SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from the Season 2 finale of “The Challenge: USA,” now streaming on Paramount+.
“The Challenge: USA” was even harder than it looked, in part because one of the competitions was cut from the final edit.
When asked about the toughest part of the final — a multi-day race with numerous legs — winner Desi Williams tells Variety that it was “sheer amount of uphill running on rough terrain” — especially since she was “dehydrated, because we had stayed up all night the night before doing an overnight challenge that wasn’t shown.”
The season’s other winner, Chris Underwood, describes the edited-out overnight challenge, which is shown in the photo above.
“After Day 1, we had set up camp, we built a fire, and 30 minutes into us doing our ‘Kumbaya’ stuff, TJ Lavin came in and basically told us that we had to stand up individually on these 12×12 pillars, that had barely enough room for your feet to stand on,” Underwood says.
The group had to guess when an hour had passed, counting the seconds. After they thought they reached an hour, they could step off. However, if they stepped off before the hour was up or after an hour and five minutes had passed, they had to restart.
The cast — minus Johnny “Bananas,” who chose to do the competition alone — counted together and got it wrong three times, which meant they were stuck standing for more than three hours.
Photo by Jonne Roriz, courtesy of Paramount
“It was just one of those terrible, torturous, aggravating things,” Underwood says. “The final was hard and that uphill climb, it was vertical. At some times, we were grabbing trees to pull ourselves up the incline. But that night challenge, not having sleep going into it and then just the fear of like, ‘What if we get it wrong again?’ We had up to six tries, so there was a lot of pressure to get it right.”
Both Underwood and Williams came on the show with a purpose — he was determined to change his reputation as the least-deserving “Survivor” winner of all time, while Williams’ partner quit during the Season 1 finale, which meant she was disqualified and didn’t have the chance to show she had what it takes to win. Now that they’re both champions, neither feels the need to play again.
“I’m getting married. I own a business. So it is a huge sacrifice to leave for seven weeks. I’ll never say never, so I could do it again but the stars have to align,” Williams says. “It has to be the right timing, where I feel like things are stable at home, I feel like things are stable with the business.”
Underwood says they’re on the same page. He didn’t expect to get a call to play at all, and now that he has, he doesn’t feel the need to return.
“For me, wanting to play the game was kind of a comeback tour, out of retirement. I didn’t think I was gonna get a call to play shows again. I wanted to prove that I had the dog me to win and compete. I didn’t get a lot of good publicity after winning ‘Survivor,’” he says. “I was going to go and give it my all and didn’t really care if I was going to come back or not, I just want to make this worth it for the sacrifices I made back home. If I were to play again, it would have to be an all-winners version of ‘The Challenge’ or something like that, because it would take a lot for me to leave what I’m doing now. I’ve got a 1-year-old daughter. Work is taking up a lot of my time, so there are definitely sacrifices. I’ve got things outside of the reality television life, so it would really depend. I don’t think I can’t say that I have the bug.”
