Profile of Evan Marriott on Famous Like Me

Joe Millionaire was an American reality television show broadcast on the Fox network in January 2003. It was broadcast in the UK that same year.

The basic plot is that a bachelor (Evan Marriott) has inherited millions of dollars and is searching for a potential bride. He takes a group of hopeful women on several dates at exotic and luxurious locations, or performing the type of work he does, eliminating women at the end of each episode until only one woman remains. The main gimmick of the show is that the entire "millionaire" premise is actually an elaborate lie. The women are not aware that this bachelor is in reality not a millionaire, but rather a humble, working class construction worker. At the end of the series, the secret is revealed to the last remaining woman after she has decided to stay with him anyway- the couple are surprised (and rewarded) with a real check for a million dollars.

The show thus had an experimental, moral overtone. Viewers could see how differently women treat a man they believe him to rich, and see if these attitudes change once they find out he is not rich — i.e. "does money matter"?

Series

The first season of the show went fairly predictably. Zora Andrich was the last woman to stay with Marriott, and the two were delighted by the million-dollar reward. However Andrich and Marriott were ultimately not attracted to each other, and did not see each other after the show was over. The million dollar check was real, though; the two of them split the money.

The show made a minor star out of Paul Hogan, a butler who advised the contestants. The runner-up, Sarah Kozer, also received some independent notability when the media reported during the course of the show that she had performed in bondage videos; Kozer also delivered a blow job to Marriott in the woods (during this, the subtitles "slurp, gulp, slurp" accompanied panned shots of the wooded area.) Kozer subsequently posed nude in the June, 2003 issue of Playboy.

Joe Millionaire was filmed primarily at the Château de la Bourdaisière in the countryside of the Commune of Montlouis-sur-Loire, in the Indre-et-Loire département of France.

The show was wildly successful and became a pop culture phenomenon when originally broadcast in the US, with over 40 million viewers tuning in to the last hour of the final episode. It was the most-watched episode of any entertainment series since the premiere episode of the second season of Survivor, which was broadcast immediately after the 2001 Super Bowl.

The show's magic, which depended entirely on its charade, dissolved very quickly with the second season, aired in the fall of 2003. There were now 14 women, either from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Sweden, or Italy (where that season was taped, with a different hostess). It is believed that because the women in Evan's season were all from the United States, the producers would be unable to repeat the charade with another set of Americans. Viewers were not taken with the cowboy protagonist, who was clearly more enamored of his horse than of the European lasses he was supposed to be wooing or wooed by.

The hostess was actually viewed by the ladies as little more than a Grim Reaper type, who rarely appeared except to inform them of the elimination ceremony (modeled on ABC's Bachelor series). She ended her spiel with the exact same words: "I'll go get Evan."

Paul would appear with a collection of necklaces and call out the names of those the Joe had chosen. Those who did not receive any, like the roses in the Rose Ceremony on the Bachelor(ette), were eliminated.

Or so it seemed, when David Smith (the second Joe) believed he had eliminated the wrong woman. That individual, from the Czech Republic, went on to win this season. By that time, though, the magic had completely disappeared and no more seasons were produced.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Evan Marriott