Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper Gets Honest About His Relationship With Jillian Michaels Now originally appeared on Parade.
Fans of The Biggest Loser have long wondered where Bob Harper, 59, and fellow trainer Jillian Michaels’ relationship stands more than a decade after the more controversial 51-year-old coach left the show and five years after it ended — and now Harper is setting the record straight.
In Netflix’s new 2025 docuseries Fit For TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, Harper admitted that while he and Michaels seemed inseparable on-screen, their bond didn’t last once the cameras stopped rolling.
“We were really close on television,” he revealed, but he felt differently after experiencing a near-fatal heart attack in 2017. “After I had my heart attack, she’s the one person I never heard from,” he recalled. “That, to me, spoke volumes.”
The candid admission is part of the docuseries’ deep dive into the rise and fall of the once-massive NBC reality hit. After dominating primetime for more than a decade, The Biggest Loser went on hiatus following season 17 in 2016. It briefly returned on USA Network in 2020 with Harper at the helm and a new focus on holistic wellness over weight loss, but the reboot failed to find its footing and was placed on indefinite hold after that season.
Harper reflected on his early days with the franchise on Fit for TV, saying he had a feeling the series was destined for success before it even premiered. “I thought the show was going to be huge,” he recalled. But it also pushed him to be more ruthless in the gym.
“Always remember we were trying to make an entertaining show,” he said. “What’s more important for weight loss? We all know it’s diet, but that becomes boring television. You know what’s not boring television? To see us in a gym yelling, screaming [at contestants]. That’s inspiration, that’s good TV. And producers loved that s—t. They were like, ‘We want them to puke! We want the madness of it all!’”
These days, Harper is overhauling his reputation as a cutthroat trainer with a softer persona on shows like The Traitors, which he starred in for season 3. He also seemingly married longtime partner Anton Gutierrez in June 2019, and is the proud dog dad to three pups.
Fit For TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser is streaming now on Netflix.
Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper Gets Honest About His Relationship With Jillian Michaels Now first appeared on Parade on Aug 16, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 16, 2025, where it first appeared.
