Hollywood Stars Who Launched Their Careers On Reality TV Shows

Once a reality star, always a reality star. Or at least that has certainly been the perception of those folks who've flipped over tables on a "Real Housewives" show, hatched backstabbing schemes on "Survivor" or "Big Brother," or gotten into boozy altercations on "Jersey Shore."

Yet there have been cases when reality TV has propelled someone to an unexpected career in showbiz. Who would have thought, while watching Elizabeth Hasselbeck (née Filarski) attempt to outwit, outplay, and outlast her fellow "Survivor" castaways, that a few years later she'd be butting heads with Rosie O'Donnell "The View."

That said, there have also been those who've gone on to Hollywood fame and fortune despite their early experiences on reality shows — which, once they've established their stardom, really hope that everyone forgets. In fact, scratch the surface and it will become clear that those with reality shows in their past include several top actors (including a two-time Oscar winner), a few pop stars, and even an "SNL" cast member turned comedy superstar. To discover more, read on for a look at some Hollywood stars who launched their careers on reality TV shows.

Cardi B rocketed to stardom with "Bodak Yellow," a quasi-autobiographical 2017 rap hit based on her past as an exotic dancer. That, however, wasn't her only vocation. Her résumé also includes a couple of seasons on VH1's "Love & Hip-Hop," stirring up drama on the series' 6th and 7th seasons between 2015 and 2017.

Of course, the version of Cardi B seen by the show's viewers wasn't quite reality, given that she already had a massive social media following and could draw big crowds to club appearances. "Like, I have seven hundred thousand bajillion followers," she told The Fader in a February 2016 interview. "But they didn't care about that. They just wanted to make me look as the stripper, a struggling stripper."

In fact, she admitted that she was initially hesitant to appear on the show because she was focusing on music at the time, and worried that being painted by the reality TV brush could sabotage her musical aspirations. At the same time, she was also reluctant to turn down an offer that was on the table while pursuing a music career that may or may not bear fruit. "I want to be taken like a serious artist, but it's like, what happen if the music don't work, you know what I'm saying?" she said in an interview with Hollywood Unlocked. Luckily, it all worked out, with Cardi racking up more than 17 million equivalent album sales since then.

When unearthing the untold truth of Kristen Wiig, it can be revealed that she landed her first major TV role long before her Apple TV hit "Palm Royale," her entry into movie stardom with hit comedy "Bridesmaids," and her seven seasons of hilarity on "Saturday Night Live." That role was on 2003's "The Joe Schmo Show." 

"Joe Schmo" was a social experiment that both parodied and deconstructed reality shows. The premise surrounded Matt Kennedy Gould, an ordinary guy who believed he was competing on a "Big Brother"-style series called "Lap of Luxury." What he didn't know was that the other contestants were all actors who were actually there to mess with him, à la "Jury Duty."

Wiig played marriage counselor Patricia Lane, also known as Dr. Pat the Quack due to her bizarre and outlandish therapy methods. Dr. Pat's most memorable moment, however, was completely unplanned. While wearing a padded sumo wrestler costume for a challenge, Wiig took a real-life tumble that sent her to an actual hospital when Gould inadvertently tackled her harder than he'd meant to. "I was in a sumo wrestling suit and I got knocked down, and my head hit the ground really hard," Wiig recalled in a 2019 interview for Comedy Central. "So when I got hit, I said, 'Oh my stars."

While looking back at the stunning transformation of "Landman" star Jon Hamm, has starred in such acclaimed TV series as "Landman," "Your Friends and Neighbors," and his breakout role in "Mad Men," he was once an aspiring young actor struggling to pay his rent. There were times when he found creatively unorthodox methods to round up a few bucks, once of which was a cringe-inducing appearance on a 1996 episode of a dating show called "The Big Date," one of three bachelors attempting (sight unseen) to woo a woman via witty repartee.

Sporting a floppy haircut, Hamm is asked to describe how he'll go about winning her heart on their first date if he's selected. "Well, I'd start off with some fabulous food, little fabulous conversation, end it with a fabulous foot massage for an evening of total fabulosity," Hamm declared, proving he wasn't always as suave as Don Draper from "Mad Men." 

Back in 2018, while promoting his film "Tag," Hamm explained his reality show past during an appearance on "Entertainment Tonight." "My ex-girlfriend at the time was the casting director of a show called 'The Big Date,' and she was like, 'You get paid $250 if you want to come out here and make an idiot out of yourself,'" he said. "I was like, 'That sounds like a good idea.'"

In the mid-2000s, MTV aired a show called "Boiling Points," with hidden cameras capturing real people faced with bizarre circumstances, not realizing the oddballs they were dealing with were actors tormenting them for viewers' amusement. In a 2005 episode, the unsuspecting dupe was a restaurant customer who became outraged when served a plate of food that looked like it had been retrieved from a dumpster. The dupe in question was a young woman named Stefani Germanotta, who would become famous a few years later as Lady Gaga.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2025, Gaga was asked about going ballistic on "Boiling Points" 20 years earlier. "That was not acting!" she admitted. "That was just, I mean, so long ago. So embarrassing ... I was so excited to be on 'Boiling Points,' because I was gonna be on TV, and I was trying to make my way as an artist."

At the time, she felt that appearing on TV — even on an MTV prank show — was still an opportunity for national television exposure. "I look back on that and I just [think] how it was so sweet," she said. "Just imagine me screaming in the bathroom or in my dorm room with excitement — and then, you know, 15 years later, being like, 'I can't believe this is resurfacing.' So, careful what you wish for!" 

Long before Kesha made her beautiful transformation into a pop star, she made her first television appearance in an episode of "The Simple Life," the Fox reality show that placed Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in unfamiliar, fish-out-of-water situations. One of these was a visit to the childhood home of Kesha Sebert, where Hilton and Richie attempted to set her mom up on a date. "They chose us because we're the most eccentric family in all of Nashville," Kesha once explained, via Yahoo! Entertainment. 

When she later moved from Nashville to L.A. to launch her music career, she reconnected with Hilton, singing backup on one of her songs. Despite that, she and Hilton never really clicked. "No honey, we're not friends," she said in a 2010 interview with Us Weekly. "I don't have anything against her. I think she's really nice, but we're just very different. I'm just not that kind of party girl." She did, however, take a shine to Richie, but admitted that her admiration never resulted in a friendship. "I really liked her," Kesha said, "but it's just kind of like, what does an apple and a penguin talk about?" She also remembered being invited to a party at Hilton's house, which took a disastrous turn when she partied a little too hard and wound up in what she mistakenly believed to be a bathroom. "I barfed in her closet," Kesha admitted.

In 2021, Kesha was chatting with Entertainment Tonight, promoting her podcast, when she was shown footage from her "Simple Life" appearance. "Thank you for embarrassing the [bleep] out of me," she said with a laugh.

Maddie Ziegler sprang to fame as the muse of singer/songwriter Sia, appearing in several of her music videos. In fact, Sia was so impressed with Ziegler that when she made her directorial debut with the 2021 movie "Music," Ziegler was given a starring role. Beyond that, Ziegler has also had roles in "West Side Story," "My Old A**," and other films.

Yet she's never really escaped her origins as a kid dancer on reality TV hit "Dance Moms." Just 8 years old when she first appeared on the show, Ziegler's run on "Dance Moms" spanned from 2011 until 2016. As she admitted to Teen Vogue in 2024, spending all those years in front of the camera left the show's fans with preconceived perceptions about her that were not totally accurate. "I'm still that same goofy, loving, hard-working girl, but I'm also changing and growing," she explained. "It's scary when people are like, 'But you're not who you were when you were younger.' And I have to explain, 'Yeah, because that's just not realistic.'"

Looking back on her six seasons of "Dance Moms," the main thing Ziegler remembers is how much stress she was under. "I have dissociated so much from that time," she told Cosmopolitan in 2022. "I'll see fans post scenes from 'Dance Moms' and I'm like, 'I literally don't even remember that happening.'" As she admitted in a 2024 interview with Polyester, "It's just not healthy for a kid to be in that environment."

During the course of Emma Stone's still-ongoing transformational journey, she's racked up some major accolades, taking home Oscars for her performances in "La La Land" and "Poor Things." Way before that, though, she was a talented teenager with big dreams who decided to compete on a reality show in which the winners would be the cast in a reboot of classic 1970s sitcom "The Partridge Family." The premise of the original involved a rock band consisting of a mother and her kids, and "In Search of the Partridge Family" arrived on television screens in 2004. Stone was auditioning for the role of Laurie Partridge, played in the original by Susan Dey. 

During a 2025 "Radio Andy" appearance, Stone shared her memories of the experience, revealing she and the other contestants were sequestered in a hotel near Universal Studios in Los Angeles. "It really gave me the understanding of, like, how it must feel to be on 'The Bachelor' or 'The Bachelorette," she recalled, explaining she entered the competition not really worrying about the outcome but eventually became consumed with winning. "And by five weeks, six weeks in, you go insane! You have, like Stockholm syndrome," she said. "And I was, like, really crazy by the end of it. It really does feel like you're trapped in a bubble."

Ultimately, Stone won the role, portraying Lori Partridge in a mockumentary-style pilot. However, "The New Partridge Family" did not prove to be her ticket to stardom when it flopped hard after a single airing on VH1. "And then it was apparently so disastrous that the writers took their names off of it," she revealed. 

Star of TV series "Orange Is the New Black" and barrier-breaking transgender activist, Laverne Cox has a little reality TV in her past. "In 2008 I did a reality show called 'I Want to Work for Diddy.' It was my phase of saying yes to everything," she recalled during an appearance on "The Tonight Show." When asked by host Jimmy Fallon if she actually did want to work for Diddy, her withering response — "No, girl!" — caused him to convulse with laughter. "It was an opportunity to be on television," she said, pointing out that there really wasn't much trans representation on reality TV competition shows at that point.

Cox paid tribute to the music mogul in a 2018 Instagram post thanking him for providing her first big break on TV — although it's fair to say that post has not aged well, given all the allegations and details revealed about Diddy that landed him behind bars. That said, Cox has been adamant that her only experiences with him took place during the show. "Let's be clear — I don't have a relationship with Diddy," she said while appearing on "The Jason Lee Show" in 2023, explaining that her real goal wasn't to be hired as his personal assistant, but to network with casting directors. "And they loved me," she recalled. "And I think part of the reason they loved me is because I really didn't want to work for Diddy."

As any "Dancing With the Stars" fans worth their salt already know, Julianne Hough joined the show as a pro dancer back in 2007, with her brother, Derek Hough, following later that same year. The show wound up catapulting both siblings to stardom.

For Julianne, that resulted in an acting career that includes the lead role in a 2011 remake of "Footloose," appearing in the 2012 film version of rock musical "Rock of Ages," and starring in a live TV production of "Grease" in 2016. More recently, she was featured in the "Frankenstein"-inspired film "The Bride!" and took the starring role in a TV movie, "One Hit Wendy." 

Throughout that burgeoning acting career, "Dancing With the Stars" has remained part of the picture for her. That was clear when she returned to the show in 2014 — not as a dancer, but as one of the show's judges. Then, in 2023 she took on a new role with the show by becoming co-host alongside "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" alum Alphonso Ribeiro. "To see that it's been around not only just, like, survived 20 years, but is now thriving more than it ever has, it just goes to show that, like, when you stay in authenticity and integrity of what this show is — which is craftsmanship, just rooting for people to grow and succeed, and go on the journey of transformation, and keep that family experience — that's timeless," Hough told People in 2026.

It was her skill as a dancer that brought Heather Morris to Fox competition series "So You Think You Can Dance," appearing on the show back in 2006. She didn't win, but later went on tour with Beyoncé as a backup dancer. 

After that, while attempting to transition from dancing to acting, she got in touch with the choreographer of a new musical series called "Glee" ahead of its 2009 premiere. In an amazing coincidence, the show was planning a routine based on Beyoncé's "Single Ladies," and Morris was brought in to teach the dance to some of the show's actors. In another burst of good luck, series creator Ryan Murphy was on set watching her, and grew impressed with her presence. "A week later I got a call from my agent, 'You're officially booked on 'Glee for Brittany,'" Morris told Vulture of how she came to be cast as cheerleader Brittany S. Pierce. She was bumped up to a series regular the following year, and Brittany wound up becoming a fan favorite character.

Since "Glee" ended its run in 2015, Morris has enjoyed an eclectic Hollywood career and became a mom (she welcomed her second child in 2020). Not only has she acted in a variety of TV and movie projects, she's also competed on "Dancing With the Stars," but was ultimately eliminated.

In recent years, Teyana Taylor has experienced massive success as a singer and songwriter, and also as an actor. She's shared the screen with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in "The Rip," with Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn in "One Battle After Another," and with Kim Kardashian in TV series "All's Fair."

The Oscar nominee's first TV appearance was on a reality show, when her 16th birthday party was featured on MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" back in 2007. Despite the lavish bash, Taylor has insisted that she wasn't like the spoiled rich kids who were often featured on the show. "I want to clear this up," she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2025. "I've seen people saying I'm a ... what's it called? A nee-po baby? Nepo baby! I've seen all types of stuff, like I had this rich Chinese dad or a producer dad. I was living on 144th and Seventh Avenue, and my single mom was working her a** off in corporate America to provide for me. She wanted me to have a nice party!"

That wasn't her only experience on reality TV. Taylor has also served as a judge on "America's Best Dance Crew," appeared on talent competition "Rhythm and Flow," and performed as Firefly on "The Masked Singer."