Jinger Duggar is opening up more about why she chose not to participate in the Prime Video documentary series Shiny Happy People. Both her sister Jill Duggar and her cousin Amy King participated in the series, which exposed the IBLP church and its teachings and how those teachings created the Duggar family and their reality TV success.
Shortly after the series’ release, Duggar gave some insight into why she didn’t want to participate, but she is now being more specific, and it seems that her reasoning came down to control.
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A lot of Jinger's reasoning for not participating came because of editing.
In a YouTube video with husband Jeremy Vuolo, Jinger shared her reasoning for not participating in the docuseries.
“Growing up on TV and just in the public eye in general, I know that once you speak on something, kind of like sit down [and] record something on someone else’s platform, then there’s little to no editing power,” she explained. “And that’s what I was a little unsure about.”
She wanted to be able to control the messaging she was sharing.
Although she did admit that most of the things discussed in the series were “truthful,” she made it clear that she really wanted to tell her story in “her own words.”
“I just didn’t want to speak to IBLP in that context,” she shared, explaining that her book, Becoming Free Indeed, was already in the process of being published. “I thought it would be best for me just to be able to tell my own story how I wanted and for those viewing it, they wouldn’t see it through a bad lens.”
Jinger does think the documentary exposed the negative things about IBLP well.
“Those teachings of Bill Gothard were awful and they were so deceptive because they were mixed in, there would be elements of truth from scripture and it would just take a twist, where it was very damaging,” Jinger continued in the video. “With something like this in a documentary, I was afraid that maybe things wouldn’t be handled as I want them to be and so that’s why I didn’t go on.”
She also expressed concern that there would be no “redeeming factor for what actually took place,” which kept her from participating.
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Her story has more to do with coming out on the other side of the IBLP.
Shortly after the release of Shiny Happy People in June, Jinger sat down with People and shared with them why a documentary series didn’t feel like the best fit. Again, she shared that having control over the narrative was important for her.
“So that's why I wrote Becoming Free Indeed, was to share more of my journey out of IBLP's teachings. I wanted to be able to share it in a way that was, like, God-honoring and hopefully sharing my story in a balanced way,” she shared.
She wanted people to be able to use her story as a guide.
“The reason I decided to write Becoming Free Indeed in a book form was because I thought, 'I want this to be my story in a book form because then whenever people are trying to work through this stuff, they can go back and highlight,' and [go], 'Oh, she was struggling with this too. This is how Jinger kind of walked through it,'” she added.
