The Fox Channel snapped up all the unseen footage from Radar Online’s sometimes-funny often-scary video interviews with Nadya Suleman. A two hour special featuring delusional Octomom and her 14 unfortunate kids will air on August 19. Instead of including voice-over narration, they’re wisely letting Nadya hang herself with her own conflicting overshares. Judging from the clip of the show available on E! Online, it looks like Nadya’s creepy interview over fondue features heavily. That’s when she admitted that the octuplets’ biological father was unaware that she was using embryos created from his sperm to get pregnant again this hopefully final time, saying things like “I feel so much guilt for that,” and “I live in denial. I blame myself,” but quickly deflecting responsibility for having eight at once. “How am I supposed to know more than one would grow?” she sniped, in a reference to all the blastocysts/embryos she had implanted. (She claimed she only had six implanted but some fertility experts say that it’s statistically impossible* that two would split while others say that it’s possible due to the fertility drugs she was taking. Given how often this woman lies, I would say that she had all eight implanted.)

The NY Times’ Media Decoder has a good overview of the business decisions involved in this Octomom special. It looks like Fox bought the rights to the footage from Radar Online, and that this is a separate deal from whatever she’s filming for that British company to be made into the “documentary” she’s working on:

Using footage that begins shortly after Nadya Suleman, popularly known as “Octomom,” gave birth to octuplets in January, Fox Broadcasting will present a two-hour television special on Ms. Suleman, her children and family on Aug. 19, the network said Monday.

Fox bought the rights to broadcast the special from Pilgrim Films and Television, a reality-television production company that obtained the footage from RadarOnline.com, a Web publication that struck an early deal to film Ms. Suleman and her family.

The special could reignite debate over the well-being of the children and the media frenzy that surrounded their birth. Ms. Suleman has signed at least two television deals related to coverage of the birth and raising of the octuplets.

One of those deals, signed with RadarOnline and which forms the basis of the Fox special, resulted in citations alleging violations of California labor department regulations regarding the use of children in filmed entertainment. Ms. Suleman recently signed a second reality-television deal with a British producer, Eyeworks, and she is also the subject of ongoing litigation over the need for a court-appointed guardian to oversee the children’s finances.

Mike Darnell, the president for alternative entertainment at Fox Broadcasting, said in an interview that Fox wanted to do the special, which he said was “a documentary in its purest form,” because Ms. Suleman was “an incredibly compelling figure.”

[From NY Times]

Give me a break on the “documentary” crap. The only reason Fox is issuing that statement is to placate Octomom, who has said multiple times that she’s so much better than Kate and Jon Gosselin because her shows will be “more documentary style, monitoring [her children’s growth and development,” and “more intellectual and educational, not so superficial.” I hope that’s the only provision Fox had to make for Suleman, and that she’s not getting paid a second time for the footage. I doubt that they have much more than Radar and I’d be surprised if they’re able to put any other angle on it.

In the Radar videos, Suleman ripped up Kate Gosselin’s bikini photos, got visibly jealous of Gosselin several times, fought with her mother on camera and admitted that she lied to her about every single one of her pregnancies – telling her mom they were “tumors,” got a tattoo featuring herself as an angel, and bragged about the size of her tongue. How are they going to spin that into anything but a portrait of a disturbed, narcissistic woman using the system, her family, and her children to fill her own sick needs? Maybe all they have to do is tell her it’s a documentary and that will be enough to show her in all her obnoxious, self-serving glory.

(*The issue of the six vs. eight implanted embryos was discussed in an earlier story we covered. The “statistically impossible” quote I heard on NPR in February and I’m sorry I don’t have a better source as it’s hard to google.)

All photos are screenshots from Radar Online’s videos.