As she put it on Instagram, “Wild how some folks still lie like it’s 1985 before texts and email were a thing.”
E! News has reached out to reps for Michaels and Harper, as well as Netflix and NBC, for comment and while they haven’t responded, other past contestants have been happy to speak on their experiences with Michaels.
For season six victor Michelle Aguilar, the Keeping It Real podcaster “wasn’t just my trainer,” she wrote in an Aug. 19 Instagram post. “She was my motivator, my guide and sometimes the tough love I didn’t know I needed. Jillian has this way of pushing you past what you think is possible and somehow making you believe in yourself at the same time.”
To Aguilar, “She is, without a doubt, the very best!”
And Aguilar isn’t the only past winner to feel she gained far more than she lost. Five years after the series wrapped its 18th and final season we’re doing a check in with all the former champs.