At 6:30 am, Laurel McGoff is woken out of her slumber. Snuggled tight in her thermal sleeping bag, McGoff slowly gets up and then races to change into the same clothes she had worn the day before, hoping not to get caught in the dust and freezing air sneaking in from the cracks in the door, floor, and walls.
It’s Spring 2007, and 12-year-old McGoff isn’t being woken up by her mother in a mad dash to get ready for school. It’s a production crew member, with a thick Long Island accent, on the set of a reality TV show called “Kid Nation.”
She ties a green bandana around her curly red hair and quietly, as to not wake her fellow bunkmates (and newly made best-friends), makes her way outside to the town of Bonanza City. She and the three other town council members huddle close together around a small space heater, waiting their turn to be outfitted with hidden microphones. Soon the cameras will start rolling, and another pioneer day will begin.
McGoff is now nearly 26. The braces that accessorized her huge smile back in 2007 have long since been removed. Her red curly hair has been dyed blonde. She’s taller and more developed than she was at 12. But parts of her childhood self still shine through, like her articulation and the passion behind each word she speaks. She talks with her hands.
McGoff lived a relatively normal life prior to “Kid Nation.” The Medford, Massachusetts, native has a loving family: mom, dad, and older brother. She grew up acting, and while she booked some professional jobs as a child, none put her in the limelight until she interviewed for a new CBS reality tv-show called “Kid Nation.” It was supposed to be a children’s version of CBS’s hit-show “Survivor” — 40 kids from all over the country sent to a deserted western town in New Mexico, where they lived “without adults” for 40-days. A modern-day “Lord of the Flies,” the show was a big social experiment to see if children, ranging in age from 8 to 15, could build their own society.
A strong-willed and confident pre-teen, McGoff had the “social maturity closer to that of a 16-year-old than a middle schooler,” she explains in her strong Boston accent.
McGoff was chosen by producers to be one of four town council members to lead the four districts of Bonanza City: green, blue, yellow, and red. McGoff led the green district for two of the three terms of the show’s run, and was in charge of making certain decisions for the town.
“I was terrified, but I also went in knowing that ‘I could do this, no problem at all.’ It’s good that I had this ideology when I was 12, and I wish every 12-year-old girl had it,” McGoff explains. As a child, she was a peacemaker. She would break up fights in the school yard, and mediate until a resolution could be found.
Out of the 10 total council leaders that led Bonanza City during those 40 days, McGoff was one of only two female leaders (the other portrayed as a villain).
“It was [Bonanza City], definitely patriarchal, but I grew up with a very masculine older brother and a lot of older male cousins. So I was used to that,” Mcgoff says. “And just being from New England in general, I had a thicker skin. I was used to that kind of brute masculinity. I could put them in their place. Sounds bad, but it is true.”
Besides the one or two particularly aggressive boys, McGoff didn’t feel a big divide in gender on the set of “Kid Nation.” Most of the boys and girls were very respectful to McGoff. If they didn’t listen to her as a leader, it typically wasn’t because of her gender or age, but because they didn’t like the ideas she was enforcing. McGoff preferred that to be the case.
Every three or four days, the four different districts would compete in a “showdown,” to win rewards for the town. The showdowns were elaborate obstacle course-like activities that each district would have to complete within a certain time limit. If all districts successfully completed the tasks (which ranged from building giant puzzles to diving into a giant skillet full of baked beans and live pigs, searching for cans in their district’s color) the town would be given the choice of two possible rewards, and the town council would chose which of the two they would receive. If none of the districts was able to complete the tasks, the producers would show the kids the rewards that could have been theirs.
These rewards included additional outhouses, fresh produce, and toothbrushes. The most notable reward they lost out on was beds.
Life on “Kid Nation” wasn’t easy. Before the season premiered, the show received a lot of backlash. A Boston Globe critic called the show “grotesque” and “creepy.” Many others believed CBS was putting the children in danger, and even exploiting them. McGoff was informed that children from New York and California couldn’t participate in “Kid Nation” because the show broke too many child labor laws in those states.
“The conditions were bad, that was the one thing I could look at on the TV and be like ‘that was very real.’ Weather is the first thing that comes to mind, because it could be 20 degrees in the morning, by 11 am it would be 75, by 1 pm it would be 98, and then by 6 pm, it would dip down to 50 degrees again,” McGoff explains, her eyes widening.
The producers gave McGoff a strict list of what she could and couldn’t bring to Bonanza City. She was allowed three pairs of pants, three shirts, two pairs of shoes, one big winter coat, socks, and underwear. She wasn’t allowed to bring deodorant, a toothbrush, or razors.
“They weren’t prepared, the producers, I don’t think. Because when we first got there, the sleeping bags we were supposed to sleep on were, like, half-an-inch thick; people were going to get frostbite, we were gonna freeze.”
It wasn’t until day three that the producers provided all the kids with new thermal sleeping bags, down pillows, and blankets. “It’s just shocking that they didn’t think of that before we got there,” she says. “It felt a little thrown together.”
Despite all this, the experiences McGoff had on the show, and the people she met, all changed her life for the better. “The media turned it into a shit show that wasn’t there,” she says.
Nevertheless, McGoff suffered from a deep depression for months after returning home from Bonanza City. She wasn’t used to sitting behind her middle school desk, being told when she could speak or go to the bathroom. She longed for the independence and individuality she’d gained in Bonanza.
She also missed the diversity. At 12, McGoff’s eyes were opened to the various cultures and political and religious ideals people from across the nation held. “It is really hard for me to be close-minded now, because I grew-up in Massachusetts, and my best friends [on set] were from Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Chicago, Seattle, all over the country,” McGoff says. “It was the best thing for me in a way, because I had never really left Massachusetts and really early on I got to see, and this may sound strange, but once you take away everything that makes us ‘different,’ — you know, the clothes, the hairstyles — I really saw that every single person was the same.”
McGoff discovered a lot about herself and others at Bonanza City. Every night the kids would go to sleep in the same bunks, and they would all eat the same food. There was no division of money or popularity putting people into boxes. McGoff quickly realized that internally, everyone there was exactly the same. She figured out that at the core of each of them was the need to be accepted and loved. There was more that united them than divided them.
The 2007 reality show recently gained new popularity after it was featured in multiple “Funny or Die” videos on YouTube. McGoff hopes these new viewers gain a lot from the show. “I hope people can see that this country, politically, is a mess,” she says. “These last four years, regardless of what you believe, have been traumatic. But you can have conversations with people from the opposite side, and learn something, even if you don’t agree. If you can see that 9-year-olds from Georgia can become best friends with 13-year-olds from Seattle, then why can’t we have a discussion? I think that could end a lot of hate that we have in this country.”
Today, McGoff lives with her girlfriend in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the river from Lower Manhattan. She graduated from Pace University, where she majored in communications and minored in political science. Although she has long since moved out, her childhood bedroom still showcases memorabilia from her time on the show.
A comedian and singer, McGoff often takes to social media to showcase her skills. Whether that be sketch poking fun at the different tropes of people she’s met in her life, or singing a virtual duet. On Instagram, her videos get hundreds of views.
Given the opportunity, McGoff says she would absolutely participate in “Kid Nation” again, as an adult. But on two conditions: All 40 members of the original cast would have to return, and the saloon would need to be filled with alcohol instead of soda.
