Kendra Wilkinson remembers gathering Kate Gosselin’s children during their 2013 Celebrity Wife Swap shoot and telling them to escape the cameras with her. “We all ran away,” she recalled. “It was a moment I’ll never forget.”
Wilkinson, 41, revisited the experience in an October Instagram response to a fan asking whether she’d noticed anything about Collin Gosselin during filming. She’d temporarily taken Kate’s place caring for her 8 children, including twins Mady and Cara and sextuplets Collin, Hannah, Leah, Alexis, Joel and Aaden.
“I remember he leaned on me a little,” Wilkinson said of Collin, now 22. “I did feel bad and awkward filming at times.” She remembered telling the children to run into the woods.
Her recollection comes as Collin describes alleged physical and emotional abuse by his mother in his memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood. He also alleges that Kate sent him to a psychiatric hospital without telling his father, Jon Gosselin, where he was. Kate has previously denied abusing him.
Wilkinson had also spoken warmly about the family after the swap. In February 2013, she said Kate invited her family over for lunch after filming and that the experience taught her to appreciate the time she had with her own child. “They are a truly great family and Kate has done so good with those kids,” she said at the time.