“If I put my mind to it, I can accomplish it one thousand percent,” Special Forces: The World’s Toughest Test contestant Brody Jenner tells The Hollywood Reporter of his experience on the competition series. “Before the show, I didn’t really have that sort of confidence.”
Jenner, no stranger to reality television, was one of 16 contestants to enter the Fox series, which premiered earlier this month. Heading into Wednesday night’s double finale episodes, he was one of only eight participants left.
The DJ and surfer says there are many parts of the show that he would “love to go back” and do again, but feels like a show like Special Forces might be “one and done” situation for him. “There are other parts, that I’m telling you right now, I wish on nobody. That I don’t think any human being should endure something like that,” he explains. “They have people watching you 24/7, actual psychiatrists, and people making sure you don’t completely lose your mind. It’s one of those things where you have to be debriefed after and making sure that you’re not coming home with PTSD. It’s brutal.”
He later continues, “I don’t think people even understand really how tough this show is.”
Below, Jenner speaks to THR about The Hills, his thoughts on modern reality TV and why he felt Special Forces was the perfect next step for him. [This interview was conducted before a series of devastating wildfires broke out around the Los Angeles area. Jenner, who resides in Malibu and Hawaii, was safely out of town.]
I’d love to hear your overall perspective of your journey in TV because you’ve been doing it for while now. You’ve tried a lot of different things. Do you feel the journey you’ve been having on TV reflects the journey you’ve been having in your life?
Obviously, my start in TV goes way, way back with The Princes of Malibu and Spencer Pratt. We jumped into it a long time ago, way before The Hills even, and didn’t know what we were doing. My parents were kind of in the Hollywood scene a little bit, I was pretty familiar with it growing up. It was kind of his doing, to be completely honest, and his vision. He loved that lifestyle so much, as I’m sure you’ve seen over the years. We were really good friends, and he was always just like, “Man, we got to do a show about your family.” Having him as a best friend back then is how it just sort of all… And then we went and picked up cameras together and we started shooting it. I mean, it was pretty crazy for us. Two 21-year-old kids with zero experience in reality television at all to sell a show to Fox network. It was pretty cool. Then we hired our executive producer, who ended up being the one on The Hills. We had a lot of experience [with] reality television at that point because we had been doing it for so many years with [The] Princes of Malibu. We spent two years, and we learned a lot about reality television. It was around the same time as [The] Simple Life. We really liked that format of show, where obviously that was kind of what we did for The Princess of Malibu, two kids that drop out of college and they come home to live with their [stepdad].
It was pretty wild. The only thing that was tough about that is that we had to come out, and even though Spencer and I, we filmed all of it, we came up with all the pranks that we did on my stepdad and all this stuff. The only thing that was tough for me to swallow, we had to do interviews and do everything as if we were really that big of shitheads basically when we had produced it and we did everything, so that was tough. I think at that point I was just like, “I don’t care.” Obviously, the executive producer [Sean Travis] that we hired for [The Princes of Malibu] ended up being the executive producer on The Hills. He called us up one night and he was like, “Hey, we really need you guys on this show.” He was like, “How do we get you on this show organically?”
Sean Travis would tell us where The Hills was filming. He would be like, “We’re going to this club tonight, and the girls are going to be there. You guys need to show up.” I had a lot of friends in the club industry, so I would call them and say, “Hey, we’re coming in. Can you put us next to all The Hills people?” And they would put us next to [them], and then Spencer became friends with Heidi, and then the rest is history. It [career in reality TV] just sort of organically played out. It just sort of happened. We were extremely fortunate. The Hills was incredible. It was almost like shocking though because you really realize what you’re getting yourself into when all of a sudden it blew up like The Hills. It went from just, you go anywhere to — within, it felt like a couple weeks, — you go outside and everybody’s like, “Oh, that’s Brody.” It was kind of surreal. Did that for a while, and then kind of got a little sour on it. Six, seven years of reality television. I was just sort of like, OK, I want something new or to take a little break. I took a little time off, tried the Kardashian stuff for a little while. That was pretty interesting to say the least.
Before The Hills started, I was in a band already. I was playing drums. I grew up playing the drums. That was kind of a bummer because for The Hills, I just sort of scrapped that. I just sort of was like, “You know what? They want us to be going out every night.” It’s a show about Hollywood, and so I basically left my life in Malibu, moved out to Hollywood full time. Quit the band and went to live The Hills Hollywood life. Obviously, I was getting paid from the show, so that was my job, but the music thing, I kind of put on hold for a little while just to focus on the TV part, but it was a bummer because I could have, and I should have, just been more adamant on incorporating my real life and then the music way back then.
After everything sort of settled, I fell in love with it again. And surfing. I also took a big break from the water and surfing. Those kind of things, my real life and who I really was, was never really captured on those shows. It was just going out every night and giving lunches and gossiping. I’ll be completely honest with you, that’s really not who I am. At the time, it was kind of fun and exciting. I was young. But it didn’t really encapsulate who I really am.
You talk about having to put certain things on hold, and I’m wondering if you feel any regret about any of that? Are there things you wish you had done differently?
I think that obviously as you get older, you just become wiser. You just learn things where you’re like, God, I wish I would’ve known this back then. Of course I would’ve done things a little differently. What was tough was just people being like “What? He does music?” When I was doing something that I’ve always done, they’re like, “Wait a minute, this guy knows how to surf?” and I grew up surfing my whole life because they just saw me in that one light. That was a little tough.
You’re doing a reality show, so everyone’s thinking that they really know you. Some of the things, I felt a little misrepresented that what was on The Hills for sure. But I’m not one to regret or to look back. I think that you just have to grow from your experiences and you look back… Had I been this age, yes, I’m sure I would’ve done a lot of things differently. But that’s growing up. You [have] to make those mistakes to learn from those mistakes. I made some mistakes in the past, but I don’t really regret anything. I think that overall it was a good experience, but, yeah, I wish I would’ve done things a little differently for sure.
What made you say yes to Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test?
A few different things. I’ve never done any sort of competition or game show. I’ve always done this sort of real life – The Kardashians, The Hills – whatever. I did Bromance, which was pretty interesting, on MTV on a while back. I’ve been asked to do Dancing with the Stars. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been asked to do that show. That’s just not really me. I’m not a big Dancing with the Stars kind of guy. I’m not a dancer. I’m horrendous. What was interesting about Special Forces is… Both my grandparents were in the military. One of them was an Army Ranger and the other one was an engineer building bridges and stuff in World War II. I’ve always heard stories from them growing up and just sort of a patriot at heart, for sure. I have a lot of respect for the military and women and the Armed Forces. I’ve just always had a lot of respect for those type of people.
They go out and they put their lives on the line for our freedom, so we can live this beautiful life. When I was asked to do a show like this, it was intriguing, but it was terrifying. I watched some of the old seasons. I’m like this looks brutal. This is definitely not just a production because a lot of times [on] The Hills or whatever, there’s a lot of production. You could tell that this was like, they’re putting you in this experience. I just had a lot of admiration for the military, and so I just thought about it. I asked my friends, I asked my family, “What do you think?” I was extremely nervous to do it. I didn’t necessarily want to do it because the easy way out would just be like, no, I’m just going to continue living my life and touring and DJ-ing.
Ultimately, I thought it would be good for me. I thought, you know what? This experience, because I find it so terrifying, and it is going to be probably the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. That is how you just grow as a human being. Ultimately, I just was like, I’ve got to do this. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. When are you ever going to get to be able to train with the Special Forces ever again in your life and you turn this down? I just said, you know what? You can always quit. You can always take the arm band off and get out of there, even though it’s not an option. It is an option.
We’re in a very interesting kind of renaissance, for lack of a better term. As someone who is on it now and was on it in it’s “prime,” what are your thoughts?
Reality television just is definitely different. I would say that you just said when I was doing it back then, it was a lot different than it is now. There was no Instagram around, there was no social media. I think that in itself is such a big change in TV because now everybody has their own reality show. I mean, it’s like there’s really nothing special about a reality show at this stage because anybody that has a cell phone can just film their own reality show. YouTube, put it out there. Whether it be… My wife is a massive fan of Tate McCrae, she’s a huge fan. She was showing me some videos last night of how she got discovered and she was just putting her stuff out on YouTube and singing her songs.
Back then it was a lot more difficult. It was harder to be able to get onto a reality show. It was really tough when you had to be chosen, they’re were all these people. It was so much more difficult, when now, if you’re talented, you don’t need to get onto a reality show. You can just literally go and do what she did, put your videos out there. Somebody’s going to find you. Somebody’s going to discover you. Back then it was just a lot different.
So reality television for me, I don’t know. The Hills was kind of the time to go in and do that. I really enjoy filming. I do. I have cameras. I enjoy filming, and I enjoy doing that. I still enjoy the family sort of reality stuff. Tia [Brody’s wife] and I will film each other. We’ll put our own little videos together that are just family oriented. As far as Kardashian style or The Hills, you see what I see a lot lately is a lot of drama. With The Hills, I think that it was a time in Hollywood where Lauren was working for Teen Vogue and all these young girls were like, “That’s so exciting and that’s so cool. I want to move to Hollywood. I want to work with Teen Vogue. That looks so fun.” When now it’s like you watch people just try to rip each other’s throats out. Yes, there was drama on The Hills, don’t get me wrong, but [it’s] just different. I feel like a lot of people are in a different way. They’re not laughing with you, they’re laughing at you in reality television nowadays. It’s changed a lot for sure.
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