In Reality Shows and documentaries, individual participants will be interviewed by producers in private to collect their candid thoughts and opinions about the events which they experienced. These sound bites are then edited into the playback of events of the show to provide context for viewers.
If the relationship between the producers and the contestant breaks down, it's unlikely they would stick around for the interview. But in comedies or Faux Documentaries, they will still sit in front of the camera and describe their outrageous experiences to the viewers.
This can also happen with Real Life participants, usually if the producers agree to pay them a hefty price to appear on camera.
Examples
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Films — Animated
- In Surf's Up there is an interview with the sea urchin that injured Cody during his wipeout.
Films — Live-Action
- Series 7: The Contenders has the cast giving interviews...in a Hunting the Most Dangerous Game scenario. You have to wonder where they got the chance to squeeze them in, with them being on the run from each other.
Live-Action TV
- Hell's Kitchen: In the first season, Chef Ramsay and Jean Phillipe would be interviewed in the confessional.
- In A&E's reality series Hustle N Tow, a woman who's car is towed for improper parking chases the tow truck and attempts to run it off the road. After the truck arrives at the tow yard and police diffuse the situation, the woman rants to the cameraman in an interview
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- The Canadian TV series Masterminds features the criminals describing how they pulled off their heists if they have completed their prison sentence and are still alive at the time of production.
- An episode of Restaraunt Makeover features one member of a couple who doesn't want to participate in the show. She gets in the confessional anyways.
- Subverted in the Grand Finale of Life. They resurrect the Faux Documentary from season one (where the unseen producer of a documentary about Charlie talks to his friends, ex-wife, etc.) talking with Big Bad Roman. Then Roman shoots the documentarian, grabs the camera, takes us on a tour of his Supervillain Lair and shows us that he has Reese hostage. He then sends the video to Charlie.
- In the American version of The Office (US), characters will talk openly to the cameras about things which are embarrassing, secret, and in some cases even illegal.
- Lampshaded in one episode when an ex-employee asks why they bothered to track her down and interview her for something that happened years ago.
- Parks and Recreation has the characters talk openly about things like Tom's green card marriage and the Mayor's many indiscretions.
- One episode involves Leslie becoming concerned about her loss of privacy when she becomes the target of paparazzi. This is odd, since apparently doesn't mind a film crew following her around 24/7.
- And then there's Ron Swanson. Why would a man so obsessed with privacy that he would throw away his computer after finding his address on Google Earth allow himself to be filmed, let alone talk directly to a cameraman (other than tell him "Get that thing away from my face!")?
- Similar to the above, in Modern Family, the characters are prone to confess secrets that they really wouldn't want getting out. Word of God is that the implied presence of an actual documentary crew was just Early-Installment Weirdness; there is no crew and the confessionals are actually their inner thoughts.
- Atypical uses shots of Sam in therapy sessions as a Framing Device for its narrative segments. All well and good... except when it becomes an extended plot point that Sam is no longer seeing his therapist, but these segments continue. As they're often only thematically-relevant Fauxlosophic Narration, we could imagine they took place at a different time than the events they're cut together with.
- Subverted in WandaVision. Every episode is modeled on another era of sitcoms due to magic reasons, and the episode modeled on 2000s/2010s mockumentary sitcoms has cutaways to Wanda and Vision doing confessional interviews, until Vision shakes it off and realizes he's still actively trying to get to Wanda, getting up and taking off his lapel mic.
Web Original
- Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse sometimes gives Barbie's pets and other animals a turn to talk with the viewers, with a British-accented woman translating what they say. Barbie's robot computer, Closet, also gets some of these segments.
Western Animation
- A couples times in the Total Drama series, Chris or Chef, the two non-competitors would get in the confessional. There would also be the occasional guest confession from characters like Sasquatchanakwa.
