The Big Picture
- Fox has had a lot of success in the reality TV realm, but saw a rare misfire in
I Wanna Marry “Harry.” - Producers went to dubious lengths to trick contestants into thinking they were dating Prince Harry.
- The show was cancelled after just four episodes, and, ironically, the actual Prince Harry married four years later.
When it comes to cooking up ideas for reality television, very few networks can match Fox’s “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” attitude. It’s given Gordon Ramsay a whole fleet of cooking competitions, made American Idol a cultural phenomenon, and drew viewers (and controversy) to The Masked Singer. But in 2014, Fox brought I Wanna Marry “Harry” to television screens across the world. I Wanna Marry “Harry” put 12 women under the same roof, where the winner would walk away with the heart of Prince Harry. But what the contestants didn’t know was that “Harry” was actually a man named Matthew Hicks who just happened to look like the Prince. It also turned out to be a massive failure, and years later, one of the contestants would reveal that some shady actions were taking place behind the scenes.
‘I Wanna Marry Harry’ Was a Rare Miss for Fox Reality TV
When I Wanna Marry “Harry” premiered, most reviewers noticed that it strongly resembled another short-lived Fox reality show: Joe Millionaire. That show had a similar premise of tricking its female contestants with the fiction that they would be marrying a millionaire, when in reality he was actually a construction worker. Time magazine didn’t hold back in its scorn, saying that I Wanna Marry “Harry” was “the Gus Van Sant’s Psycho of sexist reality shows.” (Ouch!) Not helping matters were the declining ratings, which led Fox to pull the plug on the show only four episodes in. The rest of the show was aired online, and I Wanna Marry “Harry” seemed destined to be consigned to the dust heaps of memory. That is, until winner Kimberly Birch spoke up.
The Winner of ‘I Wanna Marry “Harry”‘ Opened Up About Behind-the-Scenes Duplicity
One year after I Wanna Marry “Harry” made its debut, Birch revealed the lengths the producers went in order to convince contestants that they were actually dating Prince Harry. Crew members would actually stand outside and whisper about the Royal Family, or pose as paparazzi to surprise “Harry” and the contestants on dates. But one of the wildest efforts to keep things under wraps involved therapy — or rather, someone pretending to be a therapist:
They actually had a therapist come on set at one point and talk to a few of us who were saying it wasn’t him. We found out later that it wasn’t a real, licensed therapist. It was just someone from the production team. [The therapist said] ‘You have to learn how to trust your mind. I understand that you’re in a different country, and you don’t know what’s going on, but you have to trust the people here. It’s not good for you to keep questioning.’ It was really crazy.”
It’s one thing to pretend that a normal man is really a prince, but to fake being a therapist is another. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Birch also reveals that contestants were all but locked in a hotel a week before I Wanna Marry “Harry” filmed, without their phones or even TV. “It taught me a lot about brainwashing, because your reality is being screwed with,” she told The Guardian.
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‘I Wanna Marry “Harry”’ Couldn’t Be Made Today (and That’s a Good Thing)
Looking at I Wanna Marry “Harry” a decade later, it’s clear that the show was made in a different time and would never have worked in the modern day. Even putting aside the fact that people turn into amateur detectives thanks to social media, Hicks lacks chemistry with most of the contestants, which is what viewers tune in for. Birch even admitted that she and Hicks didn’t stay together, though they kept in touch. In a strange twist of fate, one of the contestants was named Meghan; four years after the show aired, the real Prince Harry would marry Meghan Markle. “I feel so vindicated, in a way,” Birch said in a recent interview when she was asked about the royal marriage. Ultimately, I Wanna Marry “Harry” remains a stark reminder that just because you have an idea for a reality show doesn’t mean that it will be a success.
I Wanna Marry “Harry” is available for purchase on Amazon in the U.S.
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