LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The executive producers behind the Duggar family documentary 'Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets' are looking forward to adding more to the four-part show. The Amazon Prime series is based on the lives of the scandalous Duggar family who gained popularity through the 2018 show '19 Kids and Counting' and its spin-off 'Counting On'. The show also explored "radical" religious culture where every father is turned into a cult leader.
The rigorous rules and their contentious past followed under the religious group called Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) were featured. The cult-like family who preached modesty, family values, and faith in God witnessed their downfall in 2010 after the Duggar patriarch Jim Bob and his wife Michelle's eldest son Josh admitted to abusing underage women which included four of his siblings. He was also sentenced in May 2022 for possessing child pornography, according to People.
'We could have spent multiple more episodes on the Duggars'
In the show, a few of the Duggar family members including Jim Bob Duggar's sister Deanna Jordan, Amy (Duggar) King and her husband Dillon King, and Jill (Duggar) Dillard and her husband Derick Dillard spoke out against IBLP and their cult-like family.
Talking to People, the show's producer Cori Shepherd said that "There's definitely enough for another solid, crazy episode that I think people would eat up. There is some stuff that we shot that I would love to have it see the light of the day."
Fellow executive producer Blye Faust added talked in support of Shepherd's statement and said, "I think we could have spent multiple more episodes on the Duggars, and also the larger story at play. There's always a conversation going on of should we do more. And I think we'll continue to have that conversation."
Executives says 'whole section about the Joshua Generation' was cut short
The executive producers explained that some of the research into this big project did not make it into the show's final cut. "There were things like the whole section about the Joshua Generation was really made a lot shorter. We could do an entire documentary on that, and I hope people will go and do a really deep dive into that because, to me, this is how this affects every American. In fact, [it] is affecting the world," Shepherd stated.
"It wasn't entirely [IBLP founder] Bill Gothard that created the Joshua Generation, but certainly, a lot of really key people were heavily influenced by him and his teachings. And so to me, that was just criminal that we had to leave that part out," she continued.
"Also, one of the more intense pieces for me was finding out how Gothard's teachings really went deep into not just communities but cities. Like municipal governments where, in certain cities, they printed quotes from his work on the checks of the city employees. That didn't make it into the doc," Shepherd added, according to People.
