Alex Cooper has basically built an influencer-and-reality-star Hunger Games, and half the cast are walking in with a bonkers amount of drama before entering the show.
Her new YouTube series Unwell Winter Games throws 16 “polarising” reality stars and influencers into a luxury chalet in Park City, Utah to compete in “mental and physical challenges over four days”, with her company hyping up “fierce competition, unexpected alliances and the kind of unfiltered drama that has defined Unwell across its programming slate”.
Yes, it may sound like just another reality TV show (lowkey it’s giving The Disney Channel Games), but it’s the diabolical casting that really caught my eye.
There are the headline names: Anna Delvey (the alias of Anna Sorokin, who served nearly four years in prison for fraud), WWE star Saraya Bevis, Love Island USA’s Huda Mustafa, Bachelor faves Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt, Siesta Key’s Juliette Porter and influencer OGs Alissa Violet and Hannah Stocking.
Unwell’s own cast bios lean into the bit, tagging Dylan Kevitch as “Shut Up King”, Cameron Jerrard as “Pro Shit Talker”, Louis Russell from Too Hot To Handle as “Reality TV Repeat Offender” and Huda as “Love Island Mamacita”, because subtlety clearly did not make it to the chalet.
The real tension, though, is around the people whose controversies are not in the distant past. Dakota Mortensen, from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, is joining the cast while he’s wrapped up in an active domestic violence case involving his ex Taylor Frankie Paul, with allegations coming from both sides. ABC already hit pause on The Bachelorette season that was set to star Paul after video appeared to show her attacking Mortensen, so having him pop up on another shiny reality format feels like an incredibly risky move.
Huda Mustafa is walking in with current legal drama too. Louis Russell’s ex, Nicole Olivera, has filed for a restraining order against Huda, alleging late-night threats and an attempted break-in while she, Russell and their one‑year‑old son were inside her LA apartment, with a judge granting a temporary order while the case moves towards a hearing. Russell himself is also in the Unwell Winter Games line-up, which means a fresh family court dispute is effectively sitting just off-camera while the show sells itself as a fun, high-stakes influencer Olympics.
For Unwell, this is being pitched as a big swing into self-produced “premium content” and an evolution of Cooper’s empire.
For viewers, it may land closer to a stress test of how much real-world harm and ongoing legal mess people are willing to compartmentalise in the name of reality TV.
The show comes out on YouTube on April 6, so at least we don’t have to wait long to see how this mess unfolds.
Lead image: Instagram / Getty
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