Olivia Plath is spilling all of the tea on her former in-laws, as well as her time on Welcome to Plathville.
Olivia— who is the ex-wife of Ethan Plath who starred on six seasons of the TLC show— has been very vocal over the last few months regarding how allegedly hateful and crooked the Plaths are behind-the-scenes of the show, as well as the network giving them a platform to do so. On Friday, she posted a video to Instagram detailing some disturbing things she claims Ethan said and did (which include allegedly making a hitlist of people he wanted to shoot that included several of the show’s crew members.)
During that same video, Olivia also spilled details about what she says are illegal actions taken by the network, including how Discovery (which is the parent company of TLC) allowed Olivia’s mother-in-law Kim Plath to negotiate a show contract for her, despite the fact that she was over 18 and not one of Kim’s children. Olivia revealed that she was unpaid for the first season of the show and says she was basically conned by Kim into signing on to the show to begin with!
“So, this network knew this,” Olivia said. “They took advantage of me, and they did not pay me for that season even though I was not a minor, and I was not her child and she should have never been able to negotiate for me and negotiate me out of being paid.”
Olivia acknowledged that she gets a lot of hate for seemingly being a willing participant in the show for years before speaking out.
“People have asked me, ‘Why did you stay in that [show] contract for years then if you knew this?’ First of all, this is a huge corporation that loves to threaten and make people feel like they have no options and they did that to me for years,” Olivia said. “Second of all, people are saying, ‘Well you signed the contract and you chose to be on the show’ and that’s actually not the full story.”
Olivia went on to claim that Kim manipulated her and Ethan into signing onto the show.
“My ex-mother-in-law negotiated [the show contract] behind my back and asked them to come shoot my wedding as a pilot, and I found out two weeks beforehand and was told, ‘Sorry it’s already happening and I’m getting the check for it’ by her,” Olivia claimed, adding that when the offer for the show first came through, she and Ethan refused to appear on it.
“At that time, [Kim] was not allowing us to see [Ethan’s] younger siblings and that really hurt my ex,” she said. “He grew up with no friends, and the only people he knew were his siblings and being cut-off from them because he married me was really hard on him, and I felt really guilty. So, when she said,’ if you will agree to do this show— just one season— I will let you see his siblings.’ We talked about it, we caved and said OK…”
Olivia stated that Kim wouldn’t let her take the show contract home to read it, and was insistent that Olivia signed it immediately. Olivia stated that she eventually did sign, partly because she was young and taught to listen to authority figures as part of their fundamental religion.
“I signed it thinking ‘but I can get out of this’ because I was raised under a rock and I didn’t know s**t about any of this,” she said, before taking aim at TLC for allowing its young cast to be taken advantage of.
“I firmly believe if you make a show capitalizing off of how people are naive, and grew up under a rock and hidden from the world, then you should bend over backwards as a network to provide them legal counsel and make sure they’re not taken advantage of, because you’re making a show about how easy it is to take advantage of them, right?” Olivia said.
Later in the video, Olivia revealed that Kim had negotiated the show contract so that Olivia was the only non-paid cast member.
“Everyone else got paid, because the check went to [Kim]. She got the lump sum and then she got to pay the kids out of what she got,” Olivia said. “I was the only person not included as a paid cast member. I was an ‘extra’ even though my wedding was the pilot for the show, and I was in every single episode and a main focus of that first season. And, the network said if Ethan and I said no [to being on the show], they wouldn’t have the show, which is why she was desperate for us to say yes.”
In the comment section of the post, Olivia revealed that she was paid for Season 2 and the seasons following it only because she got herself a lawyer after Season 1 to renegotiate her contract.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Discovery/TLC has been accused of letting one adult from a family negotiate a show contract and (lack of) pay for their adult children. In 2018, Jill Duggar Dillard and her husband Derick Dillard revealed that they were not compensated for their involvement in the Duggar’s show Counting On, nor its predecessor, 19 Kids and Counting. Derick stated that his father-in-law, Jim Bob Duggar, kept the profits from the family’s show and did not sharing them with his adult children and their spouses – a claim the Dillards further elaborated on in their 2024 tell-all book Counting the Cost.
Neither TLC nor the Plaths have commented on any of Olivia’s recent claims as of press time.
The new season of ‘Welcome to Plathville’ premieres July 22 on TLC.
You can watch Olivia full video below.
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(Photos: TLC; Instagram)
12 Responses
Discovery screwed my family over as well. They used a separate filming company to film the Moonshiners show where my daughter’s father “ Tickle” was getting paid but no child support was being taken out of his checks at all. So , he was bringing in reality show money but paying NOTHING to his daughter who was living with me at the time. She moved in with him thinking she would have this fantastic life. They knew he was an alcoholic and were complicit in his behavior.
This bitch needs to join a women’s march or some other group of professional victims.
Sounds like you know a thing or two about being a professional victim.
Better yet they sound like an abuser. Ethan is that you?
Moriah?
She most likely pulled a Jim Boob by having one chque for to the “family businessman Kim was supposed to divide it, Kody Brown also does this…. again,this is all stuff very public before Olivia ever filmed.. imo,she clearly didn’t care at the time,but now has regrets
Kim is a straight up whore, so no need to wonder why her daughter, ya’ll know which one, is following in her footsteps. the one that just got married is weird as all get go. Olivia is the only one I liked.
Why do you have to call other women whores all the time? Every comment you make about other women you don’t like includes the word “whore.” Do you know how problematic you are? There are legitimate reasons to hate these people and you just go “Whore!!” You are a nasty, nasty woman. You’re that neighbor that gossips about everyone and doesn’t have any deep, lasting relationships with other females that isn’t surface level because you can’t be trusted not to run your mouth. You are NOT a girls girl. Gross. I had mother like you. Heads up, your funeral will have seats available.
Oh my gosh you are so right, such a terrible word to call someone just because you don’t agree with them are like them. I mean how old are you??? 🤔 JS grow up lady you’re not in middle school
Gross. Go away!