Agree to disagree with Jessica Williams and Michelle Obama on reality TV being sociology
I don't like watching sports, but basketball is still more entertaining than watching Mean Girls on TV
June 24, 2026: I wrote this post before I saw the video of the Obamas talking with PEOPLE about the Obama Presidential Center. Former President Barack H. Obama discussing his basketball injury adds way more context about why the FLOTUS Michelle Obama seems so frustrated with basketball lovers. This adds a more fair perspective to her telling Sterling K. Brown he had a “dumbass injury.” 💡👌🏾I still don’t think reality TV is worth studying and absolutely believe 95% of it thrives on negativity, but I now have some missing puzzle pieces.
ORIGINAL POST
Jealousy doesn't come natural to me, but I'm mildly jealous of former FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s older brother, Craig Robinson. On just about every episode of the “IMO” podcast, she gushes over a reality show he’s never seen. She's particularly excited when one of the guests has watched the same reality show she does, and her brother’s eyes look like they are about to roll to the back of his head from annoyance.
I love that he’s too booked and busy to even know what the shows are. I haven’t watched even half as much reality TV as the First Lady, so I bonded with Craig Robinson on this topic. I laughed about it initially, then shrugged at Michelle Obama and WNBA player Angel Reese comparing reality show notes. Even in front of a WNBA player, the First Lady was still insisting on how much better reality TV is than sports. After seeing how much Angel Reese badgered Complex journalist Speedy about his dating life, I wasn't surprised to see the professional basketball player be just as excited to talk about these shows too.
But I stopped laughing when I watched the most recent episode of the “IMO” podcast with former “Daily Show” correspondent and actress Jessica Williams. Halfway through “IMO,” the podcast guest went off the rails about how “important” the “Real Housewives” series is, along with other reality shows.
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According to Jessica Williams, reality stars are actors and “really amazing things happen in reality TV. And I think it's really important, and it shows us something about ourselves as a society. And it should be watched. It should be studied. It should be analyzed.”
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I kept waiting for the camera to pan out to see her fingers because she had to be smoking some of the best weed anyone could ever sell. The irony is that right before her reality show compliments, she’d just made dismissive comments about actors being too full of themselves for crying on cue and how acting is a “goofy job where, if you do it right, you get an insane amount of money for a tiny amount of work, and I’m calling it out.”
So which one is it? Is it “really amazing” for reality stars but a “goofy job” for trained actors who take the movie and TV industry seriously? It can’t be both.
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And if that wasn’t preposterous enough, the former First Lady backed Jessica Williams up by saying, “What you say about acting, I say all the time about sports. Societally, we have decided what type of entertainment is relevant or good or worthwhile, right? And it’s like, reality TV is sociology, it’s empathy, it’s analyzing behavior. I mean, it’s like the Emmys of ‘Girl, let’s break down that conversation,’ which is very female.”
“Totally, totally, totally,” Jessica Williams chimed in.
Once again, I looked for one of these ladies to pass the weed back and forth.
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“But what do we spend money on? What gets the awards?” Michelle Obama continued. “Somebody throwing a ball. It’s like ‘OK, you’re good at … you can jump high. But that’s all you do. This is what you’ve done, so you should be good at it and you’re tall. Genetics. You fit the bill. You’re a gymnast because you’re 4’11. I tried. That’s another thing tall people can’t do: a backflip.”
Side note: Chris Brown is 6’1, and he can do backflips.
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And “Twilight” fans still remember when 5’10 Taylor Lautner did a backflip before hugging (his now-ex-girlfriend) Taylor Swift.
I shook my head, thinking of how many tall people I personally know (and a couple I’ve dated) who are absolutely awful at basketball. And I’m in the short woman crew where absolutely no one I know is a gymnast. Height doesn’t equate to athleticism. Talent and strict training do that.
“I do think it’s very gendered,” Michelle Obama continued. “I make this argument only because so many people make the opposite argument when it’s something they don’t understand.”
[Insert Jessica Williams saying “totally” like a parrot a couple more times.]
“That’s the only reason I make the argument, mainly to men, to say, ‘Wait, wait, wait a minute,’” Michelle Obama said. “What you like is only, you know, credible because men have decided it is.”
And while Jessica Williams shouted, “Right,” my own eyes nearly fell out of my head and onto the floor.
I do not play basketball.
I am not a gymnast.
I don’t like watching basketball.
I don’t like watching gymnastics.
But I do know a bunch of die-hard sports fans who are women and athletes.
How did Michelle Obama and Jessica Williams convince me to defend sports?
I’m all aboard the “I am woman, hear me roar” train, but this podcast conversation with Jessica Williams and Michelle Obama is when I have to ask the conductor to let me off at the next stop. I don’t want to be on this train anymore. It’s getting cuckoo.
Trying to defend Mean Girls with a camera in their faces by saying it’s “sociology” and should be “studied” versus people who put blood, sweat and tears into a sport that takes a major toll on their entire physical body is insane. I don’t have to love sports to respect the work put into the sports industry as much as the theater or film industries. I also find it a little hypocritical that Michelle Obama called Sterling K. Brown’s Achilles tendon tear a “dumbass injury” for a man who is nearing his 50s but cheered on 40-year-old Allyson Felix for considering being in the Olympics again. (See comment above on June 24, 2026. I now have more context.)
I respect both women (and watched “Entergalactic” a gazillion times), but their views on acting and sports don’t make sense. I suspect that if Michelle Obama was actually good at basketball (instead of complaining about “all the pushing”) and Jessica Williams had won more of the awards she was rightfully nominated for, both would be doing a 180-degree turn on the significance of these two industries.
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I repeat, I don’t enjoy watching or playing sports (except swimming). I do, however, enjoy seeing “black boy joy” when grown men and women are floating on clouds after their favorite team wins. I’m gleeful when I see a movie good enough that I want to turn around and buy another theater ticket to see it again. I never see this level of joy while watching the “Real Housewives” series — or any reality TV at all. It’s all snark, all the time.
And I’m not about to act like there’s a science to being mean, petty and catty while a bunch of cameras are mounted around somebody’s home. The women on the majority of reality TV are about as mean-spirited and negative as UFC fighter Josh Hokit.