‘The Challenge’: Johnny Bananas Admits He Would ‘Love’ to Join ‘All Stars’ For 1 Very Specific Reason
The Challenge star Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio is a legend on the MTV reality competition series. But he’s not part of the current cast of The Challenge: All Stars. Still, Bananas says he would “love” to join for one very specific reason.
‘The Challenge’ star doesn’t have plans to retire
Bananas made his MTV debut back in 2006 on The Real World: Key West. In the 15 years since, he’s competed on 20 seasons of The Challenge and won seven times. After winning The Challenge: Total Madness in 2020, Bananas told Us Weekly that he had no plans to retire.
“I’m not somebody who’s going to sit here and be like, ‘I’m retired,’ and do that whole thing. But I will say right now, my focus is on other things,” Bananas said.
“The Challenge has been such an amazing, incredible part of my life. I had the ability to grow up watching myself on MTV and The Challenge provided me with an incredible platform to create my brand.”
Johnny ‘Bananas’ Devenanzio says it’s time to grow up
Bananas admits that he wants to be a kid forever. But at some point, he knows he’s got to leave the nest and “do grown up things.” He says that right now, he feels like he’s “adulting.” The Challenge star is hosting a new talk show called Celebrity Sleepover.
“It’s different, and it’s definitely taken some time to kind of take the character and the persona that I created on reality television and really kind of change it and finetune it into becoming a host because it’s a whole different ball of wax,” Bananas explained.
‘The Challenge’ star would love to join ‘All Stars’
The reality star says he’s into the new All Star season of The Challenge and admits he would love to be a part of it. He told Too Fab that it would be like “going back to college and hanging out with your college roommates.” Bananas added that he’s “known some of these people for half of my life.”
The one specific reason he’d like to be part of an All Star season is because of the nostalgia. He says that usually nostalgia is simply talking about things that happened, but you’ll never be able to do it again.
“All you have is those memories. And I almost feel like this would be like being able to recreate nostalgia. And that’s a pretty cool thing that not many people get a chance to do,” Bananas explained. “So from the nostalgic perspective alone, I think it would be an amazing opportunity.”
He’d also like to compete on ‘Dancing with the Stars’
Surprisingly, Bananas also confessed that he’s set his sights on another popular reality show — Dancing with the Stars. He says that if the opportunity ever came his way, he thinks it would be “a lot of fun.”
Bananas admits that he’s only a “great dancer” when he’s drinking. But, for him the show would be all about the competition. However, he says his partner would have to be someone “who’s very patient” because they would have their hands full.
“I feel like dancing would just be a different way to like challenge myself and do something new,” he said.
‘The Challenge’ star is chatting with celebrities from his living room on his new talk show
Fans might not be able to catch Bananas on The Challenge: All Stars. But, they can catch him on his new talk show Celebrity Sleepover. On that show, Bananas chats with celebrities like Tiffani Thiessen, Cynthia Bailey, the cast of the first-ever season of The Real World, and cast members from The Challenge: All Stars.
In each episode, Bananas chats with the celebs from his living room while hanging out in pajamas. He says he’s lucky enough to have a team around him that created this new concept. He says fans will see a side of their favorite celebrities that they’ve never seen before.
Celebrity Sleepover airs after Saturday Night Live on NBC. The Challenge: All Stars airs on Paramount+.
