Lake Shore contestants say producers encourage racism

Lake Shore producer Maryam Rahimi apologized last week for the reality show’s now infamous promo video, in which cast member Sibel Atlug declares “I hate everybody equally, especially Jewish people.” Rahimi told the National Post: “on one hand, we received a lot of attention, but on the other hand it was not necessarily the kind of attention that we wanted. For the record, we are not a racist show. If we offended anyone in any way, we apologize.” It’s clear that Rahimi set out to create a provocative show, but just how far are the show’s producers going to create controversy?

According to Roxanne Ramedani and Vonny Sweetland—who both were considered for the final eight cast spots on the show—producers bombarded contenders with questions to suss out how racist they were, including sending them questionnaires. Both claim they were asked if they dislike people of other nationalities and were pressured to make racist remarks. Ramedani says she was also asked about whether she would get into a fight with an Israeli.

They kept asking me, ‘Well, if you were on the show with an Israeli and they said something to you, would you get into a fight with them? Would you say anything to them?’ I said no because I’m not going to fight over something I just said that I don’t believe in.

Rahimi doesn’t deny sending candidates the questionnaire, but says it was created to “test if there’s a potential for the contestant to be hard or difficult to manage.” Yeah, with a cast that has already made racist, homophobic and sexist remarks in the promo video, Rahimi clearly did a bang-up job finding an easy-to-manage group.

• Lake Shore creators apologize for anti-Jewish trailer [National Post]