Take a moment and think of your most beloved actor or actress, and then marvel at the fact that — whoever they are — Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio has probably been on TV longer than they have. With 20-plus seasons of reality television under his belt (beginning with MTV’s The Real World: Key West in 2005 and including the longest ever run on The Challenge as well as a recent stint on the Food Network’s Worst Cooks In America), he’s been on the air more than twice as long as Jerry Seinfeld or the cast of The Office. The cast of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which recently became the longest-running live action comedy of all time by being renewed for a 15th season, is still seven seasons behind him. By that measure, he’s been on TV longer than Law & Order.
Over the course of 15 years (several of which featured multiple seasons), he’s managed to carve out a career for himself as one of the greatest reality TV personas of all time, a smirking antagonist who refers to himself as “the man, the myth, the legend” and boasts the C.V. — six Challenge wins, earning him $684,720 in prize money so far — to prove it. His partner Sarah Rice on The Challenge: Rivals III was shocked when he stole her half of their winnings in that season’s finale, but anyone who has spent time watching Bananas could have predicted the move; the man knows what makes for good TV. It’s why there were no hard feelings when his longtime rival-turned-ally Wes Bergmann decided at the last moment to face off against him in an elimination on Wednesday night’s episode. Two former enemies who spent the season building a friendship going head-to-head to earn a ticket to the final? It’s positively Shakespearean, and as Bananas — who ultimately sent Wes packing — always says, “All’s fair in love, war and Challenges.”
But he’s been able to parlay his success on The Challenge into a lasting career, including a gig hosting NBC’s late-night travel show 1st Look. It’s a savvy move: could Devenanzio, who turns 38 later this month and has spent the majority of his adult life as a reality star, be priming himself to finally walk away from the physically demanding MTV competition show? We caught up with him to find out whether he’s mulling retirement, the changes in reality TV he’s witnessed over the past decade and whether or not he’s really such an asshole in real life.
InsideHook: This is your 20th season on The Challenge. Was there a specific season or moment where you first realized, “I can make a career out of this, I’m not just here for a few seasons, this is what I want to do”?
Johnny Bananas: Not really. It wasn’t a moment. I think when that really became a reality waswhen we went from doing one Challenge a year to two, and then they actuallythrew in Champs vs Stars there for a couple of years, so then we wereactually doing three. Obviously, like any other job, the longer you’re employed, the more attractivethe salary gets for showing up, and obviously that’s the case with us aswell. Put winning aside, if I filmtwo Challenges a year, I’m making a very comfortable living doing that. You add ona win, and now we’re in a whole different realm. Once I got my hostinggig for 1st Look, it really became obvious that I could definitely continue doing thisfor a while now and make a very decent living out of it. The struggle has been just trying to stay healthy — not the struggle, but now obviouslyto stay healthy and stay in shape and stay mentally sharp and just not getburned out. Doing 16 weeks of The Challenge a year is more than enough tohandle, and then throw on top of that all the free time I had inbetween Challenges now is basically being occupied by 1st Look and other projects. So morethan anything, it’s just about being able to find a balance and just being ableto just have enough bandwidth to be able to take on everything that’s coming myway.
You mentioned 1st Look, and I’m curious how that came to be. Were you always interested in hosting?
I just felt like for me, that would be a natural transition. I always likedhosting because I just feel like I’ve just got a knack for dealing with peopleand thinking outside of the box and thinking on my toes. I’ve never been abig fan of scripted things, which is why acting was never all that attractive tome. I always thought that I was just better as me, kind of goingoff the script. Even to this day, even when I have a script, I neverread it word for word. I like to put things in my own words, andI like to say it the way I want to say it, just because itdoesn’t sound as canned and more natural. Obviously, I know I’m not going to beable to do Challenges forever and there’s no replacing TJ, so that’s not even somethingI’d consider. TJ is the host of The Challenge. So I just figured, “Listen, there’sother opportunities out there, and I think I would be a great host in otherareas.” And 1st Look just fell into my lap because it just so happens thata woman who does casting for various NBC properties, they were looking for a newhost on 1st Look, and given the makeup of 1st Look and what 1st Lookis all about, which is having the host explore all these off-the-wall, out-therejobs and professions and travel locations and all these things around the world, it wasjust a natural fit for me. I think that I couldn’t have chosen a betterfit for me and what I’m good at. It basically complements all of my strengths.Between The Challenge and 1st Look, I’m doing everything I want to do. I getto compete, I get to experience new things. I get to meet new people. Iget to travel and I get paid for doing it. So yeah, I have somehowfound a pretty good couple of gigs. Good niche to be in.
This season on The Challenge you worked with Wes. Going into this season, did you see it as sort of a one-and-done type thing, or were you thinking there was potential for a long-term alliance with him?
I didn’t know if it was going to last a day. Okay? I mean, listen.Yeah. You have a hard enough timetrusting people who are your friends, people who you’veworked with in the past. Trust is such a hard thing to come by inThe Challenge. To try to establish trust with somebody that you’ve essentially spent yourentire career being at odds with and trying to screw over and trying to manipulateand trying to work against — while the idea sounded great, and it’s like, “Hey man,we’ll do it and we’ll work together and no one will see it coming andwe’ll be able to make this thing happen” — as much as I wanted to, goingin, think that this was going to work, I never thought that it actually had a chance. And the fact that it’s worked as well as it has and that we’ve not just been able to make it work, but we’vebeen able to make it work well and that he’s actually held up his endof the bargain when push came to shove is truly just shocking. I truly believenow that anything is possible. If Wes and I can work together on a Challenge and put differences aside, I don’t think there’s anything in this world that can’tbe accomplished.
Before the season started, you did your own version of that Tom Brady video where he teases retirement. Have you started to think about how many more Challenges you have left in you?
I don’t like to quantify it with anumber, right? I’ve never believed that there are certain ages or there are certain timesthat things need to happen. Like when you’re 21, you need your college degree.And when you’re 30, you need to be settled down and married and have kids.And when you’re whatever 40, you need to be retired. Whatever it is. The wayI see it is I just feel like things are just naturally going to happen.I feel like for me to sit here and to put some sort of anartificial time or number on how many I got left or how many years Ihave left, I just don’t know. It might be too many; it might not beenough. You know? So I just like to think that where I’m at right now,physically and mentally, I feel like there’s still a tremendous amount that I bring tothe show. I feel like I can still compete and I can still hang withguys who are over a decade younger than me. And do it well. I think once I’m not able to keep up mentally orphysically with the rigors of The Challenge, I think that’s my time. But I knowthat right now, based on going into this season, the way that I’ve performed up to this point, I don’t necessarily see the end in sight anytime soon. So thatmight be good news for some people. That’s probably bad news for a lot ofother people, but yeah, I’m not going to be one of these Challenge cast membersthat claims they’re retired like Jordan, who retired years ago and now has comeout of retirement and he’s like, “Oh, this is what I’m going to do forthe foreseeable future.” So I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want tobe the guy that retires and unretires. If and when I do finally hang itup, it’s going to be for good. But yeah, like I said, that’s not goingto be any time soon.
Do you have any goals or anything left to check off on The Challenge before you retire? I mean, obviously another win would be great, but are there any other milestones you still want to hit?
At this point, obviously another win would be great, but I don’t know what elseI could possibly accomplish. I feel like at this point, any move I make onThe Challenge is I’m moving laterally, which is fine. I maintaining, I’m keeping myself there.But yeah, I think that seventh elusive win would definitely be what I need fora lot of reasons. There was a time that I really did take winning forgranted. I just felt like, “Listen, it’s just going to happen. I’m going to showup every season. I’m either going to make it to the final or win afinal. That’s just going to happen.” Because for a while there, it was like clockwork.And then after Rivals III, I’ve definitely had a string of performances where some ofthem … I mean, I was almost there, right there, right at the finish line. AndI just couldn’t get the ball over the finish line. A lot of people haveattributed it a lot of different reasons. The most common theory is I’m cursed. Idon’t believe in being cursed. I don’t think it’s a curse. If anything, it’s abyproduct of my success, and the more successful you are and the more you win,the less people want to see you be successful. And this isn’t just cast members.This is production. This is all the way to the top. There needs to besome parity if they want to keep this thing entertaining. So I’m not surprised thatmy road has been difficult as it has, but more than anything, more than provingall the haters wrong — and I want to prove that curses don’t exist, or atleast when it comes to me, they’re made to be broken — but more than anything,I just want to prove it to myself that I still have what it takesto make it to a final and to win. Like I said, I think Itook final appearances and wins for granted for a long time. If I ever didmake it back there, it would mean a lot more than it has in thepast.
You’re also on Worst Cooks, and while that’s another competition show, it’s obviously a whole different ballgame. Has your experience on The Challenge prepared you at all for it? Does it translate at all?
Absolutely. They had no idea what they were getting with me. And like Isaid, I’m used to competing at a very, very difficult, very high level against othervery hungry, very athletic, very scary competitors. And that’s just the intensity that I bringwith me anytime I compete. I don’t care if I’m playing beer pong, cornhole.It doesn’t matter. I’m going to give it my all. I’m going to do thebest that I can. I’m going to try and win it. I’m going to doeverything I can to win. So going into Worst Cooks, I think a lot ofthese other people weren’t really expecting the intensity of the challenges that we did. Ithink a lot of people didn’t bring that competitive edge. They might not even necessarilyhave it. I basically brought my A game, and I brought everything that I wouldto a normal challenge and I think I blew a lot of people away inthat regard. People were looking at me like, “Holy shit, this guy means business.” Wejust did a challenge on Worst Cooks when we were blindfolded, we had to put a mystery ingredient in our mouth,identify it, bounce on a bouncy ball horse over to a board, pick the objectoff the board that we put in our mouth and then bounce back, and thefirst one to put it on the podium wins or won that round. I wasgoing so hard. I was flying through the set. I was knocking over hay bales.I almost took out the chef at one point. These people are looking at melike, “Dude, calm down. It’s just the game.” But that’s the intensity I bring everywhere.
I also brought strategy with me, too. On Worst Cooks, the first plate that wedid, the first cook that we made was basically whatever we wanted to make.It could be anything. What we’re going to bring to a dinner party. Going in,I’m like, “Alright, this is an elimination show. We’re going to be judged basedon our performance. Right? So if I go in and I lay down a zero,if I put my worst effort out there and I just have fun doing itand make a complete ass of myself and I start from the bottom, then there’sonly up from there.” Everybody else went and they tried to throw down their ace.Everyone was, “This is the best dish. This is as good as I can possiblydo.” And it’s like, then if you set the bar that high, you’re going tohave to keep raising the bar. I went in thinking like, “If I set thisbar incredibly low and I go in and they think I’m a terrible cook andthen I come out and I like, do anything. I could peel a piece ofgarlic and they’d be impressed.” So then obviously getting in people’s heads, I got under some people’s skin already, the chefs and my competitorsas well. I just know how to get under people’s skin. I know that ifyou get flustered mentally, you’re supposed to be concentrating, and that’s what this show’s allabout, concentrating. And if I can get under their skin and if I can ofrattle them a little bit, it’s going to affect their performance. So I did thatas well. So I just brought everything that I could to the challenge, and Itried to create as much levity and hysteria as possible. I don’t know anyother way. I definitely went back and dipped into my arsenal a little bit,and I brought some of the old tricks out and I don’t think they wereready for that.
I’m sure you saw that a few weeks ago, The Ringer had a bracket of the greatest reality TV characters of all time, and it came down to you and CT in the final round. What’s your reaction to that?
I mean, just the fact that out of 64 of the biggest names in realitytelevision — I mean, Kris Jenner and Snooki, The Situation, Jeff Probst,Gordon Ramsay. The names that were on there … I remember looking at this bracket— Iwas an 11 seed from the beginning, which I’m still a little bitter about — but I’mlooking at these names and I’m like, “I’m going to be lucky to make itpast week one.” These are some really heavy hitters out there in the reality televisionrealm. The fact that I was able to just keep plugging away and keep puttingdown Ws and making it through. We got to the final four, and I’m like, “Dude,this is insane.” CT was still there. You know what? It was funny though, becausewe were in opposing brackets and I thought from the beginning, I’m like, “listen, theonly appropriate way for this bracket to end is me and CT to face offagain in this bracket.” I think a lot of fans agreed, and just making itagain to the final and just being me and him, while a lot of peoplelooked at it like, “This is just some dumb bracket,” I didn’t see it likethat. The Ringer takes this stuff really seriously. I think a lot of their fansdid. I mean, the amount of people who were voting, the amount of people whotook part in it — not just fans of ours, but just people who watch television.In my opinion, it was a really big deal. I was just really happy tobe a part of it. And again, the fact that it came down to anall-Challenge final I think just says a lot about not just the fan basethat CT and myself have, but the amount of fans that The Challenge itself reachesand how it really is, in my opinion, the greatest reality television show ever. It’sthe longest running, it’s the most successful. We essentially invented the reality television genre andeverybody else, in my opinion, is just paying rent in it. So it was onlyappropriate for the two kings of reality TV to face off at the end.
What’s been the biggest change to reality TV that you’ve noticed since you first started?
Social media. Social media has been a blessing and a curse when it comes to reality TV,mainly because of people’s motivation for going on reality television. So when I first started,when I went on The Real World, and then when I went on The Challenge,The Real World it was like, you wanted to be a part of this experience.You wanted to go on because you watched this and you’re like, “This is thecoolest experience ever. This is like a coming of age.” It’s like everyone wanted tobe casted in The Real World because they wanted to experience that. WhenI went on The Challenge, I wanted to go on because I wanted to compete.I saw all these other people that I literally looked at as celebrities, the MarkLongs, the Landons, the CTs, all these guys. Brad, Derrick — I loved theseguys. And I would be like, “Damn, I want to be like them. I wouldlove so much to go on.” It was like a dream, right? Social media didn’t exist. Now, I feel like peoplewant to go on because their number-one priority and their number-one concern istheir following. “How is this going to help my following? How am I going tobe able to increase my likes?” Insteadof people going on for the love of the game, instead of peoplegoing on because they want to be a part of this historical franchise, peoplego on because they want to see how many Instagram likes or how many TikTok views they get. You know what I mean? And it really has kind ofchanged the motivation, and it’s changed the type of people who go on.
What alsohas changed is the fact that The Challenge used to be an MTV familyfranchise essentially. If you were on The Real World, if you were on Road Rules,that’s how you get on. Unfortunately, both of those shows are no longer, so theyhad to obviously start pulling cast members from different franchises. And now you just getevery Tom, Dick and Harry from whatever is the popular show on television right now,and people come on again for the wrong reasons in my opinion. It’s these peoplethat I feel like had this glimmer of this moment of fame, whether it wason Big Brother or whether it was on Survivor or whether it was on LoveIsland or whatever show, they had this little taste of fame, and they’ll do anythingto get that back. The Challenge provides you with the opportunity to be on televisionfor a long time. So I just see people coming out of the woodwork. I just feel like it encourages thewrong type of people, or people are coming on the show now for just thewrong reasons in a way. I guess that’s just the natural state. That’s just howthings are now; but it’s just over the years, just watching that transition and watchingthe caliber of cast or talent that’s on now is just completely different than itused to be. And that’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way things go.
This isa different generation too, though. People’s interests and just theway society and the way social media is and norms and sensitivity and political correctnessand all this stuff. It’s a different world we’re living in as well. So Ithink that’s changed at the same time. Everybody has access to everybody now. Back when I first starteddoing Challenges, Twitter didn’t exist. Instagram didn’t exist. So fans weren’t able to have adirect connection to you. Now, oh my God, dude, you do one thing, you slipup in the smallest way, and you will be buried. I think that that’s reallychanged things a lot too. I think people are acting now differently on television because they’re either afraid to be criticized or they so desperatelywant to be accepted and want to be loved that it’s really affecting the waythat they come across on television. And that’s what they’re most concerned about. They aren’tbeing themselves. They’re more concerned with being whatever version of themselves that fans are eithergoing to accept or deny.
Do you feel like you have a different version of yourself, on the show versus in “real” life? What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?
That I’m the same person. I don’t like to think that I’m adifferent person on TV, or at least on The Challenge. I’m just a much morecolorful, over-the-top, in-your-face version of myself. It’s not like I go on and I’m nottrue to who I am. But I do go on and I put on my producer hat when I go onThe Challenge, and I’m like, “What is going to make great TV?” At the endof the day, the way I see it is we’re there to make great TVand we’re there to entertain. And if you followed me around in a day inthe life at my house, I’m one of the least entertaining people. I wake up,I have my tea, I have whatever landscaping/gardening project I have going on for theday. I don’t go out. I cook all my meals at home. I watch Netflix,I drink wine. I spend time with my family. I live a very different life.I’m not this guy that’s in Vegas popping bottles and living this crazy wild lifestyle,constantly stirring shit up and being manipulative, being conniving. It’s just, I know when I’m on TV, I know how to make friction. Andthat’s what makes good television. Friction. And I know how to go against the grainand how to be a thorn in people’s side and how to get under people’sskin.
That’snot to say that I don’t have an element of that as well when I’mhome. You could ask my girlfriend or my younger sister. Igrew up terrorizing her. I just loved being kind of mischievous, and I liked toget a rise out of people. That’s how I’ve always been. Ijust really up the ante when I’m on television. And people always say, they’re like,“Oh my God, you’re such an ass.” And it’s like, “Listen. If I went onand I was the person I am at home, I’d never be cast for theshow again. OK?” So I know what makes good television. I knowI’ve perfected over the years what makes good TV, what people want to see, howto start a fire, how to keep a fire burning.
At 1st Look, I basicallyhad to undo everything that I did; everything that I’d built, everything I’ve created, I then had to put the brakes onand completely undo everything that I’ve done and uncreate this personality type, because the JohnnyBananas on The Challenge is in your face. Everything has to be some sort ofa tongue-in-cheek joke or sarcastic humor or everything has to be a punchline. The Challengeis all about absorbing all of the oxygen in the room and not letting anybodyelse get a word in edgewise and you kind of being the star. Whereas hostingis the exact opposite. Hosting is you taking a backseat and whoever you’re interviewingis the star. It’s about being interested instead of being interesting. Not everything has to be a punchline,and not everything has to be a joke, and not everything has to be funnyand not everything has to be sarcastic. And it was so hard for me tolearn — and I’m still to this day learning — that it’s okay to be a moredocile, dialed-back version of myself.
Oneof my producers told me, he goes, “A joke every five minutes. One joke everynow and then makes the information go down easier.” And it hits better. If everythingout of your mouth is a joke and everything’s a punchline, no one’s going to takeyou seriously. But if you’re informative and if you say intelligent things and you putintelligent things out there, and every once in a while, you drop a little jokehere and there, it’s more effective. And it will enablepeople to see you from a different perspective, that you’re not just this jokester thatdoesn’t take anything seriously. You know what I mean? You have a serious side. And1st Look really has been such an amazing experience and opportunity for me to grow, to really hone and really sharpen my ability to beon camera and to have more than one tool in my toolbox.
What’s the status on shooting all of these various shows because of quarantine? I’m assuming everything’s delayed?
Luckily, with The Challenge and Worst Cooks, we got those two in the can beforeall this happened. It’s just crazy how timing works out, where I filmed these twohuge shows for two huge networks and it just so happens that everyone’s stuck insidein quarantine, social distancing, captive audience, bam. They’re both out. 1st Look is a little bitdifferent. We’re doing a lot of episodes virtually. So we’ve created this thing called theBox Challenge. Whoever my guest is, we have a bunch of different celebrities who we’reworking with currently. Basically, we do a challenge where a random box that the producerswill send, and I don’t know what it is either, will show up each ofour doors. We have to record ourselves doing whatever the task in the box is.It could be anything. It could be LEGOs, it could be a puzzle, it couldbe whatever. Take care of an animal for a day. Nobody knows what it’s goingto be. So we’ve been doing these virtual box challenges. We also started this segmentcalled Athletes at Home, and I’ve been interviewing NFL and Major League Baseball athletes whoseseasons are in hiatus right now. And just basically talking to them about what they’vebeen doing in quarantine, how this has affected their respective sport, and just what theyforesee the future of their sport to look like and how much different that is.It’s crazy because we look at celebrities and we look at athletes, especially professional athletesas being almost godlike figures that are above what normal society has to deal with.But it’s almost crazy how the coronavirus has put everybody on a level playing field. And even athletes, we’re basically on the same playing field with respect to this virusas athletes are. They’re dealing in the same way, and at the end ofthe day, we’re all human beings.
So I’ve been doing that. Then we’re doing another segmentwhere we’re revisiting a lot of the small business owners that we shot 1st Looksegments with. There’s a zoo in Miami called Jungle Island. There’s an aquarium in Arizonathat we shot with. And basically just, “Hey, what’s it been like being a businessowner, working for a zoo or a place that takes care of animals, what’s itbeen like during this pandemic? And what’s the outlook, and when you guys going toreopen? How’s that been?” So we’re doing follow-up stories on some of the past segmentsthat we’ve had. So believe it or not, as crazy as quarantine has been, it’sbeen nonstop for me. It hasn’t been much of a break.
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