Reality Hell is a match made in, well, reality hell - blending the staged situations of shows like Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd with reality staples like Wife Swap.
"Well the set-up is it's professional actors - I've been a professional actor for 17 years - and I came in to audition for the role of Kent Fontaine," said Kent Kasper, who appeared on one of the first episodes of the show airing on E! Entertainment.
"Kent Fontaine, my character, was an arrogant producer. He was rich, he was famous among producers. He was obnoxious, which I am because I'm from New York, and I'm Jewish."
Celia Hudson is the victim-slash-participant. She said she'd been on The Newlywed Game with her husband when she was younger and more recently on a parent-child reality show. She thought she'd signed up for a Wife Swap knockoff show. Only everybody at the home where she went was an actor, making the day as difficult as possible for her.
"Then the little things that bother me started to come out. Like the way he treated Kazoo - that was totally wrong," Hudson said. Kasper describes the character as "my Japanese houseboy."
"Slash son slash slave, whatever," Hudson said.
"Who lived in the garage, who ate sand and pebbles," Kasper said.
"So I'm thinking, then I'm thinking they are kind of Hollywood freaks, so it's probably true," Hudson said. "Like, this is supposed to be your son but you're treating him like your servant. I didn't dig it, but I thought yeah, these people are probably like this."
At the end of one long day, in which Kasper criticized Hudson's and his thin "daughter's" weight and showed off the grimy garage that the "houseboy" lived in, producers revealed to Hudson that she'd been had.
"I look over at the crew and they're busting up," she said. "I look over at my husband and my son. And they're like. And I'm still like what what what what? It hadn't registered. I'm thinking why hasn't my husband knocked this dude out? He just told me to go to hell. And then everybody's laughing."
Reality Hell airs in New Zealand on Sky's E! channel.
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