Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar slammed Amazon Prime Video’s new docuseries about their family and religion as “sad” and “sensationalized.”
“The recent ‘documentary’ that talks about our family is sad because in it we see the media and those with ill intentions hurting people we love,” Jim Bob, 57, and Michelle, 56, wrote about “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets” in a statement on the family’s website Thursday.
The pair said their family is normal, but they experienced “joys and heartbreaks” in a “very public format.”
“This ‘documentary’ paints so much and so many in a derogatory and sensationalized way because sadly that’s the direction of entertainment these days,” the statement read.
Jim Bob and Michelle concluded with an apparent diss of their daughter Jill Duggar and her husband, Derick Dillard, who appeared in the doc and spoke out against their family and church.
“We have always believed that the best chance to repair damaged relationships, or to reconcile differences, is through love in a private setting,” the parents of 19 said in the apparent snub.
“We love every member of our family and will continue to do all we can to have a good relationship with each one.”
“19 Kids and Counting” premiered on TLC in 2008 and was abruptly canceled in 2015 after news broke that eldest child Josh had allegedly molested five young girls, including four of his sisters, when he was a teenager in the early 2000s.
What started as a wholesome series about Jim Bob, Michelle and their extremely large family took a turn when controversies surrounding Josh and the extremist nature of their religion began to unravel their once-shining image.
A former friend of the family alleged in the doc that Jim Bob and Michelle had covered up the molestation scandal for years, even pressuring their daughters Jill and Jessa — two of Josh’s victims — to defend their brother in an interview with Megyn Kelly.
Jim Holt, one of the family’s former friends, said his daughter Kaeleigh was slated to marry Josh when they learned of the molestation.
Holt asked Jim Bob and Michelle if they were planning to tell him of the abuse, which they knew about for years, to which the matriarch replied:
“Well, we weren’t going to have them tell you guys at all. We were going to have Josh confess to Kaeleigh once they were married.”
Josh, now 35, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2022 for receiving and possessing child pornography after files were uncovered on a computer he left at his now-defunct used car dealership.
In addition to Jill, her husband and their cousin, Amy Duggar, the docuseries also features former IBLP members who spoke of the trauma they endured growing up in the controversial religion.
Jinger Duggar, the sixth oldest in the family who is not in the doc, spoke out against the “cult-like” Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), a nondenominational Christian organization in which they were raised, back in January.
“[IBLP founder Bill Gothard’s] teachings in a nutshell are based on fear and superstition and leave you in a place where you feel like, ‘I don’t know what God expects of me,’” Jinger, now 29, said at the time. “The fear kept me crippled with anxiety. I was terrified of the outside world.”
Gothard, 88, has been accused of sexually harassing dozens of women over the years. He has denied the claims.
Amid Josh’s scandal, TLC canceled the family’s show, but created spin-off series “Counting On” starring some of the Duggar girls.
Jill, now 32, said she and her siblings weren’t paid for their roles on the original show or the spin-off for years, as the money was controlled by her father.
Prime Video’s “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets” starts streaming Friday.
