While it’s always a good idea to live your life refusing to believe anything celebrities say about themselves—especially actors, who make their money by lying really well on camera—reality TV about famous people tries to trick us into making this mistake by presenting its subjects through handheld camera footage and presumably unscripted conversations.
Take, for instance, MTV Cribs, the oft-rebooted series that promises viewers a look into the glamorous world of celebrity homes—and mostly just had actors and musicians pretending to own stuff that they actually didn’t own.
A new video from Weird History runs down the many lies packed into 2000s era Cribs, detailing a bunch of the homes, cars, and other stuff its subjects pretended belonged to them.
A few highlights:
- Ja Rule rented a mansion for his appearance and its owner later sued him for making a huge mess and allowing a film crew into a place he didn’t actually own.
- Bow Wow, who would in later years keep pretending to be richer than he is, claimed he owned a bunch of nice cars that were actually branded with the name of a Miami luxury car rental service.
- Robbie Williams borrowed Jane Seymour’s house for his segment.
- 50 Cent rented the fancy cars he showed off during his appearance, even though he was already very rich when he appeared on the show.
- JoJo, the 13-year-old early ‘00s pop star, was actually living in hotels when her segment was shot and pretended her uncle’s house was her own.
Within all of this, the video notes, one man did give us a proper, honest look into his life: Redman. For his segment—the best in Cribs’ run—Redman showed off a messy Staten Island house where he irons clothes on the floor, plays Dreamcast on a TV placed right next to his bed (alongside, hilariously, a bottle of lotion), and withdraws cash from a bank that consists of a shoebox on top of his fridge. The Weird History clip says MTV tried to convince him to shoot in a nicer house than his own, but that he turned them down.
Watch both of the above videos and let them serve as a reminder: Celebrities are not to be trusted, unless of course, they’re Redman.
[via Digg]
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