The Biggest Loser staple Bob Harper has revealed that former co-star Jillian Michaels never reached out after he suffered a massive, near-fatal heart attack.
The pair worked together for years on the mega-hit weight-loss reality series after joining its debut 2004 season as part of the original trainers lineup. Harper, 59, remained with the show for its entire 17-season run, taking over as host in 2015, while Michaels, 51, appeared intermittently across 12 seasons.
In 2017, a year after the show ended, Harper, then 51, had a “widowmaker” heart attack that left him clinically dead on the floor of his gym for nine minutes, he told The Guardian in a new interview. Miraculously, a doctor, who was present, performed CPR on him, and he was rushed to the hospital.
Reflecting on the serious health scare caused by an undiagnosed genetic issue, Harper admitted it “f***ed me up.”
He recalled struggling mentally during his recovery after realizing he had gone from being a physically fit man in his fifties to “a person that couldn’t walk around a city block.”
He remembered many people from The Biggest Loser got in touch after hearing about the medical event — but not Michaels.
While he acknowledged that they “weren’t besties,” Harper noted: “But we were partners on a television show for a very long time.”
He said that her silence “spoke volumes to me,” adding, “I would not expect Jillian Michaels to do anything other than what she wants to do.”
The Independent has contacted Michaels’s representative for comment.
The Biggest Loser, which aired on NBC from 2004 to 2017 before returning for a 2020 reboot on USA Network, followed obese people as they attempted to lose weight as quickly as possible using only diet and exercise, with the help of celebrity trainers. The person who lost the most weight was awarded a $250,000 cash prize.
A new Netflix documentary, Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, featuring interviews with past contestants, trainers, and producers, is set to debut Friday, August 15.
The three-part feature will lift the curtain on behind-the-scenes moments and how the show came about.
“I had first heard about the making of The Biggest Loser, a show that you only have diet and exercise to work with, and I thought, ‘Oh, well, that’s interesting,’” Harper recalled in the documentary.
Despite the trainer’s association with the show and weight loss, he had “never worked with obese people.”
“I worked with very fit people who were trying to be a size zero or have a six-pack,” he said. “It was a huge wake-up call for me.”
Harper became well-known for aggressively yelling at contestants as they worked out.
“When it comes to The Biggest Loser, always remember we were trying to make an entertaining show that was on prime time network television,” Harper said. “What’s more important for weight loss? We all know it’s diet. But that becomes boring television.”
