Need another reminder that not everything on reality TV is real? 90 Day Fiancé star Andrew did his part to break the illusion when he took to Instagram to share the tea you wouldn’t see on TLC. After deciding he would rather skip the Season 8 tell-all if he couldn’t berate — oops, sorry, I mean confront — Amira directly, he took to Instagram to give his side of the story. Well, sort of.
In a highlight he saved to his account, he shared a slew of screenshots from his time with Amira. The pictures featured text messages, forum posts, and emails that seemingly exposed Amira as the deceitful one in their relationship and storyline. He also scored all of the slides to songs like “Prisoner’s Visitor” by Dispatch, “Liar Cheater Deceiver” by La Dro, “Prisoner of Love” by RuPaul, and “Detained” by Giant Sand. Picking up on a theme here? It’s not even the most interesting part.
As he continued, sharing receipts that IMO just aren’t that relevant (but you’re welcome to judge yourself by visiting his account), he did drop one interesting tidbit. Referencing a scene from Episode 4 of Season 8, he revealed that one of the airport scenes we saw of him in Mexico was actually shot on his home turf back in Roseville, California. While he did seem to actually film himself walking around that airport, the moment when he called airport security to see where Amira is was apparently totally fake.
Check out the whole scene for yourself
The clip shows B-roll from the airport, then cuts to footage Andrew seemingly captured himself of him walking around with a mask on. After cutting to a confessional, it shows the same footage of him in a mask as he appears to react to something shocking on his phone. And then the title card pops up: “After landing in Mexico, Andrew received a message from Amira’s father. Amira was detained in Mexico City.”
Between shots of Andrew making a phone call while wearing his mask, we get more self-shot footage of Andrew speaking to the camera. “I am absolutely devastated at the news I just received,” he says. “Amira’s parents told me that, um, it’s only that Amira is detained in Mexico City, and I have no idea where or who or how or what or — I, uh, don’t know what’s happening.” Cut back to the shot of Andrew in the mask.
Notice anything interesting in those two moments? In one, Andrew is standing maskless beside a plant while wearing a blue beaded bracelet. Behind him, you can just catch a glimpse of what seems to be an airport sign. In the other moment, Andrew wears a mask but no bracelet while he makes a phone call. If you look closely, it also seems like he’s wearing a slightly different black shirt. The buttons are the giveaway. But the biggest detail? The ceilings of the backgrounds are different in each shot, and it turns out there’s a good reason for that.
Apparently, that second scene — the one where Andrew is wearing a mask — was filmed at a mall near his home. “Oh, Andrew, but we saw you take the call,” he captioned a slide on his Instagram Story, seemingly quoting the naysayers as he posted a photo of the mall that the Westfield Galleria at Roseville shares on its website. “Hahaha, you have no idea what you saw!” he continued. “This is the ‘airport’ where the call was taken, a.k.a. Westfield Roseville.”
The ceilings at the mall totally match the ceiling seen in that shot, and if you look closely at one point you can even see the Westfield logo on a banner hanging in the background. It’s one of those things where, once you see it, you’ll never be able to unsee it… and now all I can think about is Andrew safely home in Roseville after his season finished filming and getting coaxed to fake a phone call to airport security months after the fact. “Uh, hello,” he said in the clip, presumably talking to nobody on the other end of the call. “This is security for the airport, right? Mexico City airport?”
It’s not news to me that reality TV shows often recreate the moments they don’t capture on camera, and we’ve certainly seen some interesting editing before on this show (remember last tell all when Larissa seemingly kickstarted a new catchphrase after one clip got thrown into the mix a few different times?), but this one is just too funny to me. Were other people at the mall? Did Andrew have a producer with him to help set up the shot, but then he started filming on his own for consistency’s sake? Did a location scout think of the mall and it’s interior design or did Andrew know immediately what would make a good airport stand in?
I’m going to need a full oral history on how this moment came together — but, at this point, I’m just not sure who’s the most reliable source of information.
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Images: TLC, Andrew Kenton/Instagram