The Big Picture
- Jill Duggar opens up about the strain that filming put on her marriage to Derek Dillard in an interview with PEOPLE, saying it caused frustration early on.
- The ultra-Christian beliefs Jill was raised with made it difficult for her to say no to her father’s wishes, even if it meant filming for 20 hours a week.
- Jill and Derek fought about the show often, with her father stepping in to drive a wedge between them, ultimately leading to their decision to distance themselves from the show.
When you hear the name Duggar, you probably instantly think of a lot of children, and for good reason. 19 Kids and Counting and the subsequent series Counting On focused on the Duggar family, led by James Robert “Jim Bob” Duggar and Michelle Duggar started with 17 children and continued to count until the show was canceled in 2015. Then Counting On took over and the continued lens on the Duggar family led to many upsets within the family themselves, including the reason for the cancelation in the first place: Josh Duggar.
One of the Duggars currently in the news is Jill Duggar, who is on tour for her new book Counting the Cost. She recently spoke with PEOPLE about the strain that the show put on her marriage to Derick Dillard and how the series on her family was almost what cost her her relationship. “It caused a lot of frustration in our marriage,” she said. “Especially early on, where he would feel a certain way about filming something. 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. But we have to.'”
When Duggar and Dillard married in 2014, the two wanted to have their own lives away from the show. Duggar said “It began to feel like a burden.” But due to their ultra-Christian religion, she was taught to not say no to her father and the 20 hours a week it took to film the series weighed on their marriage.
When Reality Gets Hard
Duggar went on to talk about how she and Dillard fought over the show.”It definitely got between us,” she said. “No matter your age, you are to obey your parents wishes and you even have to ask them for their blessing for any major moment in your life. That could be buying a house, moving to a different state, where to go to school. We were dealing with this a lot when we were trying to make decisions for our family , and we were really wrestling back and forth with it.”
But that’s not the extent of the battle. According to Duggar and Dillard, whenever they would fight about the show, her father would step in to drive a wedge between them. “Whenever we were at odds with what her dad thought we should be doing with filming, he would say things that would be very damaging,” Dillard said. “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.”
Her parents have a different experience, telling the magazine in their own statement: “We love all of our children very much. As with any family, few things are more painful than conflicts or problems among those you love… We do not believe the best way to resolve conflicts, facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation, or to communicate through difficulties is through the media or in a public forum so we will not comment.”
The reason behind Duggar finally doing this is to give that space to her siblings. She told PEOPLE that “I know there will be nay-sayers, but I feel called to do this,” Jill says of writing the book. “We really wanted to tell our story for my siblings, because some of them are going to face similar challenges, if they haven’t already, to what I’ve faced.”
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
