'Wonka' Player Kayla Simone Calls Out Show for Negatively Portraying Women, Admits Edit 'Allowed for Great TV' | Just Jared

Kayla Simone is speaking out about the way she was portrayed on Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, a new reality competition series airing on Netflix.

The 34-year-old contestant competed alongside her father Bill on the show.

Wonka’s The Golden Ticket brought 12 Golden Ticket winners, and their partners, inside a massive recreation of Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, where they faced games, tests and temptations designed to challenge them physically, mentally and morally as they made their way through the factory. Only one contestant will ultimately win what the show calls a “lifetime supply of money.” The prize is $3 million, which will be paid out over a span of 30 years.

Kayla is calling out the show for negatively portraying women through the way it was edited.

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Kayla says she did not know the show was going to have a “social” element to it until they were thrown into the game, which affected the way she played. But, she doesn’t feel like the social parts were accurately portrayed.

“It’s very clear that there was a very narrow storyline that was crafted for each individual person that, for me personally, felt very one-dimensional and reductionist,” she said in a TikTok video, which you can watch below.

Another female contestant has also called out the way the show was edited.

@itskaylasimone

Sharing my initial take after watching The Golden Ticket. There was so much depth and nuance to some of the cast and the social dynamics. It would have been nice to see that in the edit. But overall, I'm happy to see it was at least entertaining. More to come ?

? original sound – itskaylasimone

Full transcript of Kayla Simone’s video

Throughout the filming process, I was really hoping to highlight, one, I wanted to show that women could be multifaceted. We can be strong, we can be intelligent, we can still be emotionally vulnerable, and maybe even a little bit of a mess.

Unfortunately, all of my commentary on that, or anything that showed that, did not make the final edit. And not just for me, but for the cast all around. I feel like there were multiple opportunities to showcase that across the board that just did not make the cut, which leads me to a broader conversation on how women are portrayed in media, specifically strategic women, outspoken women, assertive women, opinionated women.

It’s very clear that there was a very narrow storyline that was crafted for each individual person that, for me personally, felt very one-dimensional and reductionist.

It would have been very interesting to see more of the social dynamic taking place in the house and the way those conversations were being navigated across the board. The games were interesting, but what I was most excited about when we were moving into the house was realizing how much of a social game this was.

When we originally applied to the show, we thought it was just going to be a game portion of it, which was exciting in its own way because it’s fun to play physical and logical games. Unfortunately, most of the games were not that.

So when I realized how big the social component was, I thought, “Oh, this is gonna be super interesting to watch this pan out.” But none of that really made the edit either, so I feel like it left a lot of holes as to why certain things shook out the way they did.

Again, across the board, moments of strength women in the cast were either edited out completely or reduced to a very flat storyline. I was disappointed in the lack of strategy that was shown from the women in our confessionals. Again, this was just kind of missing completely, and when included, made no sense, speaking for myself on that one.

The last piece on this was vulnerability. So I have always had a very hard time being vulnerable, being raw, and being emotional. And I told myself going into this, “You know what? It’s okay to show your weak side. You don’t always have to have on this armor.”

And unfortunately, that was taken out of context as well, further perpetuating stereotypes that women are one-dimensional, weak, and emotional.

And the third thing was to be able to look myself in the mirror at the end of all of this and to know that I made the best decisions at the time with the information that I had. I promised myself I would navigate them based on my own set of principles instead of what other people may think about them, even though I knew it would probably look pretty crazy in the final edit.

I will speak to specifics later. I’m not gonna say anything right now because I want people to have a chance to actually watch the episodes. They just came out like two days ago.

But I will say that the edit allowed for great TV. At the end of the day, it did its job.

Meet the final 6 contestants heading into the finale episode, which drops on September 30.

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