The reality is that yes, I volunteered to survive naked in an undisclosed location for 21 days with only one tool that I could bring for my own survival. The TV show was called ‘Naked & Afraid’ on Discovery Channel and our episode was called ‘Double Jeopardy’, airing in December of 2014.
Do I regret this experience? No.
Up until that point in my life, that was the best-worst experience of my entire existence. Actually, that experience reiterated what I always knew to be true about myself in that – I was an introvert and liked to work alone. At that point, I also realized something about myself that I had kept hidden from the world and my family, and that was, how depressed I really was. No matter what I did; travel the world, go on TV, etc., nothing was going to fix this mental battle I suffered from. It was a wake up call.
Was that really 100% me on the show? Yes and No.
Myself and my team mates all had our good times and our bad times, 90% of which was not aired on our episode. Stuffing 4 naked, dehydrated, sleep deprived, hungry and sick adults into a 4×4 tent is probably the worst thing anyone could do to a person. We all had times where we couldn’t move, we felt sick, we yelled at one another, we took time to ourselves, and we all had times where 3 of us would be working, and one person would take a break.
The things I did and didn’t accomplish on the show.
During the editing process of a reality TV show, they cut a lot out to make it entertaining. In our case, they had to jam 21 days of survival into one, 120 minute show (special). And since it was clear I was made to be the target, none of what I did made the cut. But if you asked any of my teammates, they’d vouch that I did make as many contributions as I could. These included:
– Making shoes for Forrest and I for our days hike to the next location
– Collecting oranges for Forrest and I
– Creating a bamboo boat to collect rain and drink from
– Helping to build and maintain our shelter
– Climbing up the mountain and collecting banana leaves with Manu for our shelter
– Collecting the nuts that monkeys dropped to the ground for us to eat
– Giving my “clothing” pieces as kindle for the fire
– Collecting sticks and wood for our fire
– Creating coconut bowls for us to drink water from
– Collecting snails many days for us to eat
– Attempting to make a fish basket, but failing, and that’s okay, since we all try and fail sometimes (I shouldn’t have gotten so much hate for that, it was one of the only things I tried and failed at – but if we were in our right minds and if Manu wasn’t an expert basket-maker – who was 20 years older than me and much more well-versed in survival – we all would have worked on it as a team effort to make it work to collect food).
– Making the oars for our raft
– Helping to make the raft (they did not show me helping at all, but I did)
It’s a shame I have to list the things I did do, but since this is my domain (literally), I can try to set the record straight about myself and display as much honesty as possible to educate viewers on the truth of what goes into a reality TV show.
Yes, it was real. No, no one is attracted to one another, especially when hungry, sleep deprived, filthy, dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion.
What you don’t understand is…
Yes, it was real. No, no one is attracted to one another, especially when hungry, sleep deprived, filthy, dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion.
Naked and Afraid is a reality television show on the Discovery Channel. According to Google, here’s the definition for you of “Reality TV”:
re·al·i·ty TVnoun
- television programs in which real people are continuously filmed, designed to be entertaining rather than informative.
In reality TV, sometimes you’re turned into an actor. You are required to act. Let me give you an example. One day after I had collected a bunch of snails from the river for our team, and we had cooked and ate them, I was asked by the Producer to stand in front of the camera for my daily “interview” (no matter how dehydrated, sleep deprived, hungry or cold we were, we had to participate in these once to 2x/day interviews, and in this case, here’s how the dialogue went:
Producer: How was it eating that snail?
Me: It was okay. I’m just grateful to have anything to eat at this point.
Producer: How did it taste?
Me: It was okay, not bad.
Producer: Come on, it must have been much worse than that. How did it really taste?
Me: I mean, it wasn’t the most delicious meal I’d ever had, but like I said, grateful to have the food.
Producer: But it crunchy? Slimy? Gross?
Me: It was crunchy, slimy and not the best tasting, yeah.
Producer: So, it was gross?
Me: Yeah it was.
Producer: So say, “it was crunchy, slimy and one of the worst things I’d tasted”
Me: It was crunchy, slimy and one of the worst things I’d tasted.
… and that was what they aired.
Sure, I could have said no and walked away, but if they didn’t get what they wanted from me for footage that day, they would have tried to pry some other ungrateful verbiage out of me the next day. One day, the Producer came up to me and said “Right now, you’re the villain of the show, you can change this right now by getting together with your team and ‘apologizing’, and we need you to do that.”. I was so disoriented, that I just listened like a sheep, and did. In every show, they pick one person to be the villain or the idiot but every time the show comes to a close, they find ways to end on a positive note and bring everyone together again. The classic closing to any show or film.
The aftermath
In the aftermath of the show, when I received hundreds of thousands of messages, with 50% being hate mail, death threats and even a stalker that would not leave me alone for 3 years following, every single person who was posting judgement and harassment, had never participated in the show, let alone a reality TV show. I even received hate mail from everything from individuals who were applying to be on Naked and Afraid, and never got on, to individuals who got on the show and after experiencing it, apologizing to me now that they knew how they were portrayed and edited to make into entertainment.
On the contrary, I also received lots of remorse for how the team was treating me and calling my teammates “bullies”. After the show, once we we ate a big meal and had a few beers, they all gave me a heartfelt apology for how they treated me. Russell and I left Panama together on the same flight back to the states, and he showed me nothing but love. I was having a lot of anxiety that day we left and was having especially some anxiety during the flight, but he held my hand and calmed me down. We also met up in Connecticut again. In real life, he’s a good guy and he admitted to needing to be someone for the cameras with all the stress from the producers to put on a show. Manu and I got together one on one as well in Los Angeles over coffee, and she admitted to me some things I won’t say here out of respect, but regarding the way she was portrayed that wasn’t true. She also gave me a heartfelt apology.
