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IN ER ENT

The public flogging
of the Franklin family.

By Julie Edgar

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t sucks when your TV debut
gets pre-empted by a politi-
cal debate. Lots more people
would have seen your formerly
fat self — prone to raiding the
fridge at 2 a.m. — panting
through a workout and tearing
up as your ego is whittled away, all under
the stern eye of a skinny, spandexed host.
Todd Franklin is still irked that few
people in Metro Detroit got a glimpse of
his family getting the tough-love treat-
ment of uber-personal trainer Jillian
Michaels on an early episode (air date:
July 13, 2010) of Losing It with Jillian,
a spin-off of The Biggest Loser that was
canceled after just one season on NBC.
He truly feels he could have touched more

20 August 2011 I

RED THREAD

lives.
"They didn't do anything to promote
us," Todd says.
Yet, had the Franklins of Huntington
Woods not succumbed to Michaels and
a huge NBC crew, they might have been
stuck in their non-televised reality, a
place that kept wife Amy simmering with
resentment and daughters Lily, 10, and
Chloe, 81/a , terrified their dad would keel
over from a heart attack and their mom
would die from a smoking habit.
Without the pressure of cameras and
the persistence of Michaels — who, in
case you're wondering, has a Jewish fa-
ther, identifies as a Jew and lives in L.A.,
but strangely had her first-ever Shabbat
dinner at the Franklins — Todd, 41, might

1.x.•
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not have adopted a far healthier diet and
habits that include gym workouts a few
times a week. The daughters would have
continued to subsist on processed foods,
and Amy, 40, might not have pursued a
passion to become a yoga teacher.
The Franklins' journey from ordinary
to high-def began with a casting call for
Michaels' new show at a Macomb County
Gardner-White furniture store. Todd,
then a whopping 310 pounds, struck a
chord with the casting team. The Frank-
lins met with producers. They were flown
to L.A. for a week and put up in a Beverly
Hills hotel, with a spending allowance.
Having logged their food intake and pho-
tographed the contents of their kitchen
cabinets, they were put through a battery

of physiological and psychological tests.
But they still weren't sure they wanted to
do the show, the couple says.
"We thought it might be too intrusive,
and we were worried about the light we'd
be portrayed in," says Amy. But NBC
didn't take the hint. "After meeting us
in L.A., they were still emailing us and
sending us video cameras to make video
diaries."
Then, in April of last year, a crew
showed up to shoot footage of Amy do-
ing her daily errands. One afternoon in
May, after a camera crew followed Todd
and the children to a nearby park, they
returned home to find Michaels sitting on
their couch, a thicket of cameras trained
on the family. Within a half-hour, they

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