'I was on Supernanny 20 years ago - I would never let my kids do it now' (2024)

Two women who starred on hit reality series Supernanny nearly two decades ago have revealed the behind-the-scenes secrets which would stop them ever letting their children appear on the show now.

The British programme featuring professional nanny Jo Frost first hit UK screens in 2004, and showed parents struggling with their ‘naughty’ children’s behaviour, begging for Supernanny’s help.

The popularity of the Channel 4 show eventually spread to spin-offs including an American version, while nostalgic clips continue to crop up across TikTok and Instagram, finding a new generation of fans.

But recalling their own experiences filming Supernanny, two sisters have shared that they’d never repeat it again.

Gabriella and Erin, the younger sisters of The Cooke Family, whose episode aired in 2005, appeared on the show when their parents asked for Jo’s help with their eldest daughter Meghann.

Over the years, the show gave us some truly iconic tantrums, and a few of the most notorious came from Meghann who would hit her younger sisters, scream at her parents, and even lash out at Jo.

In one scene, her mum Denise was left in tears as Jo explained how her eldest daughter using her like a ‘punchbag’ was unacceptable, while another (that has now gone viral on TikTok) saw Meghann repeat to Jo what exactly was ‘unacceptable’ as the nanny attempted to berate her.

And while at the end of the episode, and in a follow-up where Jo revisited the family to focus on the younger two daughters, it looked like she’d done her job perfectly and transformed the children’s behaviour, it’s now been revealed that the truth wasn’t at all what it seemed.

In fact, as well as clarifying when some clips were actually filmed, Gabriella and Erin have revealed they’d never let their children go on the programme today.

At the time of filming. Gabriella was six, Erin was four, and Meghann was nine.

Now, 25-year-old Gabriella and 23-year-old Erin have looked back on their time on the show, both abruptly telling Metro.co.uk ‘No’ when asked if they’d ever do it again with their own children in the future.

‘No way. I think it would be very different now,’ interior designer Gabriella told us.

‘I think early 2000s TV shows, if you look into them they are a bit problematic,’ professional Irish dancer Erin added.

From a production perspective, the sisters recalled how alarming it would now be to have young children bombarded with cameras in every room in the house, including their bedrooms and the bathroom.

When asked about what she remembered from being on the show, Gabriella said: ‘It was quite prominent, it was such a big thing. They were here for five weeks, so we had camera crews coming every day.

‘I don’t know the entire time they were here because we had a camera in every room of the house, which to be honest probably wouldn’t be allowed now, because we had one in our bedroom, they were filming us when we were in the bathroom as well!’

At one point, Meghann was so infuriated with filming she almost broke one of the cameras in her bedroom.

Gabriella explained that Meghann was climbing onto a table in her room to put a sock over the camera and turn it off, saying: ‘She was climbing up on this tiny Barbie desk, obviously not strong enough for a ten-year-old child, and she was trying to put the sock over [the camera] and she slipped off and my dad came in and she said “I only trod on it a little bit.” She’d fallen down off it! It was so funny.’

Gabriella went on to say that aside from the constant filming, in her opinion, many of the children part of the series weren’t actually naughty, and the show was actually exposing some vulnerable children who may have had underlying neuro-diagnoses and needed professional help, that would have reacted badly in any situation to having strangers in their house and a change of routine.

She would however allow her future children to watch the episode, joking: ‘I probably would show it to my children, saying this is how you don’t behave.’

At the time, they had no idea how big Supernanny would become, and were too young to understand what it was all about.

‘To be honest, as a whole experience, I wouldn’t have ever thought of it as oh, we’re being filmed for naughty children show,’ Gabriella said, as Erin recalled being ‘friends with the producers’ and not thinking of them as production crew.

They said: ‘We had a good relationship with them, they would plait our hair, do our face paint, play with us.’

‘It’s more that we were having fun and playing and that they were filming it, to us… maybe not to Meghann,’ Erin added.

Meghann, now 28, lives a life away from the spotlight, and works in a school. She’s also mum to a 6-year-old son, and remains incredibly close with her mum and sisters.

While on the show, Meghann was made to look outrageously naughty, throwing tantrums, shouting at her parents, and hurting her younger sisters.

However, Erin and Gabriella have now insisted most of those scenes didn’t show the true atmosphere in their house.

‘The way it looks on the show, it looks like day in day out, Meghann was a psycho, that’s five weeks and in a 45-minute show, she probably kicked up not even once a week,’ Gabriella said.

She added: ‘I’m sure if any family had a camera in every room of their house for five weeks, you could make a Supernanny episode out of any family.’

And in fact, despite Supernanny Jo working her supposed magic on the children and transforming their behaviour across the one episode, the sisters insisted nothing changed once the expert left.

Gabriella revealed: ‘The way they did it, some of the end clips where we’re like a happy family were filmed in the first week. So it’s not like, you’re naughty all this time then suddenly you’re really good. What because you’ve been put in a room for nine minutes?’

‘It’s just production,’ Erin added.

It wasn’t just Meghann who didn’t see the producers in the same way as Gabriella and Erin, as they recalled how one told their mum: ‘Don’t hate me when this has aired.’

‘Mum never really blamed producers at the end of the day, because that’s their job, their job is to produce good television,’ Erin added.

In the years that followed their Supernanny fame, the Cooke family suddenly changed.

In 2009, Gabriella, Erin, and Meghann’s mum Denise was diagnosed with breast cancer, and their dad left the family. In the 15 years since, they’ve not seen him and don’t have a relationship with him, and their parents are not together.

Denise sadly was diagnosed with cancer again in 2017, and now has an incurable form of the disease in her bones, preventing her from walking.

Before their mum’s health battles and their dad leaving, the sisters remember their ‘happy childhood’, despite arguments or Meghann’s behaviour.

Gabriella shared: ‘We went on such lovely holidays, we were a family, yeah we argued but that is one part of your whole life, it wasn’t everyday that Meghann was scratching people and smashing us into walls.

‘That was a rare thing, every so often she would lose her temper to that degree, and then as teenagers… it was probably a bit of a struggle when my dad first left, because my mum was having to adjust to three children, two dogs and still recovering. But then we’re very close as a family.’

Denise’s first diagnosis was several years after Supernanny was filmed, and while their family drastically changed when they were older, Gabriella and Erin don’t remember their lives being at all different after filming ended.

‘I never really remember the after-period, I remember [the crew] leaving and we were really upset, because you see them all the time,’ Erin shared.

A few years later though, Jo returned. This time, the focus was on Erin and Gabriella, who, a few years older, were made to look as though they’d picked up Meghann’s bad habits, which the pair strongly disagree with.

Erin said: ‘Mum used to say Meghann was a handful but the two of us were really good kids.’

While it was Gabriella and Erin that Supernanny Jo focused on in the second episode, the first time around, the producers had originally seen potential in Meghann, despite the fact she was well-behaved at home.

The family had been encouraged to apply by a cousin, but Gabriella recalled: ‘My mum actually said that when they came, Meghann didn’t actually kick off, but I think they saw the potential… she has a strong personality.’

The first time around, they have vivid memories of Jo arriving, but very few recollections of the shorter second episode that aired.

‘I was way younger in the first one but things in the first one I remember, but the second one, I have no recollection of ever happening,’ Erin said.

Gabriella added: ‘Probably because it was a shorter period of filming. I can remember me and Meghann had planned to do loads of outfits and loads of outfit changes, and Jo was like, “another outfit?”’

Looking back at the first time they met Jo, Gabriella said: ‘I remember one thing really clearly. We were sat outside the house filming for her entrance, and her taxi came around four times to get the right shot. Us and our neighbours were all sat on the curb opposite watching them.’

‘She was nice as far as I can remember,’ they both agreed.

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