Teen Mom's Maci Bookout Wants To Be On A Different Reality Show
"Teen Mom" star Maci Bookout's journey to fame is a unique, and rather controversial, one. In 2009, she was one of the breakout stars of MTV's "16 and Pregnant," a docuseries that followed the lives of teenagers who were preparing for motherhood.
The show turned some of its young stars into massive celebrities — before long, they were gracing the covers of tabloids and being approached by fans in public. "I usually only talk to fans if it's in my city because now it's just gotten so ridiculous that I don't want to talk to one person and not to talk to another person," Bookout told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. However, the show's popularity didn't make teen pregnancy seem like an attractive option to most of its avid, impressionable viewers — in fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. According to a 2014 report by The New York Times, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research linked viewership of "16 and Pregnant" and the spinoff series "Teen Mom" to an almost six percent reduction in teenage births.
Since Maci's MTV introduction, viewers have continued following her life's ups and downs on "Teen Mom" and "Teen Mom OG." They've seen her navigate her rocky relationship with Ryan Edwards, the father of her first child Bentley, and they've watched her start a family with husband Taylor McKinney. But it's Maci's dream to appear on a totally different kind of reality TV series.
She wants to follow in Bristol Palin's footsteps
In 2011, an insider told Us Weekly that Maci Bookout was "hoping she'll get asked to be on 'Dancing with the Stars.'" That still hasn't happened as of this writing, but in 2013, Starcasm reported that Maci participated in a similar dance competition in her hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The "Dare to Dance" charity event raised funds for The Kidney Foundation of the Greater Chattanooga Area.
For the competition, Bookout was paired with a professional dancer, and it sounds like he made her work hard on their choreography. "That dance practice just kicked my ass.... im exhausted," she tweeted in August 2013. A month later, she shared a blurry photo snapped during the competition that showed her wearing a long blue gown and extending one leg high up in front of her. "I was gettin' it! had a blast!!!" she wrote on Instagram.
So far, the only mom from the "Teen Mom" franchise to compete on "Dancing with the Stars" has been Bristol Palin, and she got her first shot at taking home the Mirrorball Trophy years before she joined the cast of "Teen Mom OG." Despite receiving much lower scores than the other top celebrity competitors, she finished third on Season 11 in 2010. An ABC executive told PopEater that Bristol asked producers not to invite Maci and other "Teen Mom" stars to sit in the audience while she was competing because she was trying to "hit the restart button" on her image.
Maci Bookout did appear on — and quit — another reality series
In 2018, Maci Bookout appeared on the celebrity edition of the Discovery reality series "Naked and Afraid." She was paired with a survivalist, and they were dropped in the Nicaraguan jungle with no clothing and little else. On Twitter, Amal Alyassiri, a survivalist who had also been on the show, questioned whether celebrity stars like Maci received special treatment by being allowed to bring multiple items with them to help them survive in the wild. "Nope, only allowed to bring one item... same rules/boundaries as every other brave soul that has signed up for the challenge," Maci shot back.
She successfully helped her partner Justin create a fire during their first day in the jungle, but moving around proved to be a challenge due to the sharp thorns that covered the ground. At one point, she was in so much pain that Justin gave her a piggyback ride. Their goal was to survive in the wild for 14 days, but Maci decided to leave after the first night. "I feel like if I stay here any longer I'm legitimately going to lose my mind," she said, per Radar. She had previously told the show's cameras that she was not going to quit.
"I am proud of myself for trying something completely terrifying and out of my comfort zone," Bookout tweeted when her episode aired. After that experience, doing the quickstep in high heels on "Dancing with the Stars" would probably seem like a cakewalk.