Jeremy and Audrey Roloff have finally launched their new podcast Behind the Scenes. The couple released four episodes covering everything from home renovation to faith, but Little People, Big World fans will certainly be most interested in the second episode, “Why We Left the Show.”
If you keep up the popular TLC reality show, you know that Jeremy and Audrey announced earlier this year that they will no longer be appearing. So it makes sense that one of their first podcasts would center around why they left.
Here are seven surprising things we learned from the episode:
The Roloffs were famous before the show.
Jeremy revealed that people have been interested in the Roloff family dynamic long before the show started in 2006 — they’d already made appearances on Good Morning America and the Oprah Show. He also said that he and his twin brother Zach were in newspapers when they born. “It was weird and interesting, you know? Like, ‘What do you mean tall and small people? How does that work?'”
The first seasons were completely different.
Little People, Big World essentially helped launched reality television, so the first few seasons have more of a documentary vibe to them, rather than structured storylines. So the family would be filmed for 10 hours a day, six days a week doing rather mundane things, like homework or playing video games. “The dynamic of the show changed for you guys [once reality TV boomed], because it was no longer in the budget for people to sit in your living room and film all day long,” Audrey said.
Jeremy and Audrey almost left the show five years ago.
“We almost didn’t film our wedding. We almost made the decision to stop then, five years ago,” Audrey revealed. Since then, Jeremy said he had been wrestling with the idea of leaving, especially considering how exhausting filming is. “There’s a lot of mental energy that people underestimate when it comes to filming and being on TV,” he said.
The hardest thing about filming became keeping up with family.
“It started out a story about our family. And one thing in reason years that has kind of been difficult for a lot of us in the family is, we’re one family as far as a name goes, but we’re five families now,” Jeremy said, while listing off his two brothers and his sister, all of whom are married or engaged. “It got kind of difficult navigating all the relationships and stuff.”
The real reason why they’re leaving has to do with their daughter — and faith.
Jeremy mentions multiple times that filming became very comfortable, and eventually didn’t feel like it was something he was being “called” to do. Plus, he and Audrey ultimately decided they didn’t want Ember to grow up on television.
The couple feels more free now that they aren’t on the show.
Not only do they have more time to focus on their blog, podcast, and book deals, they feel released from any unnecessary mental and physical obligations. “Since leaving, it has been one of the most freeing things,” Audrey said.
But we’ll still see them from time to time!
Just not as regulars. Jeremy repeated that he and his wife “quit the show, not the family.” Meaning, they aren’t going to skip events (like his nephew’s first birthday), just because the film crew is there.
The Behind the Scenes podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play.
