After the smash-hit success of ABC’s Who Desires to Be a Millionaire the 12 months earlier than, Fox raised the ante on February 15, 2000, with a stay particular titled Who Desires to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?
Mike Darnell, Fox’s head of actuality programming on the time, instructed Leisure Weekly in 2024 that he considered the thought whereas attending a household wedding ceremony and feeling jealous of the ABC sport present’s success.
“I’m very aggressive, so it’s making me loopy. I’m actually considering to myself, ‘What else do individuals need? They need to be millionaires.’ And I’m watching the marriage, and I’m serious about the present, and I’m watching the marriage, and I’m like, ‘Who needs to marry a millionaire!’ After which I needed to one-up it, so I known as it Who Desires to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?”
Within the ensuing two-hour particular, 50 ladies competed to win the center of 1 Rick Rockwell, who was introduced as the rich bachelor of the title. Darva Conger, then a 35-year-old emergency room nurse, gained the competitors and married Rockwell on the spot whereas 23 million viewers watched from residence.
The particular dominated headlines on the time and appeared poised to launch a franchise. “We had been thrilled,” Darnell mentioned. “We had been going to shoot a [follow-up] ‘How are they doing?’ particular. That was deliberate and every part.”
However then got here revelations about Rockwell. As The New York Occasions reported after the particular, the person presupposed to be an actual property developer and a motivational speaker was really a comic recognized for stunts like telling jokes for 30 hours in a bid for a Guinness world report.
Fox/Courtesy: Everett Assortment
Plus, the New York Publish forged doubts that Rockwell was really a millionaire. A Fox rep instructed the Publish that Rockwell had $750,000 in liquid belongings and a complete internet price of $2 million, however the rep was unable to say whether or not producers checked his property possession or mortgage standing.
Worse but, a years-old restraining order towards Rockwell resurfaced throughout all of the hype. A former fiancée obtained the order in 1991, alleging that Rockwell had hit and threatened her, per CBS Information.
“I known as [executive producer Mike Fleiss], who occurred to be with Rick Rockwell driving again from no matter shoot that they had simply performed for the particular,” Darnell instructed EW. “I might hear Mike say one thing a few restraining order, and Rick mentioned, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll let you know about that later.’ And I knew we had been screwed.”
Rockwell denied the allegations within the restraining order, however Fox nonetheless canceled a rebroadcast of the particular. And in April of that 12 months, a decide annulled Rockwell and Conger’s marriage.
In the meantime, then-chairman Sandy Grushow had vowed to steer Fox away from “shockumentary” specials, telling reporters he’d fairly “fail with high quality than succeed with rubbish.”
“That’s my boss,” Darnell mentioned, recalling his emotions on the time. “It was a really, very darkish week.”
Because it seems, the Mikes weren’t “screwed”: Fleiss went on to create the Bachelor franchise at ABC, and Darnell labored alongside him as president of unscripted tv at Warner Bros. And Fox wasn’t performed with guilty-pleasure TV: Temptation Island premiered on the community lower than a 12 months later.
But it surely appears Rockwell and Conger didn’t escape the Multi-Millionaire snafu so simply. Rockwell, for his half, seems to have dropped out of the general public eye and left his comedy profession behind.
Conger, in the meantime, has popped up within the media at times to debate the hardships of her Multi-Millionaire expertise.
“It was enjoyable on the time,” Conger instructed Folks in 2010, reflecting on the 15 seconds of fame that led to a Playboy shoot and a bout on Fox’s actuality present Superstar Boxing. “I wasn’t working, and it was ridiculously straightforward cash for what appeared like little or no.”
On the time of that interview, Conger was a single mother residing in Northern California, the place she was working as a nurse and elevating a then-5-year-old son.
“Actuality tv is so widespread now,” she instructed the journal. “Persons are like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re the grandmother of actuality! You probably did that present a very long time in the past, didn’t you?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ However everybody round me is aware of me as a mother and an anesthetist.”
Fading into obscurity most likely got here as a aid to Conger, nevertheless. She defined on Oprah: The place Are They Now in 2014 that she was unprepared for the publicity that got here together with her massive second on actuality TV — and the damaging publicity particularly.
“If I had recognized that, I might by no means have went on the present,” she mentioned. “And I additionally didn’t notice how imply and the way nasty individuals could be, being known as a gold digger and a whore and ugly and all this stuff. … One of many hardest components of this complete episode was that I believed I’d get again to actual life and return to work and discover some solace there and get again to my regular lifestyle. Sadly, I misplaced my job.”
Conger mentioned she didn’t go on the present with a purpose of getting married and wished to get out of her and Rockwell’s union as quickly as potential. “I suppose I used to be … considering, ‘We don’t know one another. It is a tv present. What we did was actually loopy. We have to undo it.’ I did get the sense that perhaps he thought this was critical, in order quickly as I presumably might, I did inform him as gently and as kindly as I might, and he was upset.”
Of Rockwell, she mentioned, “We didn’t actually get alongside too effectively, and that’s unlucky. I don’t want him hurt … It was robust. I believe neither certainly one of us [was] at our greatest at that time.”
Neither, it might be argued, was the fact TV style.