With the upcoming release of Jill Duggar’s book, Counting The Cost, she and Derick Dillard are promoting the memoir left and right.
They have faced a lot of problems. Some are normal, and others stem from growing up in an abusive cult.
And then there are the very specific issues with filming your entire life on reality TV. Especially when it’s all going to line your father’s pockets.
Jill and Derick both spoke to People (seemingly late last month) in a new interview that went public on Wednesday, September 6.
“It caused a lot of frustration in our marriage,” Jill said of filming her family’s erstwhile reality series.
She detailed that this was the case “Especially early on.”
Jill recalled situations “where he would feel a certain way about filming something.”
She described: “I’d be like, ‘I hear you, I feel you, I also don’t want to do whatever it is they’re asking us to do either.'”
According to Jill, she would then tell husband Derick: “‘But we have to.'”
Counting The Cost will be on bookshelves on September 12. In the memoir, the couple express how they wanted to spend time on their marriage after tying the knot in 2014.
Instead of being able to focus upon their family, they continued filming for 20 hours a week.
“It began to feel like a burden,” Jill expresses in the book.
Of course, having objections is complex for Jill. She grew up in a toxic, abusive cult.
Among other things, they drilled into her head the notion that she must always honor and obey her parents. That obviously did a lot of lasting harm.
It also meant that Jill, as an adult, could have walked away from reality TV … but struggled to say “no” to her awful dad.
“It definitely got between us,” Jill reflected to People of how the show harmed her marriage to Derick.
“No matter your age,” she described the cult’s teachings, “you are to obey your parents’ wishes.” Yikes!
“And,” Jill continued, “you even have to ask them for their blessing for any major moment in your life.”
Jill explained: “That could be buying a house, moving to a different state, where to go to school.”
Thinking back, she added: “We were dealing with this a lot when we were trying to make decisions for our family.” That sounds miserable.
“And,” Jill explained, “we were really wrestling back and forth with it.”
When Jill noted that her father was actively trying to drive a wedge between her and her husband, Derick agreed.
“Whenever we were at odds with what her dad thought we should be doing with filming,” he described, “he would say things that would be very damaging.”
Derick detailed: “He would weaponize the relationship and say, ‘Is this you Jill, or is this you, Derek? Are you leading your wife astray and doing things that are not supportive of marriage?’ And I think that was a red flag.”
“I saw how deeply we were in an argument one time,” Jill commented. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, this is not okay.'”
She and Derick were arguing about the show. At that time, Jill sometimes felt like she had to pick sides — her husband or her father.
Over time, she and Derick also clashed with Jim Bob over their pay — or lack thereof — for Counting On. He apparently sold the idea to his adult children that promoting a sanitized version of their cult lifestyle on camera was a form of ministry.
“When I saw how it was affecting our marriage, I think that was another wake-up call for me,” Jill explained.
“It was like, okay, we need to either fight this battle together, or it’s going to rip us apart,” she recalled reasoning.
“So yeah,” Jill concluded. “We had to join forces at that point.”
Jill Duggar Says Dad Jim Bob Tried to Sabotage Her Marriage to Keep Her on Reality TV was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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