Made in Chelsea's Hugo Taylor: The new seasons of the show are 'completely fabricated'
Claiming to be a "reality series following the lives, loves and awks of SW3's bright young things," the show documents the goings-on of a group of rich twenty-somethings living in posh West London areas like Belgravia, the Kings Road and Knightsbridge. Just how much "reality" happens inside "Made in Chelsea" is open to debate.
So Business Insider caught up with Hugo Taylor, a previous cast member who came up with the idea for the programme, to ask him what really goes on behind the scenes.
"I was working in L.A. and was just being a bum with the guys who were on 'The Hills' and a couple of others who knew them," Taylor said. "They all worked in party promotion and were on the most popular TV program in America. I thought, there's no reason why this wouldn't work in the UK."
When Taylor returned to London, he shot a pilot with MTV who passed on the concept.
"About a year and a half later, Channel 4 called me and said they were doing a show set in Chelsea, and they had two of the original cast which I'd had in my pilot," Taylor said.
So in 2011, he began filming the show with Channel 4, a "fly-on-the-wall drama" following the love lives, arguments and parties of his friends who were (and still are) constantly visiting London's best restaurants, bars, shops and club openings.
"We thought it was going to be a real hit, and it was," he said. "I think the main reason the show got so much traction in the first few seasons was the original cast - we all knew each other, and had known each other for 10 years at that point. We had a long history."
The show, now in its 12th series, even won a BAFTA in 2013 in the Reality and Structured Factual Category, and has filmed entire series abroad in glamorous vacation destinations.
However, in 2012, Taylor dropped out of the show.
"It just stopped being attractive to be nearing the later part of your 20s talking about makeups and breakups," he said.
In 2013 he and close friend Charlie Morris launched their Taylor Morris sunglasses label.
"When we started the business, every time a newspaper wrote about us it was always about "'Made in Chelsea''s Hugo Taylor and best friend Charlie Morris,' and we needed to change that," Taylor said.
"It was never an ambition to be a reality star. I wanted to be a businessman."
He added that while the first "three or four seasons" were "really real," this has started to change on the show.
"I live with the girl on the show who I was with six years ago," Taylor said, referring to Millie Mackintosh. "It had to be real to me otherwise it wasn't worth doing, but there were definitely moments where we were like, 'We don't have an argument to have today, can we find something to jam it up? Of course we can.' It gave us all a chance to develop our awful acting skills."
He said he stopped watching the show when his best friend, Spencer Matthews, also made the decision to leave.
"Now it's completely fabricated," he said. "The guys are completely characterless fops, it's ridiculous."
"The people are there to make cash off of it," he added. "I definitely got into it to make money, but we had to fight to get there, rather than like what they do now."
However, he said that the original cast are all still great friends, and that being involved was "fun while it lasted."
"You live and die by the sword," he said. "We all got together the other day. Ollie Proudlock works in fashion now, Caggie is living out in LA, Millie and I are living together and Spencer is my best friend and we see each other every day."