‘The Challenge: USA’ Cast Member Calls Out Disorganized Production: ‘Very Manipulative’
MTV’s The Challenge spinoff, The Challenge: USA, is delighting fans so far. The Challenge: USA cast members joined after competing in other reality shows like The Amazing Race, Big Brother, Survivor, and Love Island. More recently, a cast member from The Amazing Race who also competed in the new series called out production for their disorganized way of running the show.
‘The Challenge: USA’ cast member Leo Temory says production was extremely disorganized
The Challenge: USA cast member Leo Temory made it to episode 8 of the show before losing an elimination. He originally starred in The Amazing Race, so he’s no stranger to reality TV. Unfortunately, he lost during Hall Brawl — a brutal challenge involving two competitors running at max speed toward each other in a narrow hallway — against Big Brother alumnus Enzo Palumbo.
Now, Leo’s taking to Instagram to share his experience on the show. He took significant issue with showrunner Justin Booth, but he also had gripes with production as a whole.
“Did any of the daily challenges seem rigged or eliminations? (Fixed for certain winners),” a fan asked Leo on Instagram.
“I don’t know if I would say rigged. I would just say very unorganized, and because of that, the outcomes were very loose and very manipulative,” he shared, according to Reddit. “They could be like, ‘No, we never said that.’ And you have no proof, because they could do whatever they want.”
‘The Challenge: USA’ spoilers note the final was also lacking in organization
Leo Temory is The Challenge: USA cast member who’s currently the most outspoken about how production went on the show. But other cast members, like Tyson Apostol, have also mentioned the disorganization. Furthermore, spoilers from PinkRose note filming the final also had a lot of bumps in the road, and the bad weather conditions added to the chaos.
“This was extremely disorganized from beginning to end,” PinkRose posted, according to a Reddit thread. “Sounds like a lot of the cast wasn’t [a] fan of production and like some may have quit the final.”
“This is primetime network television; you cannot have the show fall apart in the finale,” a fan wrote on Vevmo. “And it sounds like there’s no way they can edit it for it to appear as an ‘insanely tough final.’”
Past cast members from the MTV flagship series claimed production didn’t manipulate the storyline at all
The Challenge: USA cast might not be too impressed with how the showrunners chose to go about it. But past cast members for MTV’s The Challenge talked highly of production. Wes Bergmann, a notable player who went on to compete on The Challenge: All Stars, said production did their best to tell the real, authentic stories of those who competed.
“We are not reality television,” Wes explained on the Bachelor Party podcast. “Our show does not do any of that. They started as documentarians, and they are still documentarians, they just happen to be really, really good, entertaining documentarians. I have never found myself in the position where the most important storylines aren’t being told in as fairly of a way as possible.”
The Challenge: USA airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.
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