Since the beginning, The Challenge: All Stars has been giving all-new meaning to the term “veterans.” Whereas The Challenge proper and other spinoffs like The Challenge: U.S.A. have been busy introducing fresh blood (er, fresh meat, in vintage Challenge parlance) into the franchise, All Stars gives some of the longer-in-the-tooth Challengers a place to shine.
This season, which premieres on April 10 on Paramount+, there are some serious blasts from the past in play, including a few folks even the most dedicated Challenge fan might’ve forgotten. The vastness of the generational variety in Season 4 brings with it a few ages-old alliances that put certain folks in peak positions right from the start. On the other hand, there are also some more recent folks who are already good enough to count as an “All Star,” and that’s a wholly different kind of advantage.
TV Insider caught up with a few of the returning stars from The Challenge: All Stars Season 4 to find out what it’s like to step back into the arena, so to speak, after years and years away.
Adam Larson, who’d been away since 2005’s The Gauntlet 2, said he “didn’t know f**king anybody” when he arrived in South Africa. “I just assumed I was the first one going home, that I was going right into eliminations. I mean, I was just ready for it…. They’ve been asking for a few years, since [All Stars] 1 came out. And just being a single parent in Florida… The recurring theme in all of these conversations is you have your other priorities, and we finally have a little bit of support in place to where we could go off and do these types of things. But it takes a lot of work. It’s really hard. And so if it didn’t feel right, if it was toxic or a conflict, I was going right now. There wasn’t any calling anybody or figuring out alliances ahead of time. Everybody else came in with so many connections.”
Similarly, Flora Alekseyeva, whose last (and only) previous Challenge was in Battle of the Seasons more than 20 years ago, found joining the game to be especially daunting due to her lack of friendships with the others.
“I only remembered [Adam]. And I remembered Veronica [Portillo], but I never really communicated with Veronica much last time,” she said. “It was a little awkward because I felt very intimidated by all of these superhero people.”
Even for Ace Amerson, who previously returned from his extended hiatus from the show in All Stars 1, found himself agape over some of the returnees on tap for this season.
“Seeing Flora, I was the biggest fan of Flora growing up. And like, I would be walking in the kitchen and I would see Flora just sitting there, and like, ‘Oh my God, this is Flora!’” he remembered.
Another fellow returnee who left him a bit shaken was Kefla Hare, who hadn’t competed in The Challenge since 1999 when it was still dubbed the Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Time hadn’t taken away Hare’s intimidation factor, of course: “When I saw Kefla, he had his mask on and this camouflage jacket, and he just looked so muscular. I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ Latterian [Wallace] had knocked me out in the first Challenge. And I’m like, ‘Man, dude, if I have to pole wrestle this guy, I’m just going home.’… He looked like he was ready to go to war.”
The upshot of being cast alongside so many other long-time alums is that this season gave everyone an opportunity to forge new friendships.
“I took away from this particular experience some really, really good friends, and I am still friends with them. And I’d never met them before,” Alekseyeva said. “Now, I could consider them friends and people that I could call and say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ Some people that I actually hang out with and see their family and their kids. So for me, it was a good way to meet new people and add on to my small group of people that I actually like.”
“It was a nice reintroduction to the family. You know, when you’ve been away from your family for a while — like you go to a family reunion — you don’t know who anybody is because all the kids have now hit puberty and s**t like that. That’s what it felt like,” Larson added.
The Challenge: All Stars, Season 4, Wednesdays, Paramount+