I'm just a student (theater and music), nationally certified massage therapist, and herbalist with an organic body product company. I happen to do a lot of survival-related things, like big wall climbing, solo mountaineering, long distance swimming, etc. When they contacted me for the show, I was living in a car and traveling. I hunt, study plants, and am a wilderness first responder.
I'm probably the only contestant on the show who doesn't call themselves a survivalist, which personally I think is a contrived and kinda bullshit term.
I actually brought 3 knives and a water filter to Brazil, Matt brought 4 knives. They asked each of us if we'd be willing to bring a fire starter. They liked my story about my dad dying and mentioning bringing a mag. So they had a PA go into the village and buy a mag and a keychain flint. They gave me my pick. We both tried to start a fire a few times, but it was really windy and then would dump rain every other day. We had to dig a hole in the sand and put kindling in it and try to aim the sunlight into the hole. I actually stole two baby birds from a nest and cleaned them one day, but took them too late in the day (4:30 pm, about)...the sun went down at 6. So I tried cooking them and cured them about half way, then tried a fire, but it was too late. They ended up being bait in my fish basket (which was never shown. It was a badass funnel).
I got pissed and started drama because Chris was a camera-hogging queen who hates women, and Luke was a camera-hogging bitch who was telling me all my ideas were bad ones and then using the same ideas on camera the next day like they were his. I got pissed, flipped out, threw their shit in the river. I was also pissed at Discovery for throwing me under the bus on my Brazil edit and then denying me kidney meds in Colombia. I brought a signed doctor's prescription on hospital letterhead for salt for my kidneys, and 3 producers came into my room prior to the challenge and said it wouldn't be fair to the other contestants. Then I found out Luke got 2 bottles of homemade tincture (fine alcohol, herbs, fish oil, and more mystery ingredients) he got to take at will, while Dani B got B vitamins. So I was pissed, to say the least. I completely lost trust in Discovery and Renegade, and actually tried to tap out the day before the blowup because my kidneys were swollen. The field producer convinced me to stay another day.
There is soooooo much that they omitted from both episodes, I don't even know where to begin. There are full nudes on
Stone Nudes. I was in 3 Stone Nudes calendars, including a cover, and I have 5 photos featured in Dean Fidelman's book, "Art in Motion." I took them with him in Yosemite, El Dorado Canyon in Colorado, and Thailand.
I'd like to be a screenwriter and keep working on my new herbal company. I've done some character extra work recently on Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Look for the ski episode next season! It's hilarious!
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The production crew doesn't coach, but they do ask us to rephrase things certain ways, or to use words they want us to use. Like me saying that whole thing about redemption ? that was their story, not mine.
From my perspective, I was thrown under the bus with the Brazil edit and being asked to "redeem myself" was as ludicrous and nonsensical as people telling me I need to apologize for throwing the tools in the river. Like, no one's gonna die. They're going to keep doing their thing and get fed crackers and tincture, and if they start to fail they're gonna get snickers bars and space blankets.
The locust that Matt gave me in Brazil actually fell onto Jesse, the cameraman, and he tossed it at Matt and started filming.
Just to clarify, when I say I was thrown under the bus, that is because my partner had gotten an Adderall prescription for the show and was living off his fat. Because he made it and I didn't, they rewrote the story. They set up a tripod and deleted me out of building the shelter. It took us hours, making cordage and tying shit together. Then they made sure to not show a single thing i did, like sharing some of the coconuts with Matt, sharing buriti, berries, etc. Omitted my fishbasket, the birds I stole from a nest, the 24 hour toxicity test on the cactus we were both eating...they made it look like he was just eating cactus and I wasn't. They also omitted everything he said during our argument, showed me calling him names, cut to a commercial, and repeated the scene.
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I appreciate your honesty. Which is exactly why I'm not sorry, because I don't believe in apologizing for things one isn't sorry for, like going to a Catholic confessional. I don't buy into that perennial philosophy. For instance, I apologized to Matt in Brazil because I was sorry. In this case, absolutely not. The show is very contrived, producers denied me my kidney meds, Luke stole my bowdrill, I was pissed. They weren't going to die because it's a contrived TV show. They were being assholes, and like I said before, I went all out FUCK You. It was a simultaneous FUCK YOU to both they guys and the show. No regrets. No apologies. Like I told Luke, you don't force apologies out of people. They should be made out of sincerity.
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The crew is supposed to leave us alone, but tbh this time around they were chit chatting it up. There was this one cameraman, super cool, he'd bring in ideas to our group. One time, I was fishing in the river with my bag and realized we needed a big flat basket to scoop because funnels weren't working. When I mentioned it to the guys, they were completely dismissive of the idea (which aucked because I was the one collecting vines for the baskets and they just kept taking them). But then the cameraman said that that's what the locals did, a couple days later, and all of a sudden it was a good idea.
The producers have very specific questions so they can get specific answers. They ask us to repeat answers certain ways using certain words. They do have a bit of a script in mind, but they try to plant ideas and work the words out usingtypical directing techniques.
They didn't make Luke give me back my bowdrill, and they made me "point out" where I'd thrown the tools. They also made Chris give me back the machete and then redid the scene so it looked like Luke made him do it. I was pretty much just like, all out FUCK YOU, and I think the producers were a little pissed (but simultaneously stoked because they like drama).
In Brazil, the argument was egged on by the producer. He was like, " Matt's bothering you, why don't you talk about it. It's obvious. You should confront him." Then after the argument, he was all like, "that is totally being used, it was great."
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I was contacted for XL around Thanksgiving. I had just started to get back to my normal weight after a massive weight gain rebound post-starvation in Brazil. So I started eating tons of food and cut back on my exercise. For Brazil, I had gained about 10 pounds but was a little self conscious and was still swimming a lot, so it was mostly muscle. This time, I cut back on exercise to lower my metabolism and gained 25 pounds of fat.
We bring 4 items and the producers pick for us. In this case, they actually provided a couple of our items just to create a surprise and fuck with us. It's a 2 month conversation, back and forth, prior to traveling, about what 4 items to bring.
I have studied archery since I was a kid, and studied long bow archery in Japan as a post grad after highschool. I've been hunting since I was a kid and my parents taught me how to field dress a deer around age 9 or 10. I am an herbologist and I spend a lot of time outdoors. I mountaineer, climb big walls, long distance swim. I've spent quite a few years of my adulthood sort of roaming because of a couple past experiences that resulted in homelessness. One of those times was when the house my two bros lived in burned down, and I helped them relocate. So we were a little tribe of nomads for a while. Our parents ditched out when we were teens and our mom committed credit fraud with two of our names, so none of us 3 have had a parental financial net to ever back into, if that makes sense at all. I've spent my whole life pretty much surviving and pulling myself up from my bootstraps, as well as rescuing my bros repeatedly.
The term survivalist is a crock, in my opinion. I'm just a theater major, massage therapist, and herbalist who does badass shit.
I have no idea why I did it again. They totally threw me under the bus with my first edit. I guess it was kind of a mild sense of extortion, tbh. XL paid a little more.
