I Almost Became a 90 Day Fiance Cast Member
...I'm so glad I didn't.
I haven’t written here in over 6 weeks, and I feel bad about it.
I have THIRTY ONE DRAFTS sitting in a folder, including two that were supposed to be brand collaborations that fell through. I broke up with my now ex-partner about a month ago, promptly fell extremely ill, and I’ve been dealing with mood swings and rationing what little energy I’ve had towards catching up on housework, juggling various paid projects, and trying not to melt down daily. Rather than posting a draft, I decided I needed something to write something light hearted to get myself back into my routine of Substack-ing.
And so, let’s talk about how I narrowly avoided being cast for 90 Day Fiance last winter.
This story starts in 2018, I guess. A very attractive 21 year old Colombian long haired, tattooed metalhead named A. slid into my DMs in Instagram. I was learning Spanish on Duolingo at the time, and we struck up a flirtatious friendship. This continued off and on for years. In 2022 he ghosted when he got married to a Peruvian woman his own age. Two years later the marriage had collapsed, and he slid BACK into my DMs.
A. was very emphatic that he regretted blowing me off when I’d offered to visit him in 2021. He asked me if I’d still consider it, now that he was single again. I had a better idea, one I had first pitched to him in 2020, but we hadn’t followed through because I was too Covid cautious: we could apply to be on “90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days” together. He agreed without hesitation.
I sincerely did want to meet A., but doing it in the context of a reality show ironically seemed like a saner idea than flying to Colombia just to meet the 26 year old guy I’d been sexting with on and off for six years. Even if everything went south with A, it would help me bulk up my social media following, which is useful as a self-employed media professional. While the show paid less than minimum wage, we’d both take home $10,000 at the at the end of the project, enough for A to realize his dream of “buying a farm to grow weed and keep chickens" in Colombia. The plan was hatched in December 2024, concurrent to The Orange One’s re-election, and the idea of possibly repatriating abroad was looking increasingly appealing.
We had the perfect set up for a 90DF couple: seventeen year age gap, we both had a unique “alt” look and attendant interest in polyamory, BDSM and witchcraft. Better yet, A’s ex D seemed to still be angrily lurking around the fringes of his life, occasionally hacking into his Instagram account to berate me. Under normal circumstances this would be a massive red flag, but it was catnip for a reality TV casting producers. We had to bring SOME conflict to the table if we wanted to be cast.
The timing was definitely odd. He’d popped back up in my life when I was hooked on Season Seven of BT90D, and I often thought about how I wished I had done the show with him when we’d first had the chance . And then, like magic, he re-appeared, we talked about it, and I submitted the application for us.
This would neither be my first time on trash TV (that would be my appearance on the Tyra Banks show in 2006), nor was it my first reality show audition. Earlier in 2024, I’d auditioned for Allt för Sverige (The Great Swedish Adventure), a Swedish reality show about Americans of Swedish ancestry. I came extremely close to being selected, but it fell through because my most recently traceable Swedish ancestor, Svend Holst, was born in the late 1700s. He repatriated to Denmark as an adult, and it was ultimately his Danish grandchildren who emigrated to the USA from Denmark in the 1860s. If the Great Danish Adventure ever makes another season, I’m READY.
I don’t know if it’s just easy to get cast for reality TV or if I stick out as an interesting character, but 90 Day Fiance was extremely eager to cast A. and myself for the show. They contacted me within a week of my intial email. After completing a preliminary phone interview, I was rushed into three hour long video audition, where I was coached to say very specific things about my relationship with A to shape the narrative that would be presented on the show. Immediately following the audition, I was prompted to upload dozens of videos, screen caps, and photos documenting our relationship to their google drive, and it had to be done RIGHT NOW. That was the constant stressful refrain of the casting process: they always needed everything TODAY. Including a zoom interview with A.
At first, they said his preliminary participation was not very important for casting, but then suddenly it was VERY URGENT THAT THEY TALK TO HIM RIGHT NOW, and he kept no-showing or rescheduling his meetings with the casting director. I repeatedly asked him if he wanted to back out from doing the show, and he insisted that he did, but it was moving too fast (I did not disagree with that assessment). He had a minor motorcycle accident and was fired from his job in the same week as the casting directors were pushing for a meeting, and he started messaging me less and less, in stark contrast his previous suggestion that I come visit him within a few months. I sat down at my ancestor altar feeling very overwhelmed and confused and said: “if this is not for me, please close the door.” I’d also started listening to a podcast created by a neurodivergent former cast member who’d broken NDA to talk about the filming process, and it was becoming increasingly clear that as a neurodivergent person with chronic illness (which I had disclosed very explicitly to casting), doing this show could potentially wreck my health.
I asked my ancestors to close the door if it wasn’t for me, and close the door they did.
After a third rescheduled meeting, I received a strange call from one of the casting crew.
“A. seems too busy to do the show, but we still really want to cast you. You said you are polyamorous, is there anyone else you could do the show with?”
“No, I planned to do it with A,” I replied, confused. “You realize he had a motorcycle accident this week, maybe he needs a few days to recover before he can do the audition?”
“We need to make a decision today,” she said primly. “It would be great if you let us know in the next three hours if there’s someone else you could do the show with. Maybe there’s another partner you have that lives overseas that you overlooked.” Wink wink, nudge nudge.
My jaw dropped. They had in no uncertain terms implied that if I could pull an international showmance out of thin air- IN THE NEXT THREE HOURS- that I had the gig.
I released a half-hearted APB to friend and acquaintances who either lived or had networks overseas, feeling fairly slimy as I asked them if they knew anyone who wanted to pretend to date me for reality TV. The closest I got with my friend G., whose cousin Z. was a “notorious scammer” in Cameroon. Unfortunately he was unable to get ahold of Z. because he was in hiding after the fallout of his most recent scam. The truth was, I didn’t WANT to do 90 Day Fiance with anyone other than A. I genuinely liked A. and wanted to meet him, I spoke basic Spanish, and I’d done enough research on Colombia to know it was a country I would enjoy visiting. The show would be stressful enough with A., but to shoot grueling reality TV overseas with a virtual stranger in a random country I knew nothing about sounded like a recipe for mental, emotional, and physical breakdown. It wasn’t going to happen.
A. subsequently spiraled, saying he was stranded in Peru with no way to get back to Colombia, that he was taking massive amounts of ketamine to cope, that he had wanted to do the show but it had “moved too fast.” I agreed with him, but told him that we should call it off entirely. It no longer made sense for me to try to meet him in person if his life was so deeply out of control, especially considering how unstable things were with his ex. I felt a little sad but made peace with the fact that neither a real life relationship with A. nor appearing on 90DF was going to happen.
And yet…
Both A. and the producers would continue to pester me for MONTHS after the casting fell through. A. finally got back to Colombia and begged my forgiveness, but I had moved on. Every other week I’d get a new, chipper text from the 90DF producers asking me if I was “dating anyone.” I finally snapped and told them I’d had someone to do the show with but that they’d thrown out his application, and I had no intention of doing the show with anyone else. They finally left me alone after that.
I’d watched enough of the show to know there were cast members whose “partners” didn’t even exist in real life, or would ghost on the in-person meeting on the show. I can think of at least three. They had rejected my application with A. because he was flaky for a few days following a motorcycle accident. They had then asked me to produce a new partner within three hours, when I had only submitted my application the previous week. I can only assume they kept me on their contact roster in the hopes they could slot me if someone else fell through. But it wasn’t as if I was actively looking to replace A. in order to go on the show. It was something I specifically wanted to do with A, and if A didn’t want to do it, it wasn’t going to work.
I am 100% okay with 90DF not happening. I am a weirdo who enjoys questionable adventures and doing wacky things for the plot, but I’m also 45 year year old with chronic illness, and I most likely dodged disaster on many different levels. I admittedly stopped watching the show after this experience. I guess I didn’t really want to eat the sausage once I learned how it was made. I still enjoy reality TV on occasion (right now I’m vadge deep in season two of the The Ultimatum: Queer Love) but as a person who cares about labor rights I really do hope that reality TV participants get SAG-AFTRA protections someday soon, because the current state of industry sounds frankly traumatizing and exploitative. And I want that partly for selfish reasons, because one of these days the RIGHT show is going to come around, and you all are going to be SO sick of my antics. ;)