Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test finished off its second season with a gripping finale episode on November 27. The final celebrity recruits left standing were Tyler Cameron, Nick Viall, and Erin Jackson. Hollywood Life spoke exclusively with Tyler, 30, and Nick, 43, about making it to the end after enduring intense interrogation, freezing water, and more.
Nick admitted that “being cold, the stress positions, the noises” that he faced during interrogation “felt like torture.” He added, ” With the bag over your head, you lose sense of time. You’re a bit delusional. You just don’t know how much longer you have to put up with that pain. I think that was the challenge for me. It’s just like, I think I can do this. I don’t know if I can do this. But how much longer do I have to do this? I would never want to do that part again.”
Tyler revealed that “being cold struck a genuine fear” in him. “I remember in the second interrogation, I was so scared that he was just going to find ways to just make me cold and torture me more because I was just trying my best to find ways to get warm and I couldn’t. That was my genuine fear. I’m just going to get colder and colder and colder, and I did. It was miserable. It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through,” The Bachelorette alum said.
Bachelor Nation stars have a knack for survivor Special Forces selection. At the end of the first season, The Bachelorette’s Hannah Brown was the last one left competing with soccer star Carli Lloyd. Tyler revealed that he spoke with Hannah after his Special Forces experience and “debriefed” with her about everything.
“It’s something that we’ll always be able to share,” he said. “We both did Special Forces. We went through all this together. So it was great to be able to kind of debrief and talk with her through it all.”
Nick noted that he hasn’t had the chance to talk with Hannah about Special Forces just yet. “It was cool when we all got done to realize that the three people of Bachelor Nation have all been successful on Special Forces,” Nick told Hollywood Life. “If nothing else, it makes you realize that what we did on The Bachelor really, I guess, affected us in ways that somehow prepared us for this.”
When asked to elaborate, The Viall Files podcast host said The Bachelor/The Bachelorette is a “psychological warfare experience where the physical aspect isn’t anywhere close, or you can’t compare to Special Forces. But the psychological aspect truly is, you could argue, maybe even more intense. You’re really on an island. You don’t have a support system. You don’t know who you can trust. It’s kind of a terrifying emotional experience, and to get through that you really have to have your wits about you. You have to have your emotions in check. I do think that prepared us for what we experienced in Special Forces.”
As they looked back on Special Forces, Nick admitted that he’s realized that he still has “the ability to challenge myself. I can push my limits. It was just a good reminder that you never really know your limits. You can always find something more, and I just think that’s a really important aspect of life because I think one thing life has taught me is that the next challenge is always around the corner. You’ve got to ride the highs and lows, and you have to fight through everything. Selection really teaches you that you’re capable of more than you realize.”
Tyler told Hollywood Life that Special Forces gave him time to “think about what I want in my life and what I want back home.” He continued, “It gave me that edge that I wanted, too, but also me realize there are good things, important things, I need to pursue back at home and whatnot. It kind of got me to get on the straight and narrow that I wanted to get on for a long time.”