What Only TLC Fans Know About Return To Amish

When it comes to reality TV, few shows have captured our attention quite like "Return to Amish." The show is a spin-off of TLC's "Breaking Amish," which follows Amish and Mennonite community members who are experiencing the "real world" outside of their restrictive, religious communities for the first time. Unsurprisingly, experiencing a world filled with technology, social media, and varying religions can often prove more than a little overwhelming. As of 2024, the show has run for seven seasons, with fans hoping it will soon be greenlit for an eighth.

Although "Return to Amish" may be a reality show, a lot of the real lives of the cast members never make it to the screen. Plus, several cast members have alleged that certain elements of the show are actually not as real as they seem. In fact, there are a number of things about the show that only the biggest TLC fans know. So, without further ado, let's dive straight in.

Fans of "Return to Amish" will know Jeremiah Raber, one of its main cast members. Raber was adopted into an Amish community as a baby. Throughout the course of the show, he left the community behind to discover who his real parents were.

Raber was originally cast in "Breaking Amish" thanks to a connection he had with a producer. "I knew the one producer for about 13 years," Raber told Blastzone Online in 2015. "He asked if I'd want to do a show about the Amish and their lifestyle. Me, being the person I am, didn't hesitate to give him a yes. I did a one-hour interview, and TLC approved it."

Raber later appeared on "Return to Amish," and as he further told the magazine, he has a lot of good memories of his time on the show — especially because it meant he got to find a new mother figure in Mary Schmucker. "'Return to Amish' has a lot of good memories," Raber said. "My favorite memory was the connection I felt with Mary, who took me in as her own son. That was the closest I've ever been to feeling like I belong in a family." According to Soap Dirt, Raber remains one of the only people from the show with whom Schmucker is still in contact.

Rosanna Miller joined "Return to Amish" in 2021. In Season 6, she and other members of the Amish community feared the "outside" world due to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, she eventually traveled to Florida to explore it.

While in Florida, Rosanna was shown meeting and befriending local women; however, many fans are convinced that these women were either actors or members of the public who were paid to pose as her new friends. "I doubt if Rosanna's new English friends would be hanging out with her if they weren't on TV," wrote one fan on Primetimer. "I hope I'm wrong. The guy and the girl who were talking about how Rosanna left her whole world behind were telling the truth, and I hope they're sincere." Another fan agreed, writing, "Something about the friends scenes smells 'producer setup' if you ask me." Sounds like some TLC fans believed that this storyline was too good to be true.

Fans may remember Chapel Peace Schmucker from "Return to Amish's" early seasons. She stopped appearing on the show after the third season. As it turns out, Schmucker stopped appearing on the TLC show because of a scandal involving drug possession. According to TMZ, Schmucker and 26 other people were arrested for drug possession. Apparently, "$90K of meth, $8,400 of heroin and more than $27K in cash" were seized by authorities. Schmucker was arrested for "possession with intent to distribute and for having paraphernalia."

Schmucker had previously been arrested on several other occasions for driving an unregistered vehicle and another count of drug possession. She was also found guilty of breaking her probation.

According to In Touch Weekly, Schmucker went on to work in multiple jobs in the hospitality industry, including a position at Denny's. She has also allegedly given up smoking since her time on the show.

Even reality stars worry about how they'll be portrayed on TV. For Kate Stoltz, who appeared in the first three seasons of the show and made a few guest appearances in the following seasons. One of the main concerns that Stoltz had with the show was her fear that the producers would edit her scenes to make her look a certain way.

"One of the hardest things about being in front of the cameras is that I never know how things are going to be edited," she told HuffPost. "It definitely keeps me on my toes. I never know if my joke will be cut off in the middle of a sentence. Every single word that I say is recorded and on film and it can always be used out of context." It's definitely a reminder that we should take everything on the show with a grain of salt! After all, the editing process can clearly have a major impact on how things play out.

Reality shows always use real people in real situations, right? Well, maybe not quite. In fact, some big TLC fans believe that "Return to Amish" may have actually hired people to pose as people from the Amish community in the show.

"Who thinks that the cast members could be hired actors?" one fan wrote on Reddit, adding, "For myself I predominantly believe that they are real people in (mostly) unscripted situations." A few other fans chimed in with what they saw as proof that the show did sometimes use actors. In one swimming scene, one fan noted, one girl "had clear tan marks from wearing a bikini top before" despite the fact that the scene was about trying on swimwear for the first time. 

Another fan guessed that some of the cast members might actually be ex-Amish people who agreed to return to an Amish community for the show. "[C]learly they have been out of the life for so long that they are technically acting," one wrote. While we'll probably never know which cast members are "real" and which are pretending for the sake of the show, it's certainly fascinating to see what the fans have spotted while watching it

Kate Stoltz eventually left the TLC reality show to pursue her own career as a model and fashion entrepreneur. "I decided to fully immerse myself into my work in design, and finishing my college degree at FIT," she wrote on Facebook. "Getting a good education is very important to me."

Stoltz later opened up about how she felt about being on the show. As it turns out, she didn't exactly have many regrets about leaving it all behind. "It's so important for me to build a strong career because I'm not going back to Pennsylvania, ever," she told Us Weekly (via Inquisitr). "I think the best thing I ever did was completely cut ties with all of my friends and everything back home, not because they weren't good for me but because if I would have stayed in touch with them, I would still be hanging onto that life that I had, and it would keep me from pursuing what I want to do up here."

Like most reality TV, "Return to Amish" isn't exactly 100% real. In fact, several cast members have opened up about just how much of the show is pre-scripted by producers.

When In Touch Weekly asked Kate Stoltz about whether or not the show was scripted, she replied, "I really can't [say]. I'm sorry." Well, that's a far cry from an outright no, isn't it?

Former cast member Daniel Miller has also opened up about how certain scenes were staged for the show. He claimed that the show's producers had actually edited a scene between him and Johnny Detweiler to look as though it was a conversation between other people. As he put it in an Instagram Story, "I was wearing a microphone and the producers and editors made it appear for whatever they pleased. But don't forget this is a TV show. And good luck with finding a show that's 100% real!" (via Soap Dirt).

In 2018, Sabrina Burkholder overdosed on heroin in an incident that was never shown on "Return to Amish." Burkholder revealed that the accidental overdose was nearly fatal.

As she wrote on Facebook, the incident occurred just before her 32nd birthday while she and her boyfriend Jethro Nolt were out with their friend Sean. Even though Burkholder was almost one year sober at the time, she relapsed. "I was in a mood," she wrote (via People). "We all were."

They ended up using heroin. "I remember feeling very weird and that was my last [conscious] thought," she wrote. "Half an hour later I woke up surrounded by paramedics." As the reality star went on to explain, she then had memories of being physically dead — it turns out, her heart had briefly stopped. According to Burkholder, she briefly went to heaven where she saw her grandmother and mother.

Even though reality TV is meant to be about real people, for its cast members, it's still a job — so, on "Return to Amish," the stars are actually paid for their time filming. When Sabrina Burkholder was asked by Starcasm in 2016 about her source of income, she replied, "I get paid to do the show. I also work a regular job between seasons!"

So, how much do the stars of "Return to Amish" make for their appearances on the TLC show? We don't know exactly, but we can guess. Danielle Jbali, who appeared on "90 Day Fiancé," another TLC reality show, told "The Domenick Nati Show" that she was paid $10,000 for appearing in every episode of the season. As Moneywise noted, that comes to about $1,000 for each episode. So, we can guess that the stars of "Return to Amish" probably make about the same amount.

Rosanna Miller first appeared in "Return to Amish" on Season 6 in 2021. Since then, she's had her first child, Clara Rose, with Johnny Detweiler. In a Q&A on Instagram Live, Miller revealed that she and Detweiler had decided not to raise the child within the Amish community and that she and Detweiler had left the community. She went on to say that she was no longer friends with anyone from the show, including Rebecca. "I don't know, she's a nice person, but I guess we just don't get along." she said.

It seems that motherhood is treating her well. "My baby is my lifesaver," Miller wrote on TikTok in 2023, alongside a video showing a slideshow of images with Clara. In another TikTok video of her and her daughter, she wrote simply, "Blessed." And in a third, she wrote, "Love my little family."

If you've seen "Return to Amish," you probably couldn't help but notice that Danny Byler, the ex-Amish cab driver and Maureen Byler's boyfriend, had some slightly bizarre looking teeth. According to Screen Rant, his strange teeth are actually the result of an accident. When Danny was young, he allegedly drank Drano, a toxic chemical, by accident. However, because his family was Amish, they rejected any modern surgery options — as Amish America noted, most Amish people don't go to the dentist. Instead, they simply remove teeth and eventually replace them with dentures.

Maureen seems to have no issues with Danny's teeth. In an episode of the show, she called him a "really handsome guy" (via Starcasm). Later, in 2021, she posted on Instagram, "This man brings so much happiness in my life. He is funny, loving and kind." The pair had a daughter in 2022, and as of 2024, they appear to still be going strong as a couple.

Sabrinda Burkholder has had a number of children since her first appearance on "Return to Amish." She had her first two children, Oakley and Arianna, with Harry Kreiser III. After breaking up with Kreiser, she began a relationship with Jethro Nolt.

In 2019, she spoke to In Touch Weekly while pregnant with her first child with Nolt. "Jethro's father is a preacher in the conservative Mennonite church, and so we've known each other for a long time," she said. At the time, the pregnancy was going well. "This pregnancy has been great to me. I feel really good other than occasional tiredness," she said, adding, "I'm excited to have a boy! God has redeemed me, and I am so grateful."

Burkholder had two more children with Nolt; however, the pair eventually broke up in 2023. Burkholder had her sixth child, Reno, just four months after the split.

Although Daniel Miller first appeared in "Return to Amish" as part of the community, it turns out, he had actually already left the community in 2017 when the show began. He allegedly returned to his old Amish community for the sake of the show and, at the producers' request, pretended he had never left. He then pretended to leave after the producers scripted a leaving scene. In other words, his entire arc that saw him leaving the community for what appeared to be the first time was allegedly staged for the show.

"[M]y story was reenacting on this season," Miller wrote on an Instagram Story, adding that in real life, leaving the community had been much more tumultuous than the show made it seem. "It came across a lot easier on TV [than] when I actually left back in April 2017," he wrote (via Soap Dirt).

Carmela Mendez first appeared on "Return to Amish" in Season 6 after she married Jeremiah Raber, a longtime cast member on the show. Although Raber came from an Amish community, Mendez didn't have the same upbringing. However, she didn't exactly have an ordinary childhood — in fact, she was raised in a cult that was allegedly based around American Christian minister William M. Branham, who spoke about the "end of times" (via In Touch Weekly).

As Mendez later explained in a YouTube video, her upbringing actually helped her to understand Raber's Amish roots. "When I would go out and stuff, people would try to do stuff to me," she said of the cult (via In Touch Weekly). "I felt like the first time somebody tried something with me, I felt like I was going to go to hell." In fact, Mendez recalled that once, she and a friend from the cult had actually been mistaken for Amish children while playing. "She laughed and she said we kind of have similar beliefs, then she started naming all the stuff that they do," she recalled. "They don't watch TV, they don't have radios, they don't use electricity. And I was thinking, 'Oh my god. People who have it worse than us? Wow.'"