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The Cast Of Toddlers And Tiaras ALL GROWN UP

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The pageant toddlers America watched cry, twirl and flip their fake teeth are all grown up now.

TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras premiered in January 2009 and ran seven seasons before wrapping in late 2016, turning a parade of six-year-olds in flippers, spray tans and rhinestone crowns into a genuine ratings hit — and a lightning rod for critics who accused the network of exploiting its youngest stars. Nearly a decade later, cameras have caught up with the franchise’s most recognizable faces to see how the pageant circuit shaped the people they became. The new rundown of “where are they now” moments traces the paths of the show’s biggest breakouts, from reality-TV superstardom to quieter lives entirely off camera.

• Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson first appeared on the show in 2011 alongside her mother, June Shannon, before parlaying her fame into TLC’s spin-off Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and later Mama June: From Not to Hot.
• Eden Wood, one of the franchise’s original breakout pageant queens, left the circuit for acting and modeling, landing her own spin-off Eden’s World and playing Darla Hood in Universal’s 2014 film The Little Rascals Save the Day.
• Isabella Barrett turned her pageant-era profile into entrepreneurial and modeling work, while longtime contestants Madison “Tootie” Berg, Ava Perez and Danielle Kirby stuck with teen pageantry, cheer, or simply went back to regular school.

Honey Boo Boo’s Long Road Through Reality TV

No contestant defined the show’s second act quite like Alana Thompson. She was a pint-sized pageant kid with a big mouth when she first showed up on Toddlers & Tiaras in 2011, but her one-liners were memorable enough that TLC handed her and her mother, June Shannon, a spin-off within months. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo became a genuine phenomenon, and when that show ended, the family didn’t disappear — they resurfaced in Mama June: From Not to Hot, keeping Alana in front of cameras well into her teenage years. Few pageant kids from the original series stayed as visible, for better or worse, as long as she did.

Eden Wood’s Jump From Pageant Stage To Soundstage

Eden Wood was four years old and already a fan favorite when she appeared in the show’s early seasons, and she’s arguably had the most conventional showbiz trajectory of anyone who came out of the franchise. She got her own spin-off, Eden’s World, then made the leap to feature film work, stepping into the role of Darla Hood in Universal’s 2014 release The Little Rascals Save the Day. It’s the kind of transition — pageant stage to acting credit — that other TLC alumni, including the families profiled in The Duggar Family’s Most Bizarre Moments Since Their TLC Show, have chased with mixed results.

Eden Wood went from four-year-old flipper-teeth champion to playing Darla Hood on a Universal soundstage.

The Contestants Who Stayed In The Pageant World

Not everyone who came through Toddlers & Tiaras chased Hollywood. Isabella Barrett built out modeling gigs and entrepreneurial projects off the fame the show gave her, while Madison “Tootie” Berg, Ava Perez and Danielle Kirby largely stuck closer to the world that made them famous — teen pageants, cheer competitions, and, in plenty of cases, just going back to school like any other kid. The original series also introduced viewers to Ava Anderson, Paisley Dickey and Sophia Lucia, all of whom grew up carrying the show’s spotlight into very different corners of adolescence.

A Franchise That Never Fully Left The Conversation

Seven seasons is a long run for a show built almost entirely on six-year-olds in false eyelashes, and the fact that people are still tracking down these kids years after the cameras stopped rolling says something about how deep the show’s cultural footprint went. The same appetite for “whatever happened to” content has kept alumni pages busy for shows like the ones covered in What The Winners Of America’s Next Top Model Look Like Today, and Toddlers & Tiaras is no different — the pageant crowns are long gone, but the curiosity about who wore them isn’t.

Honey Boo Boo and Eden Wood ended up on opposite ends of the same spotlight — one kept the reality cameras rolling for nearly a decade, the other traded the sash for a script and a role in a Universal picture. Either way, the six-year-olds America watched sob over runner-up finishes in 2009 are the same names still generating “remember them?” videos eight years later.