One of TLC’s longest running hit shows is that of Sister Wives, a series that follows the polygamous Brown family, headed by patriarch Kody. In the reality TV show’s 19 seasons, much has happened within the family dynamic, including Kody bringing in a fourth (and much younger) wife named Robyn, the only partner to whom he remains married today.
Since the show premiered in 2010, many of the children have since grown up and started their own lives independent of the series. One of his daughters, Gwendolyn, recently reflected on how much filming the show had changed their lives.
Gwendolyn Said Sister Wives Lifted Them Out Of “Poverty”
The main drama on Season 19 of Sister Wives may show just how far the family has come: Kody and some of his exes faced a major land dispute, feuding over the property called Coyote Pass in Arizona, a large estate where they had once all lived together. In the final legal settlement, Kody and Robyn wound up with 50% of the land, while his exes, Mary and Janelle, each walked away with 25%. It wasn’t long before the family members sold the land to a third party, a sale worth over $1.5 million.
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Gwendolyn noted that, when the show first started, things could not have been more different for her and her family. That is, they came from much more modest means, and that filming the show afforded them a new kind of lifestyle. Gwendolyn, who was just eight when the show first began filming, elaborated on how being a part of the series signaled the first time that their family wasn’t “hungry” on a regular basis:
We just got thrown into fame and thrown into money. And I stopped wanting and needing things… Life is a lot easier for a kid that’s not going hungry. It was quite a blessing initially.
“I was super into it as a kid,” she added, explaining that having access to the things she couldn’t before struck her as a cool development. She even went on to joke that she and her siblings liked to vie for the attention of those operating the camera, thinking of them as their “new uncles” instead of members of the crew.
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The latest episode of Sister Wives continued to speak on Garrison’s tragic passing, with Kody and Janelle deciding to bury him in Wyoming.
Filming Came At The Cost Of Personal Privacy
That said, not everything was smooth sailing with filming, according to Gwendolyn. She also went on to say that there was a rough adjustment to having cameras around all the time, explaining that their new financial freedom also came at the cost of their privacy. She was candid in explaining what it could feel like at times:
I couldn’t have a hard day. There wasn’t a lot of privacy.
She brought up a particularly challenging moment when she’d had an argument with one of Kody’s other wives—while cameras weren’t allowed in her bedroom, she’d taken the argument into a common living space by accident, and realized too late that the moment had been captured on camera. “I was so embarrassed,” she recalled of the incident.
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Looking back years later, Gwendolyn has tried to make sense of her emotions during the early seasons of filming—and, it seems, tried to give her younger self grace for everything she was going through. “All that anger and all that publicity. And oftentimes, I even wanted to be angry on camera. I think there were a few times that I probably [was mad],” she shared. “Even if, as a kid, you want attention, you can look back at it as an adult and be like, ‘that poor kid.’ Also, poor me now,” she added.
These days, Gwendolyn has gone on to carve out her own life outside of the show. Longtime viewers of the series will recall that she opted to have a breast reduction back in 2022, and that she also went on to marry her partner, Beatriz Queiroz. She’s also been lauded for using her visibility to bring an increased awareness to the queer community over the years.
When it comes to her involvement with Sister Wives, she still has her own unique connection to the show. Though she is less active on social media than before, she has her own YouTube channel, which she uses to rewatch old episodes of the series and add her commentary about what was really going on, letting fans into the behind-the-scenes that only she would know.
