The Bizarre Case Of The Mysterious Hell's Kitchen Contestant

Simply One Of Reality TV's Biggest Icebergs......

Subscribe And Like For More HK Content Like This!!

Instagram - flynn_masters

#hellskitchen #iceberg #gordonramsay

[SchruteFarms]

The fact that the producers have gone so far to erase JR from any media tells me he did something so bad that they made everyone sign NDAs to bury the story.

[scruffythecat]

JR was just a speedrunner who got the Any% record for Hell's Kitchen. Antonia came close with her "Gumbo" strategy to clip into the ambulance early.

[kodoqbesar]

Seriously though, JR is like those reality TV iceberg mystery/creepypasta

[margarethmichelina]

If you pause on at 0:26, you can see there are 13 silver plate domes right there which that means there was 13 contestants with 13 signature dishes. Also, there was a huge gap between Josh and Brad if I'm not wrong, that means, JR was standing between them.

[heymistercarter.]

One thing that raises the mystery of this even more is that, for whatever reason, the actual person has never come forward to clarify what actually happened. No one has found this person or anything or spoken to him. So it does make you wonder, if this guy was actually on the show, someone would find him and allow him the chance to explain what happened.

[Scourge]

It doesn't strike me as particuarily odd that they don't remember JR. 15 years is a long time to remember someone you only saw for a few hours.

[popularculturenostalgianmo]

What I have read, he actually wasn’t a co-worker of Joanna. He decided to supposedly twist and run with Joanna’s story about how she got recommended to be on the show from her boss into “Joanna is having an affair with her boss.” The producers most likely didn’t want to get sued for defamation with her boss so they disqualified JR. Also, he was supposedly violating his NDA by leaking rumors online. But my question is, how was he able to do that with no access to a computer nearby? Back in 2007 when this was being filmed, people couldn’t go on the internet on their phones and leak out stuff like 4chan or anything like that?

[lucakiami]

I think it's highly plausible that the contestants from Season 3 *aren't allowed* to give details on JR, under strict orders by the producers. It's common for reality TV show contestants to be forced to hide information that could be detrimental to the show's reputation. Incidents of contestants breaking these codes of conduct can easily result in them getting sued or even arrested.

So in regards to this HK iceberg, the theory in this video I agree with the most is that JR intentionally tried to harm Ramsay with his signature dish. Assuming this to be correct, the producers would, realistically, not want ANY INFORMATION on this to be disclosed, let alone any evidence suggesting it to be true.

Plus, I can't imagine any other reason why Joanna's explanation on Facebook would be deleted, as she could have gotten into serious legal trouble if she kept it up. (However, it's not mentioned in this video whether she was forced to delete it by the producers or if she willingly deleted it herself. If anyone knows for sure, please let me know.)

[zimz]

This isn’t the only time a contestant was cut at the last second. In season 21, Alyssa was actually a substitute contestant for someone who got covid right before filming. Although unlike with JR, There was absolutely zero mention of this on the show.

[heymistercarter.]

Or another question I have is if this was like a Sherry Pie-type situation. For those who don’t know, Sherry Pie was a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race’s 12th season. She was this plus-sized camp comedy DA who was allegedly slated to do pretty well in the competition. She even made it all the way to the finale. But then right before her first episode aired, it turned out that she’d essentially been running some kind of serial catfishing scheme, where she was posing as a casting director named Allison Mossey and convincing men to send videos of themselves reading lines from a nonexistent play (or TV show pilot) to her. And some guys she made take steroids to bulk themselves up (one guy was apparently diabetic, so that would’ve killed him), and some she made so some, well, let’s just say hard-R-rated stuff to themselves. So basically, she was convincing men, many of whom were aspiring actors trying to live their dreams, bulk up to her preferred body type and trick them into sending glorified fet!sh p0rn to her. So once this was found out and many men came forward with their stories about this, Sherry was quickly disqualified from the show and edited out of most of the episodes she appeared in (other than being shown in some challenges and runways, since she initially made it to the finale).
Why I bring this up is: I wonder if something like that happened with this JR guy, but production found out about it and removed him before he could go anywhere. Maybe it wasn’t as wild and extreme as Sherry’s thing, but it could’ve been close. Who knows.

[Ty-opxr]

It's actually not completely implausible that the show would have two contestants that knew each other. Cooking is a small world and two chefs from the same city may have crossed paths before. This happened again on season 18 with Gizzy and Scottley

[mrnerdling]

The two most popular theories I’ve seen are either 1. J.R. spreading rumors about the ladies, which is against the show’s rules of conduct and immediately disqualified him. And 2. J.R. intentionally cooking a dish whose only purpose was to make Ramsay ill.

But there’s one theory I have, that I see no one else brought up. I feel J.R. was _paid_ to be let off the show.

Why on earth would there be 13 contestants? An odd number would mean the red team would be put at a disadvantage by having 6 members against the blue’s 7. Granted, this situation has happened before with Antonia and Jason’s departures, and even in recent HK seasons where the first challenge also was the first elimination prior to opening night. But this is season 3 we’re talking about, long before either of those happened.

What I think occurred was that the season was supposed to have 14 contestants. Whoever was the red team’s 7th member had dropped out weeks prior to shooting. So rather than recasting her, production decided to go ahead with 13. Once the contestants arrived, perhaps the red team pointed out the discrepancy at judging, and production realized this wasn’t going to work, especially if a member of the red team happened to be the first boot (which eventually did).

All in all, this just seemed like a nightmare for production to deal with. Nowadays we see they love to shakeup the contestant pool throughout the season. But this early on in HK’s history, they’d rather even the pool by having a blue team member voluntarily leave, or paid J.R. to exit and be compensated.

This whole situation would’ve been plain embarrassing for the production staff and they’d rather have it to that J.R. never competed and this whole thing swept under the rug. Yet they failed to take his photo out of the lineup and missed his partial cameo in Vinnie’s shot and the 13th dish.

It should’ve been casting’s job to fill in the 14th contestant last minute, or have someone on the blue side volunteer to step down _prior_ to cameras rolling, not during. Therefore, to keep everything under wraps, they made sure no one on the season will ever be allowed to discuss the existence of J.R.

This is just my two cents though. It’s not as interesting or as enticing as the other two theories, but, sometimes the true answer usually isn’t that riveting.

[elphabafang]

Friend has a theory that he got arrested before the first dinner service.

Also, this 100% feels like something that the lost media folks would love to sink their teeth into. If anyone could find more info on him, it'd be them.

[jbearclowater]

So, I have a theory. Admittedly, nothing to back it up, but just throwing this out there:

He was brought on as an intentionally early boot, but did or said something offensive enough to edit him out all together; my guess would be something related to drugs, knowing Ramsay has zero tolerance for that kind of stuff. It doesn't make sense to have an odd number of contestants, considering the format of the show. Why would the blue team have seven members and the red six? My guess is Ramsay brought on an extra member to the blue team as a "Red team members have won the last two seasons, so we're giving the blue team an extra member this year" with the intention of booting someone early.

Now to the boot itself: He's seen in a couple of wide shots entering Hell's Kitchen and during the Signature Dish challenge. Later in the Signature Dish challenge, he's not seen. If you pause during 0:34, there's a big gap between Josh and Rock, which is where JR was when you pause during Vinnie's Dish. So it seems he was eliminated during the challenge itself. Knowing Ramsay has no tolerance for drug abuse (season 11 winner Ja'nel supposedly lost her job that she won because of a failed drug test, and in Ramsay's other shows he's always shown a zero tolerance for drug use), JR may have revealed a drug addiction problem, or possibly (though unlikely) been under the influence of drugs during the challenge, and Ramsay booted him the second that was found out, . Maybe he was under the influence during his Signature Dish presentation, and said something about Joanna, whether true or not, which prompted the question of drug use, and when he confirmed it, he got the boot right then and there.

Why the rest of the contestants would be so hush about that, I'm not sure. Maybe it was part of their NDA's if he said something really bad during that, but then Joanna saying he was spreading rumors doesn't add up if that would be breaking an NDA. Maybe they just all decided not to speak of it because he was in a bad place, but you'd think eventually someone would say something. No idea why it's never been revealed. I heard one rumor that he committed suicide after the Signature Dish challenge, but I doubt they would keep going on production if that happened. If he did commit suicide after being on the show, maybe the show asked competitors not to say anything about him to paint him in a bad light (again, Joanna's stuff makes zero sense in that case).

[Calooseeus]

The Joanna theory makes the most sense. Since, why else would she randomly state all these facts about JR on Facebook live. After she did that, she was probably contacted by someone at Hell's Kitchen that she breached an NDA by talking about it, so she deleted that facebook live stream and now acts like she doesn't know him.

[BonsaiMan]

This is some lost media type stuff. Considering J.R was at the challenge and that you can see 13 plates, he did have a dish which means there was footage of him presenting the dish. Whether this was deleted or is being stored somewhere secret we will never know, but it would be awesome to see. I didn’t even know about this until today.

[anthonyruggiero]

My theory is that JR made a dish bad enough that Ramsay gave him the "you can go home right now, you tell me" speech and he said "yeah sure this isn't for me" and it wasn’t dramatic enough to include in airings so it just got cut

[colin]

JR knows who they are, they can speak for themself

[Dervraka]

Ramsey has him chained in the Hell's Kitchen dungeon for screwing up the risotto too many times.

[ChristineTheHippie]

In American Idol 4, there was a contestant who was kicked off for failing to disclose that he had a criminal record. So being eliminated after something in his past was discovered is a possibility.