TLC forced me to fake my relationship!

The curtain rises on 19 Kids and Counting.

The reality show aired for seven seasons on TLC and was canceled after Josh Duggar admitted to molesting his siblings when he was a young teenager.

(This was before Josh Duggar was convicted of child pornography. The guy serious problems.)

But back to Jinger:

In his latest book, People Pleaser: freeing yourself from the burden of imaginary expectationsthe former cast member delves into the specific way she was forced to fake various moments in her life for the camera.

“The first days, the first meals together, the small talk, the process of getting to know someone can feel a little awkward,” she writes.

“But I would say there's probably no adequate word to describe how difficult it is to go through this whole process with cameras pointed at your faces and someone interrupting you when the conversation is just starting to unfold.”

Jinger later referred to filming with husband Jeremy Vuolo as a “date night on demand,” recalling how she was “asked to repeat some of the same conversations and gestures” they did in a previous take.

To be clear, Duggar explains, these moments happened organically — but what did viewers see in each episode? GOOD…

“A few months later, I found myself walking down the stairs of my house towards Jeremy, anticipating that we might be about to make our relationship official,” she wrote, adding how a producer stepped in to ruin this special revelation.

“I took each flight of stairs carefully, smiling at Jer with butterflies in my stomach, excited to hear what he would say to me when I got to the bottom of the stairs.

“Cut! Jinger, please go back up the stairs! You have to start again to succeed. ALL RIGHT.”

Jinger and Jeremy have been married for eight years and seem legitimately happy.

They are even expecting their third child.

But the journey to get to this place was clearly unusual, full of outside input and spontaneous exchanges that had to be recreated for television.

“He asked me to be his girlfriend, the sweetest moment,” she adds. “And then we had to start all over again because there was a mic problem. And then we had to do a few more takes. And then we had to make cuts.

Jinger made her small screen debut with her family in a 2004 documentary about their daily lives.

Four years later, 19 Kids and Counting premiered on TLC and aired until its cancellation in 2015.

A spin-off titled Counting On, focusing on Jinger and her sisters Jill and Jessa Duggar, debuted later that year and was canceled in 2021.

According to Duggar, meeting Jeremy in 2015 was like a breath of fresh air, “but it was also a little terrifying,” she says in the book, adding:

“He was so beautiful and so fun and so… alive.” Because I was so steeped in my (religious) way of seeing things, I thought it was a potential step toward sin to even acknowledge that I was attracted to Jeremy, that I felt my heart being pulled in his direction. …

“And once we fell in love, the vibrancy of Jeremy’s vision, faith and dedication began to open up to me a wider world of mercy and grace.”