Hannah Gosselin opened up about the darker side of her family’s reality TV fame, revealing that Jon & Kate Plus Eight only worsened her parents’ Jon Gosselin and Kate Gosselin’s already strained marriage.
“[Filming] made my siblings and I closer to each other, even though it made my parents further from each other,” Hannah, 21, told Teen Vogue in an interview published on Wednesday, May 14.
Although the TLC personality looked back at the memories with her siblings fondly, she acknowledged, “It’s hard to go back and watch my parents argue.”
Hannah, along with her sextuplet siblings — Alexis, Aaden, Collin, Leah, and Joel — and older twin sisters, Cara and Mady, made their TV debut with their parents Jon, 48, and Kate, 50, in the TLC specials Surviving Sextuplets and Twins (2006) and One Year Later (2007). The popularity of these documentaries eventually sparked the launch of Jon & Kate Plus 8, which aired from April 2007 through July 2017.
The TLC alum reflected on growing up in front of the cameras, sharing that film crews were “always present,” something she didn’t think much of until she got older.
“You’re always surrounded,” she recounted. “The film crew was there 24/7.”
Kate Gosselin and Jon Gosselin
Jon and Kate divorced in 2009 after a decade of marriage, with Kate initially receiving full custody of all eight children. In 2016, the mom of eight sent Collin — who was “11 or 12” at the time — to a live-in facility due to alleged behavioral issues involving his siblings. Following two years in the institution, Collin, 21, went to live with Jon in 2018. That same year, Hannah also chose to move in with her father.
Years later, Collin opened up about the years he spent living with his mom during a July 2023 episode of Vice TV’s Dark Side of the 2000s.
“I know my mother was going through a lot of things. I mean, a divorce and plenty of different things that can’t be easy to go through,” Collin alleged to viewers. “And, you know, I want to think that she needed someone to take out her anger and her frustration on. And it was just kind of me, you know, I was in the way and I was there. So, she chose me.”
According to Hannah, Collin was often “separated” from the rest of his siblings.
“Like he would not get to come and play outside with us. He would eat dinner at different times than us,” she said in the interview alongside her brother. “I don’t think effort was made in the home to help him learn what behavior is acceptable, what behavior is not acceptable.”
That same month, Kate broke her silence on her son’s accusations in a lengthy statement on Instagram. “Unfortunately, I believe Collin remains a very troubled young man who continues to need a lot of help,” the North Carolina resident wrote. “His brothers and sisters and I have not been directly involved in his life due to his history of unpredictable behavior and violent tendencies towards us.”
