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      “The Traitors” Host Alan Cumming Wore His Own Clothes on the Show

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      On “The Traitors,” a reality game show framed as a whodunit, host Alan Cumming’s wardrobe has some viewers on the edge of their seats.“The Traitors,” a new reality game show, hinges on startling revelations. In episodes of the series, which is framed as a whodunit, cast members are regularly “murdered” (kicked off). Others are “banished” (also kicked off). But some of the most astonishing reveals have nothing to do with the plot — and everything to do with what outfit the show’s host, the actor Alan Cumming, will appear in next.There are pink plaid suits. Herringbone tweed capes. Sleek little kilts. “Perhaps, rather alarmingly,” Mr. Cumming said, “the vast majority of the clothes were mine.”Some fans of “The Traitors,” which premiered this month on Peacock, said Mr. Cumming’s knack for turning natty looks became a favorite part of tuning in. “I really appreciated that he was dressing in so many colors,” said Catherine Maddox, 39, a lab manager in Boston.The series, which is based on a show from the Netherlands, arrived in the United States after a British adaptation (not hosted by Mr. Cumming) became a surprise hit last year. Contestants on the American version are a mix of celebrities made famous by past reality shows — including Arie Luyendyk (“The Bachelor”), Cirie Fields (“Survivor”), and Kate Chastain (“Below Deck”) — and people who have yet to earn their 15 minutes of fame.Mr. Cumming, whose demeanor is at once macabre and flirtatious, presides over them as they compete for a cash prize on the grounds of Ardross Castle, an estate in the Scottish Highlands once owned by an heir to the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce empire.Many of the clothes Mr. Cumming wears on the show came from his own closet.Photographs by Euan Cherry/PeacockSam Spector, who styled Mr. Cumming for “The Traitors,” wanted to achieve an aesthetic that he described as Sherlock Holmes, with a touch of “villain from a James Bond movie.”Euan Cherry/PeacockThe set was meant to evoke “Clue,” the murder-mystery board game turned movie, said Mathieu Weekes, the production designer of “The Traitors.” To freshen up the 19th-century castle, his team decorated it with ruby red dining room chairs, a crimson love seat, an emerald couch and other vibrant furniture. “Our first reference for color was the film ‘Knives Out,’” Mr. Weekes said. “We wanted to make it feel quite quirky.”Rarely do reality show sets “have this vintage maximalism,” said Rachel Trombetta, an architectural researcher who works in film and TV. Mr. Weekes, the production designer, said that the set of “The Traitors” was “quite different to create” than those of previous reality shows he has worked on (among them: “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”) “We wanted to break from the norm and try to give it sort of its own identity,” he said.Setting the show at such a spectacular location meant its host needed a wardrobe that would “relate to the craziness of this beautiful castle,” said Sam Spector, who styled Mr. Cumming for “The Traitors.” Thankfully, Mr. Cumming, who is Scottish, had a closet full of suits, kilts and plus fours that could serve as a foundation for the aesthetic he and Mr. Spector wanted to achieve. “We talked about trying to make this sort of dandy,” Mr. Cumming said, “this eccentric Scottish laird.” Or, as Mr. Spector put it: Sherlock Holmes, with a touch of “villain from a James Bond movie.”Robin Emry, a 31-year-old researcher in London who has seen both the British and American versions of “The Traitors,” described Mr. Cumming’s wardrobe as “Vivienne Westwood meets Vincent Price.”To make Mr. Cumming’s clothes pop even more, Mr. Spector accessorized the host in fly plaids, a type of Scottish scarf worn over one shoulder, hats, capes, sashes and opulent brooches, which tied many of his outfits together (literally and figuratively). Some of his accessories, like a pair of blue opera-length gloves, were made especially for the show.“The gloves are just hilarious,” Mr. Cumming said. He wears them with what he called “a little policeman’s cape” and a porkpie hat — an eccentric get-up that even he said pushed the limits of an already theatrical wardrobe.“It’s the most mental look,” Mr. Cumming said, “but I love it.” More

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      ‘The Traitors’ Was a UK Hit. Will the US Version Catch On?

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      A cross between “Survivor” and the party game Mafia, the competitive reality show arrives on Peacock after a British version became a word-of-mouth hit.For television fans, a favorite reality show can spawn viewing parties, themed WhatsApp groups and memorable moments quoted without context.But James Symonds, 25, a British graphic designer, recently became so obsessed with the BBC reality game show “The Traitors,” that he hosted a party at which he and his friends re-enacted its first season.“Never has a TV show ever had me like this,” Symonds said in a video interview. After watching episodes broadcast live with his partner, he said they “had so much sort of adrenaline we couldn’t sleep.”“The Traitors,” which premiered in Britain in November and has an American version arriving Thursday on Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, is an adaptation of the Dutch television game show “De Verraders.” The British version was unusual in that it was not the typical type of show broadcast on the BBC, but it was one of the most talked-about shows of 2022 in Britain.A blend of “Survivor” and the party game Mafia, “The Traitors” is set in and around a castle in Scotland. Contestants work together through a series of grueling challenges to win money that is added to a final prize fund. Participants are divided into “Traitors,” whose identities remain secret and who choose a player each day to “murder,” and “Faithfuls,” who try to uncover the Traitors’ identities throughout the show.The whole group also votes for those who it thinks are Traitors, eliminating the person or people from the show. The result is a thoroughly unpredictable competition series.The British and American versions of the show were filmed at the same Scottish castle.Mark Mainz/BBCIn a scene from the British show, the contestants gathered to discuss who they thought were the Traitors.Mark Mainz/BBCFor Symonds’s party, he secretly assigned Traitors and Faithfuls, repeated monologues from the show’s host, Claudia Winkleman, and warned guests, “‘You can no longer take each other at face value,’” he said.Like in the show itself, the party became immersive. “My friend had brought his relatively new girlfriend along,” Symonds said. Soon, her boyfriend had been “murdered,” and “everyone just turns on her,” the host said, accusing her of targeting her boyfriend.This tendency for viewers to take the show’s gameplay almost as seriously as the contestants helped “The Traitors” become a word-of-mouth hit in Britain.“It’s a format that creates an enormous amount of drama,” said Stephen Lambert, whose production company, Studio Lambert, made the American and British versions of “The Traitors,” “and it is ultimately about the way in which people make judgments about each other.” In Britain, the show was broadcast during prime time, three times a week on the BBC, but it found a bigger audience during its run on the BBC’s streaming service, iPlayer (an average of 3.7 million viewers watched the first episode within the first seven days of its broadcast, with more than 1.5 million viewers watching the episode in the subsequent weeks, according to figures from the BBC).All 10 episodes of the American version of the show, which were filmed at the same Scottish location before the British show was shot, will arrive on Thursday on Peacock.Contestants on the American version of “The Traitors,” from left, Shelbe Rodriguez, Rachel Reilly, Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick and Ryan Lochte.Euan Cherry/PeacockThe U.S. show’s format is similar, but with a couple of adjustments: The Scottish actor Alan Cumming hosts, and half of the show’s 20 contestants are reality TV stars from shows including “The Bachelor,” “Big Brother” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”The oldest contestant on the British version was in her 70s, and for many fans, it was refreshing to see a diversity of ages and backgrounds in a reality show.“We’ve all sort of been exhausted by the format of ‘Love Island’ and dating competitions where people are bronzed up and dressed to the nines,” Hamza Jahanzeb, a fan who ran a Twitter Space dedicated to “The Traitors,” said in a video interview. At 29, Jahanzeb is one of the show’s many viewers ages 16 to 34, and he said he felt the cast “was a reflection of our reality.”Mike Cotton, who is the executive producer of the British and American versions of the show, said in a video interview that this was intentional: “We always knew that we wanted to have a cast — have an eclectic cast — that represented a broad age range of people, much like you would get in a traditional murder mystery.”When it came to making the American version, producers at NBC decided to include reality TV regulars “to see if preconceived notions of known personalities would affect the game,” a representative from NBC said over email. Lambert noted that in the United States, a new show faced “even more competition than there is in Britain,” and that having recognizable faces among the first season’s contestants could be “helpful, in terms of getting attention and drawing an audience.”This mix of contestants also meant that “there was an added frisson,” Cumming said. The reality TV stars “were accused of being able to be more manipulative because they’ve done things like this before — in ‘Big Brother,’ in those shows where you have to kind of form alliances,” he said.“It’s kind of hilarious that the American version of the show is much camper than the British one,” Cumming said. Euan Cherry/PeacockWhile on the British show, it was “fascinating,” Cotton said, to see “how some people will become very convinced, 100 percent certain, someone is a traitor based on almost no evidence whatsoever,” in the U.S. version, a question that emerged for all contestants, including celebrities, was, “Can you sort of get rid of your preconceived notions about someone?”In both shows, if only Faithfuls remain at the end of the competition, the overall prize fund is split evenly between them. If a Traitor makes it to the end undiscovered, however, he or she takes all of the money.At a time when viewers often accuse reality shows of being overly produced and storyboarded, the producers on both versions of “The Traitors” had a deliberately hands-off approach to try to keep the gameplay feeling authentic and immersive.“We didn’t have the kind of reality show producers pulling people in for chats, chatting with people whilst they were taking a break or anything like that,” Cotton said.This lack of intrusion also added to the pressure cooker environment. On the British show, contestants “started talking about people as if they had actually died,” Cotton said. “And we just had to remind them that they hadn’t died, but were removed from the game.” The production team said that the show had a robust contestant welfare system, and an on-site psychologist.Cumming, who is touring his cabaret show in Australia, had never hosted a reality show before. He discussed with producers playing the host as a “James Bond villain,” he said, wearing tartan and a beret.It ended up being a “heightened sort of weird, dandy, Scottish, layered version of me,” he said. “It’s kind of hilarious that the American version of the show is much camper than the British one.”“But I guess that’s me,” he added. “That’s my fault.” More

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      Jennifer Shah, ‘Real Housewives’ Star, Sentenced in Fraud Scheme

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      Ms. Shah, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” was sentenced to more than six years in prison for her involvement in a telemarketing scheme, prosecutors said.Jennifer Shah, who gained fame as a cast member on the reality television show “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” was sentenced on Friday to six and a half years in prison for her involvement in a telemarketing scheme that defrauded thousands of victims, prosecutors said.Ms. Shah used the scheme to finance her luxury lifestyle, which included a rented 9,420-square-foot mansion in Park City, Utah, that she referred to as the “Shah ski chalet,” a rented apartment in Midtown Manhattan and a leased Porsche Panamera, prosecutors said.The criminal case against Ms. Shah had been heavily featured on the Bravo reality series, which turned the charges against her into a dramatic plot point.In her tagline for the second season of the show, she declared, “The only thing I’m guilty of is being Shah-mazing.”In court papers, prosecutors cited that line to argue that Ms. Shah had mocked the charges against her.Ms. Shah’s lawyers wrote in court papers that the show was a “semi-scripted, heavily edited facsimile of ‘reality’ intentionally manipulated to maximize ratings” and that it did not accurately reflect her feelings about the case.Her lawyers blamed the show for making it seem, as her sentencing date approached, as if Ms. Shah was “intransigent, defiant, and often even unrepentant, about her actions here.”“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Ms. Shah’s lawyers wrote. “Just as Jen Shah has never been a ‘housewife,’ little else is real about her persona and caricature as portrayed by the editors” of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”A spokeswoman for NBCUniversal, Bravo’s parent company, declined to comment.The show, which premiered in 2020, purports to depict women living glamorously while negotiating issues like sex and religion in a city that is home to the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.At her sentencing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday, Ms. Shah said she was sorry for her role in the scheme, which prosecutors said had defrauded victims by selling them bogus “business services” that promised to help them make money online.She was ordered to pay about $6.6 million in restitution and to forfeit $6.5 million and 30 luxury items, including designer handbags and jewelry, prosecutors said.In addition to the 78-month prison sentence, Ms. Shah, 49, of Salt Lake City, was sentenced to five years of supervised release.“I want to apologize to all the victims and families and I take full responsibility for the harm I caused and will pay full restitution to all of the victims,” Ms. Shah said, according to NBC News. She added, “I recognize that some of you lost hundreds, and others lost thousands, and I promise to repay.”Prosecutors said that from at least 2012 until March 2021, when she was arrested, Ms. Shah had been a leader of the wide-ranging scheme and had facilitated the sale of leads, or contact information for potential victims.Victims were told during “coaching” sessions that the sessions would help them earn money from online businesses, prosecutors wrote in court documents.Instead, the coaching sessions were designed to convince victims that, to make their internet businesses succeed, they would need to buy additional products and services, which were of little or no value, prosecutors wrote.Many of the victims were over 55 and some reported losing tens of thousands of dollars, depriving them of much of their life savings, prosecutors said.Ms. Shah was not deterred by Federal Trade Commission investigations and enforcement actions or by the arrest of dozens of others involved in the scheme, prosecutors said.Instead, they said, she tried to cover up her criminal conduct by telling others to lie and delete text messages, placing businesses and bank accounts under other people’s names and taking steps to move some of her operations to Kosovo.Before she pleaded guilty in July to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, Ms. Shah sold “Justice for Jen Shah” T-shirts that featured “NOT GUILTY” on the front and “#justiceforjenshah” on the back, prosecutors said.“With today’s sentence, Jennifer Shah finally faces the consequences of the many years she spent targeting vulnerable, elderly victims,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.“These individuals were lured in by false promises of financial security, but in reality, Shah and her co-conspirators defrauded them out of their savings and left them with nothing to show for it,” Mr. Williams said.Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Ms. Shah to 10 years in prison. Ms. Shah’s lawyers had asked for a sentence of three years, writing in court papers that she was “an exceptional mother and a good woman who has already been punished extensively as a result of the sins of her past.”“Though Ms. Shah admittedly played an important role in the particular fraud in which she was involved, she was only one of many people involved, was not involved in all facets of the conspiracy, never communicated with any of the victims, and she clearly did not invent this particular fraud,” her lawyers wrote. “Nor was she a mastermind.”Claire Fahy More

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      The Explosive Ambitions of Kate the Chemist

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      The dream is Vegas.“Don’t make fun of me,” said Kate Biberdorf, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, “but it would be a live show in Vegas where it’s a science show.”That is not a typical aspiration of someone who teaches chemistry to undergraduates. For Dr. Biberdorf — better known as Kate the Chemist — that dream is part of her goal to capture the fun of scientific exploration and to entice children, especially girls, to consider science as their life’s calling.“When I’m happiest is when I’m onstage sharing what I love,” she said.She’s thinking of a big spectacle, like the long-running magic shows of David Copperfield at MGM Grand or Penn & Teller at Rio Las Vegas. “If we can convince people to go to science shows when on vacation,” she added, not entirely convinced herself.For now, her efforts have focused on television and publishing, not Vegas. Over the last few years, she has written two books of science experiments to try at home, a science book for adults and, with Hillary Homzie, a children’s book author, a series of novels starring a younger, fictional version of herself.On television, she has already become something of a contemporary update of science popularizers like Bill Nye the Science Guy or Donald “Mr. Wizard” Herbert.Perhaps you’ve seen her.Dr. Biberdorf, 36, has appeared on NBC’s “Today,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and other programs with demonstrations of color-changing chemicals, magnetic slime and, very often, chemical reactions accompanied by bright, loud bangs.During a “Today” show segment in 2019, she, along with Craig Melvin, the show’s news anchor, and Dylan Dreyer, the meteorologist, forcefully dumped buckets of hot water into liquid nitrogen, instantly engulfing them in eruptions of billowing white vapor.The three, wearing lab coats, safety goggles and protective mitts, emerged a bit frost-blasted.“You didn’t tell me it was going to blow up in my face,” Mr. Melvin exclaimed.“This is a thundercloud,” Dr. Biberdorf explained.Dr. Biberdorf has appeared on NBC’s “Today,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and other programs with color-changing chemicals, magnetic slime and bright, loud bangs.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesThe TV appearances only last a few minutes — long enough to show off some chemistry “wow” but too brief to include more than passing mentions of the how and why of what is happening.For a deeper dive into science, Dr. Biberdorf is looking to star in a television show or two of her own.One of the ideas she and her collaborators are pitching is “Science Unfair.” Imagine a reality television competition along the lines of Food Network’s “Worst Cooks in America,” but with students who are bombing in their science classes.“It would be more like the kids who hate that and don’t want to do the science fair,” Dr. Biberdorf said. “We’re trying to get them together and make them do a little competition. At the end of each segment, hopefully they will now like science.”The other pitch, on the back burner for now, is “Blow My Stuff Up,” which would combine therapy and pyrotechnics to help people recovering from a failed relationship or other unhappy experiences.“There’s a therapist there as well, so they’re actually working on healing and moving forward in their lives.” Dr. Biberdorf said. Then, she would satisfyingly dispose of objects emblematic of the troubles that the people have put behind them.An episode might follow someone who had long suffered driving an unreliable, junker of a car. “They finally got a new car, they just want to blow up their old car,” Dr. Biberdorf said, “and we can do that with a bunch of pyrotechnics. So I am absolutely stoked about that.”Both of Dr. Biberdorf’s parents are psychologists, and her sister is a therapist. “It kind of brings the two worlds together,” she said.Sizzles — demo videos showing snippets of what the show might look like — have been shown to various networks.Growing up in Portage, Mich., just south of Kalamazoo, Dr. Biberdorf got hooked on chemistry because of an enthusiastic teacher in high school, Kelli Palsrok.“Honestly, ever since I was 15, I knew I wanted to be a chemist because of her,” Dr. Biberdorf said. “My dream, truthfully, is to be her for the next generation of kids.”Ms. Palsrok remembers the young Kate as “pretty much the same as she is now,” she said. “Always enthusiastic about chemistry and science. Very well-rounded student. Loved the hands-on stuff.”But the field of chemistry has not always been welcoming to Dr. Biberdorf. “You are judged on your appearance,” she said. “And I look a certain way, and I dress a certain way.”Which is to say, she wears heels, skirts and lipstick.“I lean into my feminine side,” she said. “But that’s just because I like it, and I feel like I’m at my best when I present that image.”She added, “It’s also very important for me that younger girls can see that side of a scientist.” She said women taking her college class have expressed appreciation for that.“You can look however you want and still be into science as much as possible,” Dr. Biberdorf said.But that does not fit the stereotype that many scientists have of women as scientists.“I don’t think people look at me and go, ‘Well, that’s a smart lady,’” Dr. Biberdorf said. “So I know when I’m in faculty meetings or conferences or anything like that, my first three sentences need to be articulate, accurate.”Dr. Biberdorf said she owed her passion for chemistry to her high school chemistry teacher. “My dream, truthfully, is to be her for the next generation of kids,” she said.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesAs a graduate student at the University of Texas, she studied catalysts for potentially speeding up Suzuki-Miyaura coupling, a reaction commonly used in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.There, she found that she did not like laboratory work. In addition, pure academia was a difficult place for her. “I didn’t want to be in that environment,” she said. “I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.”Her current job at the university is as a professor of instruction — all teaching and no lab research. In 2014, when she started, she was teaching two undergraduate chemistry classes, and she went to her boss asking if she could do more.“We created an outreach program called ‘Fun with Chemistry,’” she said. “I was supposed to go to two elementary schools a semester. That was the deal.”The program turned into something much more popular, with many more schools asking her to visit. “I interacted with something like 16,000 students that first year,” she said. “It was nuts, in my opinion.”That in turn led to monthly appearances on “We Are Austin,” a morning show on the local CBS station.A few years later, a thousand miles away in Los Angeles, Glenn Schwartz, noticed. He had been Bill Nye’s publicist, but the two went their separate business ways about five years ago. Mr. Schwartz wondered: Is there another Bill Nye out there?He searched for about a year before coming across Dr. Biberdorf.“I found Kate’s website, and I looked at some video, and I simply contacted her,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Really, it was me looking around and looking for somebody like her. And then I was lucky enough to actually find her.”Mr. Schwartz, who is now Dr. Biberdorf’s manager, said she possessed a winning mix of credentials and personality. Although there are many people posting science videos on YouTube, “Kate was obviously different,” he said.He added, “The thing about being on TV is that you can’t teach somebody to be likable.”Bill Nye the Science Guy does not mind sharing the science television spotlight. “Kate is going to be Kate, and Bill is going to be Bill,” he said in an interview.Mr. Nye said their goals were the same: to intrigue children in science. “It’s the people who are watching us that we want to succeed and change the world,” he said.(Mr. Nye is still on television, too. His latest series, “The End Is Nye,” , premieres on the Peacock streaming service on Aug. 25.)Though she does not have her Vegas shows yet, Dr. Biberdorf is planning to take a road tour of chemistry demonstrations across the country next year.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesScience on television has required a sort of research very different from the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling experiments Dr. Biberdorf used to undertake. For example, she had to figure out how to blow up a cake on “The Wendy Williams Show” last year to celebrate the host’s birthday.For safety, fire, the usual sorts of explosives and toxic chemicals were not allowed in the studio.“So what did I do?” she said. “I took liquid nitrogen, put it in a soda bottle and put it in a thing, and it exploded that way. Which is a bomb. But they don’t know that. So we just didn’t use that terminology. I said it’s vapor pressure. But it’s a way to spin that, right? You have to figure out how to say things so you don’t scare people.”After a year and a half of remote teaching because of the pandemic, she returned to the lecture hall in the spring semester. “We’re able to talk a little bit about how Covid tests work,” she said. “There’s a lot of real-world applications.”She is planning a road tour of chemistry shows next year, conducting her experiments and science entertainment at performing arts centers across the country.“We’re just trying to figure out the logistics right now,” she said. For a demonstration like the exploding birthday cake, “How do I get that from place to place?” she wondered. “Am I rebuilding my exploding birthday cake every time, or what can I reuse?”If the whiz-bang of the shows can intrigue audiences, she hopes people might delve into her books, where she can provide more detailed explanations and still make chemistry interesting to people not yet familiar with the jargon.“I use as many analogies as I possibly can,” she said. “I talked about Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s marriage as a way to explain double replacement reactions. And so that’s something that works for my age group. Maybe there are people that don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s a way to hook the millennials and then Gen Z hopefully, because we need more scientists.”She does not have her Vegas show yet, she said, but, “we have some connections with Penn & Teller.” (The magician duo, Penn Jillette and Teller, are also clients of Mr. Schwartz.)“Maybe,” Dr. Biberdorf mused, “I can kind of sneak in there somehow and do something fun with them.” More

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      Todd and Julie Chrisley, Self-Made Moguls on Reality TV, Are Convicted of Fraud

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      The couple, who star on the popular show “Chrisley Knows Best,” used money from fraudulently obtained loans on luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate and travel, the Department of Justice said.Todd and Julie Chrisley, the stars of “Chrisley Knows Best,” a reality TV show in which the couple project themselves as real estate moguls who judge PG-rated family squabbles according to strict standards for comportment, were convicted on Tuesday of conspiring to defraud banks out of $30 million and avoiding years of tax bills, the Department of Justice said.After a three-week trial in Federal District Court in Atlanta, a jury found the Chrisleys guilty on all counts — jointly, eight counts of financial fraud and two counts of tax evasion, with Ms. Chrisley also being convicted of additional counts of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.Their accountant, Peter Tarantino, was found guilty of filing false corporate tax returns for the Chrisleys’ company.“When you lie, cheat and steal, justice is blind as to your fame, your fortune, and your position,” Keri Farley, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in Atlanta, said in a statement.The Chrisleys could each be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Eleanor L. Ross of the Northern District of Georgia set sentencing for Oct. 6.“Disappointed in the verdict,” Bruce Howard Morris, a lawyer for Todd Chrisley, wrote in an email on behalf of the couple. “An appeal is planned.”Lawyers for Mr. Tarantino did not immediately reply to requests for comment.Despite the Chrisleys’ self-presentation as self-made businesspeople, their wealth depended in large part on fraud, according to the indictment against the couple.They obtained loans, for example, by using a bank statement saying they had $4 million at Merrill Lynch when they did not even have an account with the bank, the indictment said. Mr. Chrisley directed his accountant to perform actions he himself suggested would be “crooked,” and Ms. Chrisley repeatedly used glue and tape to falsify documents, according to the indictment.The couple used money from loans for “luxury cars, designer clothes, real estate, and travel,” the Department of Justice said, even as they also filed bankruptcy and walked away from more than $20 million in loans. They did not pay the Internal Revenue Service in a timely manner for the 2013 through 2016 tax years, the indictment said.NBC Universal announced last month that “Chrisley Knows Best” had been renewed for a 10th season. The network also said that “Growing Up Chrisley,” a spinoff starring two Chrisley children, Chase and Savannah, had been renewed for a fourth season, and that a new series, “Love Limo,” a dating show hosted by Todd Chrisley, would begin next year.The release described “Chrisley Knows Best” as USA Network’s “most-watched current original series,” with an average of 1.8 million total viewers.A spokesman for NBC Universal declined to comment on the verdict or on the company’s plans regarding any of the shows. The second half of Season 9 of “Chrisley Knows Best” is still scheduled to air starting June 23.Following a proven American formula, the show depicts a family with traditional values and a down-home style of self-expression who just happen to be fantastically rich.In the show’s trailer, Mr. Chrisley describes himself and his wife as people from a “small rural town” who now live in a “gated neighborhood” outside Atlanta alongside “celebrities.” Their “main home” is 30,000 square feet, they spend at least $300,000 per year on clothes and Mr. Chrisley earns “millions of dollars a year” — but the Chrisleys still face the same issues as families making $40,000, he says.Mr. Chrisley plays the controlling and fastidious patriarch, the sort of father who responds to his son’s misbehavior by throwing his laptop into the pool. His wife’s role is to comment sarcastically yet forgivingly about her husband’s foibles.The Chrisleys join a growing roster of reality TV stars who have gotten into legal trouble.In 2018, Michael (The Situation) Sorrentino, an actor in MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” was sentenced to eight months in prison for violating federal tax laws, and in 2014, Joe and Teresa Giudice, two stars of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” were sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud, among other charges.Eduardo Medina More

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      Leah McSweeney of ‘Real Housewives’ Takes a Cold Plunge

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      The reality TV star and clothing designer has a new memoir about her drug-fueled partying days.“Oh my God, this is insane,” said Leah McSweeney, the reality TV star. “I might die. You might have to call. …” Her voice cut off as her head slipped below the water. It bobbed back up a second later as Ms. McSweeney fled the frigid plunge pool and reached for a towel. “I was honestly afraid you would have to call an ambulance.”­­­This was on a recent afternoon at Wall Street Bath, a Russian bathhouse behind scaffolding, in a basement, on the fringes of the financial district in Manhattan. Ms. McSweeney, 39, a star of the latter seasons of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” has been a regular patron for nearly a decade, enjoying the sauna, the shvitz, the treatments. In the 12th season of “RHONY,” she brought her moneyed co-stars to the spa. Ramona Singer called it “rustic.”But, as Ms. McSweeney told the camera, “This is my oasis for relaxation and detoxing.”Now that Ms. McSweeney is sober, she has fewer toxins to dispose of, but on this breezy spring afternoon, a few weeks after the publication of her first book, “Chaos Theory: Finding Meaning in the Madness, One Bad Decision at a Time,” she returned to steam, sweat and calm herself down.“It’s so nice to be able to disconnect,” she said. “It’s probably good to work that part of your brain.”Ms. McSweeney with Dorinda Medley, left, in a scene from “The Real Housewives of New York City.”NBC, via Getty ImagesAfter signing a waiver, she made her way down to a no-frills locker room, which smelled worryingly of feet. Trading her jeans and black bodysuit for a coral string bikini, she slid into lavender slides and a matching robe from her sleepwear line, Happy Place.She began downstairs, in a hot tub next to a large pool. “Moby used to have ragers here,” she said with a twinge of nostalgia. “My daughter learned how to swim here.”Gingerly, she lowered herself into the hot tub; the water looked less than crystalline. “Me and my sister joke that you can probably get pregnant if you go in here,” Ms. McSweeney said. An employee turned on the bubbles. A mosaic mermaid cavorted above.After a 10-minute warm-up, she entered the shvitz, a wet sauna, deserted except for a middle-age man, his skin the pink of a cooked lobster. Ms. McSweeney arranged herself on the bench and began to sweat.“I like the way I feel after I sweat,” she said. “I don’t enjoy sweating itself.” After a few minutes, she got up and doused herself with a bucket of cold water. She shvitzed again. And doused again. More men entered. One told her to smile more. Her studs had begun to burn her ears, as did the chai necklace on her chest, which she bought to celebrate her conversion to Judaism. She left.Next up was the infrared sauna, though it smelled of something worse than feet. “Is that cedar or some really stinky guy?” she said. She left less than a minute later, entering the dry sauna, with a temperature set to 190 degrees. Two men were already in there, beating each other with oak leaves. Ms. McSweeney sat atop her towel, her skin peaching and pinking.“There’s something about this experience that’s uncomfortable,” she said. “You push yourself to the limit. How high up in the sauna can you go?”“I can’t believe I’m just telling people that I had a crystal meth addiction,” Ms. McSweeney said. Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesJoining a famously contentious reality show is a way of testing limits, too. She was surprised that the Bravo producers were interested in her. She lived downtown. She was a generation younger than most of the other cast members. She lacked their financial resources. Still, she couldn’t refuse. “I’m a sensation seeker, an adventure seeker,” she said. “There was no way I was saying no.”She mostly enjoyed her first season, even if it included a drunken episode involving tiki torches and some gossip at her expense that prompted her indelible declaration, “Don’t talk about my vagina and don’t talk about my mental health!” Yet she made friends — Dorinda Medley and Tinsley Mortimer, chiefly.The publicity for her femme street wear line, Married to the Mob, didn’t hurt either.But her second season, which aired in last year, felt different. And not only because she had quit drinking, a decision motivated by how she saw herself onscreen. “The show is a good mirror,” she said.Returning sober and, in the middle of the pandemic, with her grandmother dying, she struggled to deliver. “The producers were like, ‘Leah, lighten up,’” she said. “I just couldn’t. I’m so new to it. The other women are good at compartmentalizing. I can’t turn that part of myself off.”She persevered and when the season finished, with the fate of “RHONY” undetermined, she began to write her book, which details her mental health struggles and a history of substance abuse. The first version was exceptionally raw. And even after working with an editor, the book remains raw.“I can’t believe I’m just telling people that I had a crystal meth addiction,” Ms. McSweeney said, describing a period in her teenage years when she went in and out of rehab. “This is not something that I talk about openly. It happened a long time ago. It’s kind of a world away. To open up about it was scary.”Scary, but also apparently healing. “I think it just got me in touch with myself,” she said. “I had kind of lost myself.”Ms. McSweeney had no problem finding herself at the spa. After maxing out at 10 minutes in the sauna, she threw herself into the ice-cold plunge pool, then recovered with a warm shower, which left her feeling serene, floaty. “You’re aligning your body mind and soul,” she said.In the brightly lit restaurant, back in her robe, she relaxed with a ginger juice and a bowl of vegetarian borscht. Hurricane Leah, a nickname that became the title of a “RHONY” episode, had been downgraded to a light drizzle. Wall Street Bath had done its work. More

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      A Gay Icon From Reality TV’s Early Years Makes a Hesitant Return

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      Danny Roberts, a star of “The Real World” on MTV, brought a sense of possibility to the pop culture landscape during a fraught time for gay representation.GRAFTON, Vt. — When you cross into Vermont from New York, the road opens up and the Green Mountains emerge. Make it to Grafton (population: 645), and your cell service largely evaporates. This was where, on a recent day, Danny Roberts was standing in the doorway of the tiny cabin in the woods where he lives with his 6-year-old daughter. His eyes are crinkly now; his sandy hair seems uncertain of its next move. He has grown out a beard.His daughter was out for the day, Mr. Roberts said. His mother, who was visiting for the week, was watching her.“It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” he said. “We don’t talk about the reality TV thing.”When he first put himself out there, in the ninth season of “The Real World,” he was young and a bit naïve. Now, at 44, he’s doing it again, for reasons he can only half-explain.The phrase “reality TV” was just becoming part of the everyday lexicon when he found himself jammed into a house in New Orleans with six other young people who — with the help of a few narrative contrivances — were taking their first stumbles into adulthood.When he and his fellow players left “The Real World” for the real world, the stumbling continued, and Mr. Roberts learned that the TV version of himself had become a shadow that traveled with him. Danny Roberts meant something to people.Mr. Roberts, left, and the cast of “The Real World: New Orleans” at the People’s Choice Awards in 2001.Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImageIf you’re not a member of the microgeneration able to bust out the chorus to the Spice Girls hit “Wannabe” from memory, there’s a good chance you have no idea who Mr. Roberts is. But for a swath of gay elder millennials whose formative years unfolded to an MTV soundtrack, his reappearance as a cast member on a streaming return to “The Real World” on Paramount+ is likely to spark that old zig-a-zig-ah.In 2000, Mr. Roberts was something new in pop culture: a gay sex symbol zapped into the basement rec rooms of teenagers who had never encountered such a creature. Gay people, at the time, were becoming more visible on TV — thanks, in large part, to earlier installments of “The Real World” — but none had the wholesomeness and confident sexuality that Mr. Roberts, then 22, exuded with every flash of his Mona Lisa-meets-Backstreet Boy smile.The project of L.G.B.T.Q. visibility was going through an awkward phase in that time. Ellen DeGeneres’s coming out in 1997 created a sense that things were changing. But her sitcom, “Ellen,” was canceled one season after her revelation.“Will & Grace,” another sitcom, broke some ground by chronicling the relationship between a gay man and his straight friend, but discerning viewers couldn’t help but notice that it had about as much bite as “I Love Lucy.” In 2000, “Survivor,” then in its first season, delivered an openly gay (and, often, openly nude) antihero in Richard Hatch, who schemed his way to million-dollar victory. But he was a rather dark, Machiavellian figure.“The Real World” had featured L.G.B.T.Q. people since its 1992 debut — most notably Pedro Zamora, a young activist from the third season, who died of AIDS-related illness a day after the finale — but Mr. Zamora’s impact was complicated by deep sadness.Mr. Roberts, born and raised in small-town Rockmart, Ga., was something different from his TV predecessors. Rather than playing a jester, villain or de-eroticized Ken doll, he was chill, joyful in his identity, and he seemed to glow with an unapologetic sex appeal.“It’s kind of the elephant in the room with my family,” Mr. Roberts said. “We don’t talk about the reality TV thing.”Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesYes, he was sex on a stick (with a soul patch). And for gay adolescents in a time before social media, who relied on television for glimpses of fellow travelers, the sight of him bopping around the “Real World” digs in his black boxer briefs was both an awakening and an indication of new possibilities.Unlike Mr. Zamora, Mr. Roberts was, at the outset, not particularly motivated by activism. His boyfriend during the filming of “The Real World: New Orleans,” an Army officer named Paul Dill, appeared on the show using only his first name, and his face was hidden to conceal his identity. These were the days of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Bill Clinton-era policy that allowed L.G.B.T.Q. people to serve in the military under the condition that they stayed in the closet, and Mr. Dill could have lost his job if he had been revealed.The couple took the risk of going before MTV’s cameras not in protest of the policy, but because they couldn’t bear to be apart. Mr. Dill’s blurred-out face in his several appearances became an enduring symbol of the injustice of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” as well as the liminal space gay people occupied.“I really didn’t know what ‘Don’t Ask, don’t tell’ was,” Mr. Roberts said. “I didn’t know the ramifications. We really should have at least changed his name.”The decision would have consequences. After baring himself to the cameras, Mr. Roberts returned to everyday life only to be forced back into a new kind of closet as he tried to continue the relationship.“Every day, we lived with fear,” he recalled. “Of his career being destroyed. Of being dishonorably discharged. And I had my own fear. He was stationed in North Carolina, so we’re in the South, and every kid out there knew who I was.”“You know, Matthew Shepard was just a couple of years before this,” he continued, referring to the gay college student who was kidnapped and murdered in Wyoming in 1998. “You keep repeating in your head: I’m going to get gay-bashed in the parking lot just trying to get my groceries.”Mr. Roberts, right, with fellow cast members on a recent episode of “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans.”Paramount+After breaking up with Mr. Dill in 2006, Mr. Roberts settled into a life that seemed to mirror the increasing ordinariness of gay men in America. He became a recruiter in the tech industry. He married, adopted his daughter and divorced. (“I don’t recommend marriage,” he said.) In 2018, he announced that he had been living with H.I.V. since 2011. He moved to Vermont.Then, like an old flame, “The Real World” came calling. Mr. Roberts said he found it difficult to resist the paycheck and the chance at closure. “It was a nostalgia thing,” he said. “It’s returning to the scene of the crime.”This time around, he’s more mindful of the way his presence on TV can create change. “For me, personally, all the progress that L.G.B.T.Q. people have made in the last 20 feels very tenuous now,” he said. “This is a chance to remind people about what things were like then, and that we don’t want to go back there.”The new show, “The Real World Homecoming: New Orleans,” doesn’t entirely abandon the reality TV conventions it helped pioneer. In one episode, a drunk cast member tumbles out of an S.U.V. and face-plants on the sidewalk.But as the seven old housemates return to their New Orleans haunts, they carry with them the baggage of middle age. Mr. Dill makes an appearance in a poignant scene on the show’s third episode, coming face to face with Mr. Roberts for the first time since 2006. His face is now fully visible.After making his name in reality TV, Mr. Roberts worked as a recruiter and moved to a small town in Vermont.Adrianna Newell for The New York TimesAs Mr. Roberts strolled the grounds of his rural property on a gray spring day, the easy charisma of his younger self was in evidence. Since 2020, he has been seeing a farmer who lives one town over. (They met on the dating app Scruff.) “He had no clue I’d been on TV,” he said. “I don’t think he grew up with cable.”This time around, there’s nothing to hide. But some habits die hard: Mr. Roberts declined to share the farmer’s name.And while he has mixed feelings about the path that “The Real World” led him down, the experience was as important to him as it was to his fans all those years ago.“I think a lot of people who are marginal, especially who are gay, especially from that time, you felt invisible,” he said. “It’s this deep hole of emptiness. Doing that show was the most exciting, beautiful part of my life at that point. I got my first taste of what confirmation feels like.” More

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      Lizzo’s ‘Big Grrrls’ Asks Big Questions

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      The singer wanted a new kind of backup dancer. Along the way, she ended up making a new kind of TV show.Lizzo would have rather just hired her dancers through an agency. But, as she says on the first episode of her new show that premiered on Amazon Prime Video last month, “Girls who look like me just don’t get representation.”She’s talking about “representation” in the professional sense. But broader questions of representation loom on “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” The eight-episode show follows a group of aspiring plus-size dancers who recently competed for a chance to back up Lizzo onstage and possibly join her tour as one of her “Big Grrrl” dancers.Lizzo tells the dancers that if they don’t rise to the occasion she’ll send them home — or she might not. A few episodes in, she tells them that they might all get to stay.“The No. 1 thing is I didn’t want to eliminate every week,” Lizzo said in a Zoom interview.“I’m looking for dancers, not dancer,” she said, emphasizing the plural. If she eliminated a woman every week, she said, she wouldn’t have anyone by the end.Ashley Williams.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesArianna Davis.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesA reality TV competition that doesn’t cut contestants may seem like a paradox. But Lizzo’s career has always featured surprising and somewhat contradictory combinations. She regularly appears nude and bristles at being called “brave” for it. She insists on the inherent value of fat bodies and has started a shapewear line. She twerks and she plays the flute.Inside Lizzo’s WorldThe Grammy-winning singer is known for her fierce lyrics, fashion and personality.‘Feel-Good Music’: Lizzo says her music is as much about building yourself up as it is about accepting where you are.Why ‘Truth Hurts’ Matters: In 2020, The New York Times Magazine put her No. 1 hit on its list of songs that define the moment.Diary of a Song: Watch how Lizzo made “Juice,” a party song that packs all of her joy and charm into three danceable minutes.Her Beauty Rituals: Lizzo talked to us about her skin rehab, impossible standards and what she does first thing in the morning.“I don’t have to fit into the archetypes that have been created before like Tyra Banks or Puff Daddy,” Lizzo said. “They all did it their own way, and that’s what I’m doing.” Lizzo’s persona as a TV host is part demanding queen, part nurturing mentor. Several times throughout the show, she delivers imperious one-liners to the camera, holds for a few seconds and then bursts into laughter.Lizzo’s warmer and more supportive moments are tempered by her choreographer Tanisha Scott, who brings tough love and an exacting rigor to her rehearsals.Lizzo, left, and the choreographer Tanisha Scott in a scene from the series.James Clark/Amazon Prime Video“I’m able to speak to them from my own personal experience, to not give up and not also feel sorry for yourself in any sort of way,” Ms. Scott said in a Zoom interview. Ms. Scott started her career as an untrained dancer with a larger-than-average body and has emerged as a rare success in her industry. She said she had to work 10 times harder than other dancers to get where she is.“So I wasn’t going to be sweet and easy and ‘this is a bunch of roses’ and ‘we all got this,’” she said. “No. You have to work for it.”Ms. Scott credits Lizzo with opening the door for the greater commercial viability of larger dancers. “She’s making this not a trend or a novelty, she’s making this a business,” she said.One of the unique elements of Lizzo’s show is how seriously it takes both the talents and struggles of its aspiring “Big Grrrls.” Every episode features athletic feats performed by larger-than-average bodies, including particularly jaw-dropping acrobatics by Jayla Sullivan, one of the contestants. But the show doesn’t shy away from the dancers’ injuries, insecurities and occasional food issues.Tonally, the show lives somewhere between body positivity — a concept that has fully penetrated certain corners of marketing — and body neutrality, a newer idea that encourages people to accept and respect their bodies. The entertainment and dance industries are also in a moment of transition in their attitudes toward larger bodies.“There’s a movement of plus-sized women coming to the forefront as leading roles, as stars,” said Nneka Onuorah, who directed the show and appears in an episode. “This show is just the tip of the iceberg on that.”Lizzo said she has seen the change “on a commercial level, where bigger girls are being welcomed in casting rooms.” “I’ll even hear things about, ‘Oh, we need a Lizzo type,’ which is really inspiring,” she said.Still, Lizzo said that there are still vastly fewer casting opportunities for large dancers. “I’ve seen big girls being cast in music videos almost as a joke, not as being taken seriously,” she said. “So I think it hasn’t infiltrated the actual dance industry.”Jessica Judd, who runs an organization in the Bay Area called Big Moves that focuses on making dance accessible to people of all sizes, agrees. Her group worked closely with choreographers in the mainstream dance world for years until they grew disillusioned by a pattern of fat-phobic comments and empty words around body diversity.“They absolutely know what to say — they absolutely know they probably shouldn’t say out loud that they only want a size 4 or below,” Ms. Judd said, “but then you look at who gets cast.”Jayla Sullivan, left, with fellow dancer Kiara Mooring.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesJasmine Loren Morrison.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesShe recalled comments people made about plus-size dancers being “brave” for getting onstage (“that’s not the compliment you think it is,” she said) and the sense that mainstream producers or choreographers were working with them to check a diversity box, then going back to their uniform casts.“I do not want to be a perpetual prop for the mainstream dance world trying to work out their issues around fatness and bodies,” Ms. Judd said.To Ms. Judd, Lizzo’s show is a major victory for representation, but does not necessarily portend anything for the broader dance world, where she has seen plenty of lip service paid to body positivity but little substantial change.“At the end of the day,” she said, “not a lot of presenters, directors, producers and choreographers are necessarily invested in having fat people involved in their organization.”Lizzo agrees that there is a long way to go for big dancers to be taken seriously and treated well in the dance industry. In the meantime, she is focused on her own work.“I just want people to know that more than anything this is an incredible television show,” she said, rattling off a list of the crew members who she worked with.“I’m just fat,” she added. “And I’m just making a show about what I need.” More