on
Twitter
that she had to cancel her upcoming wedding reception because she owed thousands of dollars in taxes.

Gary Shirley
sensed something wasn't quite right after a frightening conversation with Amber Portwood on the morning of June 14, 2011. At 11:34 AM, he called 9-1-1 in Anderson, Indiana looking for help.
Operator:
Anderson 9-1-1, what is your emergency?
Gary:
Hi. I just spoke with my, uh, girlfriend and she had said something to me... She is Amber Portwood...Um, she said something to me...said she's having a hard time in her life. (She said) 'Call the police, they will find my body in the garage.' I don't know what to do. So I am calling you guys because I don't want her to kill herself... This is about 5 minutes ago. I called my mom...she was like “She has made several, she has said this several times” and I said “She is not answering my phone calls. She said 'call the police so they can find my body in the garage.' I called her back several times and she didn't answer, so... You don't tell somebody to call the police if you don't want them to call the police.
Operator:
Is she home by herself?
Gary:
Yes, she is. I called my mom. She is on her way over there right now.
Operator:
What kind of car is she going to be in?
Gary:
She's not in a car. She'll be in the garage, and in the garage she has Dodge Magnum in her...she has a Dodge Magnum in her driveway.
Operator:
Wait a minute. You said your mother's going over to check on her?
Gary:
Yeah, but I don't…
Operator:
And she'll be on foot?
Gary:
She's going to hang herself!

Sharon Bookout was combing through
Craigslist
ads in the spring of 2008, hoping to find a modeling job for her pregnant teenage daughter, Maci. What she stumbled onto instead was a casting notice for a new cable docu-series that planned to follow teens like hers on their scary and unpredictable journeys into unplanned parenthood:

MTV is currently casting an upcoming series focusing on young women during their pregnancy. As we realize that this is a sensitive subject that many of our young women are experiencing, our goal is to show what pregnant women, from varying backgrounds, are experiencing in their everyday lives.