NEW YORK—Mystery solved! Emmanuel DelCour, the handsome contestant on Bravo’s reality show Chef Academy, really is Jean Val Jean, the former adult performer who has starred in such blockbusters as Digital Playground's Island Fever 4 and Adam & Eve's Eden.
What do you mean it wasn't really a mystery or a surprise? You mean he was “outed” during Monday’s show and the producers knew all along? Sacré bleu!
May we please return to the old days when a secret life in porn actually brought a blush to someone’s—anyone's—face? These days, it’s become literally impossible to tell where the outrage begins and the marketing ends, or is it the other way around? Reality shows are essentially messing with reality. (So is Oprah, to tell you the truth.)
What’s truly creepy, at least to a native Earthling, is the extent to which the legitimate media—as in CBS News—is playing along with the charade. To flog the point, the storied network’s website screamed the following headline Tuesday morning: “Does Reality TV Chef Have Porn Star Past?”
Uh, yeah, he does. Because in the body of the article right under the headline, it actually states, “On the show Monday night, fellow contestants Kyle ‘Kup’ Kupiszewski and Kyle Daley discovered Delcour's alter-ego.” Well, hello, Mary. So that would mean the article actually answers the question posed by the headline. Greeeeeeat.
“On the show's Web site, DelCour's bio says he was born and raised in the south of France and moved to California four years ago, where he ‘has acted in commercials and television series and worked as a personal trainer,’” CBS reports, breathlessly. “His IMDB.com page is less enigmatic. Under ‘Alternate Names,’ Jeal Val Jean is listed.”
Nice investigative reporting there, CBS, even if you weren't able to get DelCour to confirm or deny the truth about his past. Don't worry, though. Levi Johnston is being dispatched to beat the truth out of him for a new reality show called Yes You Are, No I’m Not, a Drew Pinsky Production.
As for Bravo, they’re handling the publicity fallout as best they can. Forced to post the confrontation video to their homepage Tuesday, they warn viewers to ‘watch what happens when Emmanuel's peers confront him about his sexy alter-ago.’”
An inspired crème brûlée, perhaps?
Visit AVN Gallery for photos of Jean Val Jean.
