‘The Challenge: USA’ Star Said She Declined Returning for Season 38

CBS 'The Challenge: USA' cast photo

The popular CBS spinoff “The Challenge: USA” has introduced viewers to a whole new group of Challengers who might one day cross over to the regular “Challenge.”

One star of the inaugural spinoff, “Love Island” season 3’s Shannon St. Clair, recently revealed that she was asked for the upcoming season 38 of the regular “Challenge” but she declined the casting team “right away.” The reality star appeared on Spotify’s “Reality Rundown” podcast hosted by Mark Long and Emily Longeretta and shared, “I did get asked for Season 38 for MTV, but it was very last minute.”

She said the request for season 38, like her experience on “The Challenge: USA,” was as an alternate but added, “It wasn’t the same network compensation, so I turned it down right away.”

Shannon explained that she was originally supposed to be an alternate on the CBS spinoff. She said she never watched “The Challenge” before and normally she would have researched the show beforehand and trained. However, since she thought she wouldn’t be on the final cast, Shannon said she treated it as a nice trip to Argentina for her birthday and was completely unprepared for the show.

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Shannon Revealed That the Worst Part of the Experience Was the Living Conditions

Shannon told the podcast hosts that what was hardest about the experience was the living conditions, telling them, “the living conditions I think, were what really got me. It wasn’t the challenges. It wasn’t the people. It was the living conditions.” She added:

For me, the hardest challenge was living in a bunker with strangers, and the food was not great. People got like food poisoning and had to go to the hospital. It was not very ideal at all for living conditions, and I think that I’m very adaptive to my environments, so that’s just why I say I wouldn’t [go on season 38].

She went into a lot more detail about the situation, adding that it was “basically 28 people sleeping on top of each other.” She shared, “It was not warm and fuzzy, it wasn’t comfortable, I wasn’t lighting a candle and reading a book before bed. It was very uncomfortable, mosquitos chewing at your face cause the door was open all night, it was super hot and then it was super cold.” Shannon also said people would have nightmares and wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

At another point in the podcast, Shannon said she was surprised by the whole experience, including their living arrangements. She explained that she thought when they were walking in for the show that they’d be at least living in a mansion with an infinity pool and a hot tub. “So I walked into this scary warehouse, it actually looks very cool on TV I will tell you in person, it just wasn’t it,” she shared. Shannon also said:

The bathrooms were absolutely horrible, the toilets were gross, we were all sharing six toilets with 30 people men and women. The sinks would leak, there was six showers so the water was always cold so you couldn’t even take a hot shower after a challenge.

Shannon Didn’t Completely Rule Out a Return to ‘The Challenge’ in the Future

The reality star told the co-hosts that she doesn’t watch a lot of tv and just started watching “The Challenge: USA.” She joked that the competitors looked “cool as s***” on screen and that “watching it on tv for the first time, I’m like, damn I wanna go on this show,” she laughed.

Shannon said she would consider doing another season of “The Challenge” in the future but she’d have to get a bit more information about it ahead of time and train a lot more. Most importantly, she added, “maybe get a little DL on what the living conditions would be like.”

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