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While the “whirlwind” of TV fame forced the “Duck Dynasty” family to hold onto their “deep roots of faith,” they decided to stay in the industry because of the positive influence they felt it had on culture.
“I heard a speaker one time, he was talking about how it used to be like school, education, the church, the government, like all these kind of things had a similar kind of effect on people,” Korie Robertson told Sage Steele on her podcast this week.
“He’s like, ‘Now, all these things are like tiny hills in the shadow of entertainment because of all the time we spend consuming entertainment today, podcasts and all of that,” she explained. “And so, that’s why our family — we never got out once we got in. We were like, ‘Wow, this is actually a means to point people to Jesus, and we need to be here and there’s a lot of Christians that are scared of entertainment because there’s this perception of darkness.”
She said when they first signed up for their reality show, which began in 2012, people told them: “‘Your kids are going to end up on drugs, you’re going to get divorced, like what are you doing?’ It was like ‘don’t do it.’ And we were like, ‘No, we need to be in entertainment.’”
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Her husband, Willie Robertson, interjected that they figured if it wasn’t their show in the time slot then someone else would take their place who maybe didn’t have the same kind of positive message.
“If you think about television as we used to think about it, like there’s only 24 hours and everybody — ESPN’s competing with A&E, and they’re competing with ABC and CBS and so you’ve got only so much [room],” Willie said of the TV landscape at the time. “So, we looked at it like, ‘Well, most of its garbage or dark or just, you know,’ and so we thought, ‘if not us, who else will this be?’”
Korie added that it quickly became a “real mission for our family.”
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She admitted that doing reality TV was a “whirlwind,” so they had to rely on their “deep roots” of faith.
“I’m so thankful we stayed in our hometown,” she told Steele. “We had our church family, we had some of those things that were already deep, but, you know, it was hard. There was a lot of, we were so busy. Church got different.”
She explained that fans realized where they went to church and showed up there.
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Not only did people start looking at them differently, they revealed, but some even approached them during the service for a photo.
“For us, it opened our eyes to the power of entertainment and how it is shaping our culture.”
And people they’d known their whole lives saw the situation as “cool” but also a little “rude” and “weird.”
“And then you get criticism from the church,” Korie said. “It was hard, and so we’re so grateful that we had those deep roots having to, whenever the show ended, of finding ourselves again,” Korie said.
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While it was “hard” on them, Korie said that they both “came from families of faith, so we never lost it. We never lost our faith. We stayed very rooted in it, but we had to be really intentional about it.”
Surprisingly, Willie said his “faith is far more deeper” than before they started the show because their lives were simpler then.
“Would you be as faithful if you had more money, if everybody knew who you were, if everybody was telling you how great you were or how terrible?” he asked rhetorically.
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Korie added, “Are you going to stay even when you have the world at your offer?”
But the show was undeniably influential on the culture, they said.
“I think the fact that we ended the show with a prayer, there are tons of people in this country and really all over that world that appreciated that,” Willie said, adding, “That was unusual. You didn’t see prayers at the end of a show. And [fans] really resonated with that.”
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Willie also felt that their family was “down to Earth and relatable to people. We weren’t in Hollywood.”
He explained that many fans found them more relatable than other shows on TV, even other reality shows. “Most reality shows are like a carnival,” he said.
His wife added, “You’re watching [those shows] because it’s like a trainwreck.”
Their show was also surprisingly funny despite the fact that they didn’t set out to be a comedy.
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“It’s hard to make a show funny,” Willie said. “Look at most TV. It’s not funny.”
“It was a time when people were looking for something hopeful and positive that the whole family could sit down and watch,” Korie said. “It was such a powerful moment for us because we saw how entertainment shaped culture through our show.”
Describing it as a “family sitcom,” Korie said, “It affected people.” And despite the show going off the air in 2017, she added that “people still come up to us in tears about what the show did for them. How they watched it with their dad on his deathbed or how ‘my husband became a Christian because of watching your show.'”
She added, “For us, it opened our eyes to the power of entertainment and how it is shaping our culture.”
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