Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test has finally returned for Season 3 and directing staff members Billy Billingham, a former SAS leader, and Rudy Reyes, a former United States Marine, are not going easy on the new group of celebrity recruits as they undergo demanding training exercises used in the Special Forces selection process. After less than 24 hours in Wales, actor Stephen Baldwin becomes the first recruit to exit the course — but instead of voluntarily withdrawing, he’s forced to turn in his armband after Reyes catches wind that he was “looking for a way out” with the on-site medic.
“I think people think this is a show, an actual show. No, it’s not. We’re running a course. There are no reshoots. There is no downtime. They’re living hard in the barracks. They’re cold, wet, and tired,” Reyes told DECIDER. “I don’t think there’s a single mirror in the whole thing. So it’s the first time some of these freaking face jocks have not looked in the mirror and got themselves beautiful. It’s a freaking culture clash. It’s down and dirty.”
Billingham speculated that Baldwin didn’t realize “it was going to be as real as it was” and that he was likely “thinking more of his image” when the course started to get difficult for him. The directing staff also felt that Baldwin was trying to save face by getting medically discharged instead of voluntarily withdrawing, which is why Reyes kicked him out at the start of Episode 2.
“When people are giving us excuses, you’re just looking for a way out. Now, particularly with men, they’ll either get aggressive, blame somebody else or blame something else. And he was going in that direction,” Billingham said. “So we decided at that point, ‘Okay, you ain’t going to get your glorious way out. You’re going to go out the way you should go out.’”
The two men were certainly more impressed with actress and former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Denise Richards, despite her VW in Episode 2. “Everybody says they want to get to the end, but the end is you going to your 100% and giving everything you’ve got. And she did that,” Billingham said, while Reyes described Richards’ short-lived performance on the show as “fantastic” and “really compelling.”
Billingham and Reyes stopped by DECIDER’s studio, where they talked all things Special Forces Season 3 — from pushing ex-NFL star Cam Newton into the ocean, to which celebrities they’ve been excited to meet on the Fox show. Check out the full interview below.
First of all, thank you both for your service both in the military and for our entertainment purposes on Special Forces. I’m so excited about Special Forces Season 3 and every season has such an interesting mix of recruits. How did you both feel about Season 3’s group?
BILLY BILLINGHAM: I’ll probably talk for Rudy as well as the rest of the team. We go into it open minded, open hearted. Everybody’s come for a reason. We don’t really know anything about the people that turn up. So it’s interesting for us to find out who’s there, why they’re there. But I think if there’s one thing that wraps the whole thing up with everyone that comes on the show, they’re there for a reason, a very personal reason. And most of it’s because they’ve lost direction. They really need to be brought back down to reality and find out who they really are. So it’s always the same for us, but it’s exciting to see new faces.
RUDY REYES: With all of our experience working with people in the most friction-filled places in the world of foreign militaries and other assets, we know people and we can observe and quickly find out what makes you tick. And that’s what we’re there to do. Billy says it all the time, “We’re not here to break you. We’re here to peel you back.”
We obviously see very tough, no-nonsense versions of you both in the show. But is there any celebrity who has come on who you were secretly super excited to meet?
RUDY: Yeah, I’ve had a few.
BILLY: The American ones are all new to me because most of the American talent, I don’t really know. So I’m interested in all these people, their backstories and how they started and what they’re doing now. In the U.K., there’s been people on, especially soccer players – we call them football players – that as a kid, I grew up watching. I don’t want to say I have heroes, but these are the people I’ve looked up to. And then when you see them in front of you and they’re telling you their life story, that’s exciting. But you’ve got to play that poker face and listen to their story and then finish off with a bit of advice, which is what we do. So yeah, it’s always exciting, especially this version now for me, they’re all new people, they’ve all got great stories and good reasons to be there, so it’s always exciting.
RUDY:I love Marion Jones. I was a huge fan. She was the best runner, the fastest woman in the world. And then with the struggles that happened after with BALCO and the doping, she finds herself in prison. A world-class, world champion athlete with Nike, with everything at her fingertips, and now she’s doing hard time. I love a Rocky Balboa story. I love a comeback story. And so I was really excited to see her out there. Really, really proud of her attempts.
Billy, I audibly gasped when you first pushed Cam Newton into the ocean in Episode 1. Why was he the perfect first victim?
BILLY: Because, I mean, physically, look at him. I’m sure everybody literally does look up to him because he’s a big Eddie. And what a great job I have! Bringing people down to a level they’re not expecting. It sets the scene. The rest of the team, all of the recruits, don’t see that. They don’t know what’s going on. They’re still backed up. Just the shock of capturing like, “How is this going to go?” I don’t think he really realized what was going to come. And then he gets hit hard. And it’s the best way to start.
RUDY: Yes. I’ll never forget that freaking opener. We come zooming in, we’re throwing in freaking gas and freaking flashbangs and getting control. “Down, down, down, down!” And we’re already assessing all of these recruits. We’re even looking at how they’re dressed. Like, how switched on are you? So that Cam Newton had about 17 layers of his fashion wardrobe on his thing. I’m like, “This is not the freaking runway, y’all.” And sure enough, you saw him swimming in a heavy sweater. I’m like, yeah, that’s what you get.
BILLY: To be fair, they don’t know what’s coming. He took it well. Thank God. Because he’s huge. He’s a big man.
Yeah, he didn’t retaliate!
BILLY: I’m glad!
Rudy, you did the demonstration of the first training exercise, which was that wild helicopter jump. Do you ever get nervous to do these things yourself? Or is it just part of the job now?
RUDY: Of course. You know what? It’s so interesting being in the Forces and fighting all over the Middle East and Africa and such. Back then, when you’re young and all of your teammates are just as hard and just as fired up as you are, you don’t really have fear. You mitigate risk, but you don’t have fear. Now that I’m older and then I have children, yeah, sometimes I get scared too. I get scared too. But you know what? We do a lot of rehearsals and we always support each other. We play to our strengths and we always support each other.
One part of the show I find super interesting is the 1:1s you guys do with the recruits. Does it ever surprise you how vulnerable they get during your conversations? And does it make you want to go easier or harder on them when it comes to the next task?
RUDY: What sticks in my mind is Kenya Moore on the first season. Kenya Moore in Real Housewives of Atlanta, always the heavy, always the hardass, fighting all the women, being this freaking badass-B. It’s me and this man [Billy] doing her freaking mirror room, and she immediately starts to cry, saying, “You know what? That’s all an act. I’m in an abusive relationship. My husband, who I’m divorcing, I let him beat me, hit me. And I’m just trying to get myself together for my daughter.” It moves you. All these people’s stories, they move you. I said before, it is a human revelation show under the guise of military selection. It’s really about the people.
BILLY: The show is that piece. I remember when I first started doing it, I didn’t like that bit because I’m not a psychologist. I’m not really an interviewer. But as the show’s grown, we’ve grown with it. And that to us is the most important because it really shows who the person is and why they’re there. Now there’s something about that room. I don’t know what it is. People can come in and try and guard what they really want to talk about. But after being in that room for a minute, that goes, and everything comes out. But the beauty of that is they get off their chests what they’ve really come for, which is generally they’ve lost direction. They’ve had something traumatic in their life that’s dragging them back or held them down or they have generally lost who they really are. And we bring them right down to ground level, peel them back, as we say, peel them back to their vulnerability. We say, “Look, you know what? It’s okay to fail, it’s okay to have issues, but now it’s your time to move forward and become a better version of yourself.”And that mirror room is what really peels them back.
But we don’t have all the answers. Like I said, we’re not psychologists, Generally, people come in, they’ve got something to get off their chest, which already is history. So it’s already happened. And as soon as you highlight them to the fact that it’s done, you can’t change it. You can only now become better and grow. And they realize that in that mirror room. But there’s a lot of emotions. People break down crying. We have to keep the poker face, and you want to cry with some of them. It’s like, “Okay, let’s now get up and go again.” It’s great for that. And they walk out and that’s when we see the real characteristics of every recruit that comes on the show after that room.
I will say I was kind of getting Tara Reid vibes from Denise Richards in the first episode, but I thought she had a really powerful reason for being there. As we know, she is the second recruit to VW. Did that surprise you at all?
BILLY: Yes and no. I think, to be fair, the show is a personal journey. Everybody says they want to get to the end, but the end is you going to your 100% and giving everything you’ve got. And she did that, she got off her chest what she needed to, she showed her vulnerabilities, and then she showed the strength of building resilience. She still got on. She went through a lot of physical and mental challenges that we pushed her through. A lot of them are very difficult, and she never gave up. But she reached her limit, to be fair. I mean, we didn’t want to push her any further anyway, so we were glad she went on that stage purely because of her age and physical condition. Every single day we tell them we ramp up and we do. It gets physically and mentally harder. We watch everybody very, very closely and up to a point when they’ve got the best of it, now we don’t need to go any further. And she really had reached that point. She did have a few little injuries which resulted in the leaving, but it was a good time to go, to be fair. And she did great. She got out of it when she needed to. We got to know her. It was good.
RUDY: She was fantastic. I bagged her. You were doing the mirror with her with Q, maybe. So I bagged her. So when you’re the bag man, and you bring them in, you take control, it already puts them on the back foot. They sit down in the mirror room and boom, it all falls away. But I’m on the other side of the door with the ears to listen. And I’m hearing what she went through with the divorce, with the children, with the fear when she was in a shooting, and these things, and her character of being the best mom she possibly can be. And I think all of us parents can relate to that. Really, really compelling. She was really compelling.
When I talked to Christy Carlson Romano, she said there was something militaristic about being a child star, which she thinks helped her in this process. We also saw something similar with JoJo Siwa last season. Would you agree that former child actors or even athletes who have been training since childhood tend to handle the pressure better than other recruits?
BILLY: I think they do, because with that comes a lot of discipline, and this show is about discipline. It’s about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I know it’s a cliche we use all the time, but it really is. I guess as a child actor going through that sort of regime, away from your parents, strange environments, learning all the time and having to perform whatever, it does give them that little bit of a hedge. But there’s so many more things to it.
RUDY: I would say, Sam, the showbiz people tend to do better than the athletes. We’ve had some dancers. They’re always fantastic. They’re very fit, very disciplined. They’re on, and they work long hours. The athletes tend to have a shorter window. And so when it’s no longer fun, when the fun meter’s taken, they’re ready to go. But yeah, the showbiz people, JoJo Siwa, a great example, Hannah Brown, a great example, they’re used to keep turning it on and keeping it on for as long as it takes.
BILLY: It’s a mindset. If you want to be there, you’ll be there. Your mind will take a broken body to a place you never thought you could go. But if you lose your mind, you ain’t going nowhere. Now, all these big athletes and these sort of people are very fit and very disciplined, but one dimensional. They get a good night’s sleep. They get driven to where they need to be. They get good food, they get good rest, and they call the shots. Now they’re in a world where if they ain’t calling the shots—they’re cold, they’re wet, they’re hungry—and that’s what breaks them down. The reality stars or children that have gone through all that we just talked about, they’re kind of disciplined to that. It is the mindset that makes a difference.
Speaking of JoJo Siwa, I have to ask you both about last season’s viral moment where she carried Tom Sandoval on her back during a mission. Did that surprise you? What were you thinking during that moment?
RUDY: She’s very robust. That’s a very strong young woman, and we both thought she would be an asset in the military. She was there to give her 100%. And we all were really, really impressed. It’s interesting, what took her out was the psychological and emotional at the end. A little bit of interrogation, a little bit of P.O.W. training, and it was too much.
BILLY: She definitely got what she wanted from it. We were egging her to go all the way, to finish. We wanted that and [we] believe she could have, but she decided that was enough for her. She gave 100% on everything. She actually thrived on being knocked back and getting up again, which is what we’re looking for. She really listened, learned and wanted to improve and she surprised all of us, to be honest, didn’t she?
RUDY: Yeah, I mean, for sure.
BILLY: I didn’t know anything about her. She’s never been away from her family. I thought she was going to struggle with this. No, she absolutely got everything out of it…all the hard tasks.
RUDY: The driving test was excellent.
BILLY: She’s a fast thinker, on her feet. She’s one of these people who when she does it, she gives 100%, and that’s all we asked for. And she did really, really well.
It was really interesting to see Kayla Nicole open up in the premiere as well – and they definitely had the computer with the article about Travis and Taylor ready to go! How will we see her evolve this season? Because she does seem pretty … for lack of better words … down bad in her one on one.
BILLY: She’s the best example I said about coming out of the mirror room and then realizing, “I’ve got nothing else other than to drive forward.” You’ll see. She’s a classic example of that. She lets her vulnerabilities go. From the first couple of days, she was questioning herself and started to lose a little bit of direction. And I think she was probably close to saying, “I’m done.”
RUDY: Yes, on the beach.
BILLY: We did the mirror room and she realized, “The world knows everything about me. I don’t care anymore.” And my God, you’ll see. She then smashes it. She’s a strong woman. But she was enjoying the cold, the wet, the being miserable, being shouted at.
The awful part of it!
RUDY: Yes, when she finally embraced it. Remember on the beach, we were pushing them so hard, they were all getting fatigued. And boy, she just looked like a wet rat with her matted hair, crawling. [We were like], “Get up! Let’s go!” And I think he was going, “You don’t want to be here, do you? You don’t want to be here, do you?” And then something snapped. When she went into that freaking mirror room, she was born again. Born again hard.
Yup, that does it. When Steven Baldwin was the first one to complete the helicopter exercise, I thought he would end up as a surprising star. But he ended up being the first one to leave. Rudy, what was the thought process kicking him off the course? Because he didn’t explicitly say he wanted to VW to the directing staff.
RUDY: Alright, how about this? We owe a responsibility to the course – our course that we create, and all the recruits on it. We’re not there to hold any individual’s hand. We were not individuals in the military. We had to conform. And remember he says something like, “When people say ‘Stephen, this is the emotion that we want.’” I said, “Well, we don’t call you Stephen here. You’re number five here.” We had to let him go. We wanted more out of him, but we could see that he was just going to be taking too much time.
BILLY: The cold truth is this. No one wants to fail, and no one wants to admit their vulnerabilities, except for in the mirror room, of course. He probably had the expectation of “Let’s stop. Let’s have a coffee.” I don’t think he realized it was going to be as real as it was. And then he realized. I think he was thinking more of his image and what people think of him. I think one of the DS quietly highlighted, if it looks good, it’s all James Bond, he’ll do it. If it’s uncomfortable, like running with a weight on your back and being wet, he ain’t interested. He wants to look good. And that’s not what it’s about. And I think he was realizing he’s going to fall. He got a great start, but he realized he was out of his depth. If I’m honest, I think he was just looking for the excuse. And they all do. They all want that credible, “It wasn’t me. They took me off the course.” We don’t do that. We’ll take you off the course once your legs have dropped off or your arms dropped off.
RUDY: Remember in Season 2, [Tyler] Cameron’s just projectile vomiting, and Billy says, “Shut your mouth.” So we know what the human body can go through and beyond. Yeah, you’re exactly right. It kind of blows our mind. I think people think this is a show, an actual show. No, it’s not. We’re running a course. There are no reshoots. There is no downtime. They’re living hard in the barracks. They’re cold, wet, and tired. They need to lean on each other. I don’t think there’s a single mirror in the whole thing. So it’s the first time some of these freaking face jocks have not looked in the mirror and got themselves beautiful. It’s a freaking culture clash. It’s down and dirty.
BILLY: It’s hard and it’s demanding, every second of every day. Everybody wants to do well. Everybody does worry about how they’re going to perform. And he got to the point where he realized, “This is going to be too hard.” And he wanted that excuse to go and we weren’t going to give it to him. There’s number of ways of going out. You take off your helmet and you say “I VW,” which means you voluntarily withdraw. You’ve had enough. That’s fine. [Or] we call people. That’s when we see people have given all they’ve got, there’s no point taking them any further now. And we would take them out of the course. That’s generally for safety, because they ain’t going to get any more out of it. And then the other way is if you die. That’s nature’s way. It’s nature’s way of saying you failed. And then the final one is the medical withdrawal. The doctor can say, “You know what, they’ve got a problem.” And we watch everybody very closely. We don’t ever want to hurt or injure anybody. And we get that.
But we know where the limits are. We know where we’re pushing people. And that’s based on 27 years of experience. I’ve been in conflict and seen and know what people can do and being able to read people. So we’re reading them all the time. And when someone’s trying to show you an excuse, as Rudy said, we want a result, not an excuse. When people are giving us excuses, you’re just looking for a way out. Now, particularly with men, they’ll either get aggressive, blame somebody else or blame something else. And he was going in that direction. So we decided at that point, “Okay, you ain’t going to get your glorious way out. You’re going to go out the way you should go out.” And that’s why Rudy called him out and took his armband and told him to leave. It is brutal, but he has to face the truth.
RUDY: Maybe he can bounce back from that in his personal life and grow from that.
BILLY: He’s a good guy. I’m not putting him down. I’m just saying that’s how it is. It’s brutal.
And it’s not for everybody.
BILLY: No, it’s not. And once you’ve reached your limit, you’ve reached your limit. There’s nothing wrong with going, “Hey, I’m done.”
I can’t wait for the rest of the season. Fingers crossed for Season 4!
RUDY: It’s already happening. We can’t tell you where.
BILLY: We’ll get to make some more cry.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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