Selling Sunset star Bre Tiesi says living conditions during filming of Season 5 of Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test in the Malaysian jungle were the roughest any cast has faced on the show.
Tiesi, a real estate agent, joined the season alongside Ruby Rose, Candace Cameron Bure, Collin Gosselin, George Santos, Oliver Hudson and other celebrities to compete in challenges designed by directing staff Mark “Billy” Billingham, Jason “Foxy” Fox, Rodolfo “Rudy” Reyes and Jovon “Q” Quarles.
“Apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment. Apparently, I want to torture myself,” Tiesi said in an interview with Decider, before adding, “No, I really just wanted to see if I could do it.”
Tiesi described the barracks where contestants slept as infested with cobras and scorpions. “It was horrific living in those barracks. We had cobras, scorpion; we had to kick the can, take a friend, and make sure there was nothing in it,” she said. “You’re showering with scorpions falling out of trees. It was diabolical.”
She said the entire cast shared a single bar of soap. “We didn’t even think about it; we did not care. We were so dirty that we were like, ‘Let me know when you’re done!’ It was bad.”
Tiesi said production staff told contestants the jungle was the toughest setting the show has used. “They literally said the absolute worst place you could possibly be is the jungle,” she said, adding she thinks a prior season filmed in Morocco would have been easier. “The sand, of course, is difficult, but nothing like that jungle. Those elements were insane; that humidity, just everything. It was brutal.”
Tiesi entered the competition while recovering from a medical procedure to address scar tissue buildup in her chest and collarbone, her fourth such procedure. “I had to stop everything. I barely had walked around at that point,” she said. “I actually have the time in my schedule between filming my other shows. And it just made sense.”
She said she discovered an unexpected fear of heights during a challenge in Episode 2. “I had no idea I had a fear of heights at all,” she said. “When I actually had to throw myself over this rail, and I was looking at the height, I was convulsing, like shaking. You can’t control it.” She credited fellow contestant Collin Gosselin with talking her through it by bringing up her four-year-old son, Legendary. “He knows how important being a mom is to me and my sweet spot, so as soon as he brought up Legendary, I was like, ‘Okay, I have to do it.'”
Tiesi said she consulted her ex, former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel, who appeared on a previous season of the show, before signing on. “He actually just said I’d be fine,” she said. “He’s like, ‘I’m not gonna tell you too much; I’m not gonna say anything. You will be fine.'”
Episode 2 also saw LeSean McCoy, George Santos and Ruby Rose self-eliminate. Tiesi said she was most affected by Rose’s exit, saying she hadn’t realized the extent of an injury Rose was managing or the difficulty of the jungle’s conditions for a vegan diet. “It was sad to see her go for sure,” she said.
Looking back on the experience, Tiesi said it reshaped her outlook. “It completely changed me in so many ways I never thought it would,” she said. “It’s a mirror to a lot of things that I haven’t thought about, or processed, or done anything with since I was a kid.”
New episodes of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test air Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, with next-day streaming on Hulu.
