It’s very tough to pick out the most accomplished member of MTV’s vast Real World/Road Rules/Challenge universe, considering Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, podcast giant Theo Von, and WWE icon Mike “The Miz” Mizanin all got their start there. But speaking purely about the world of reality television, Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio undoubtedly takes the crown, even if giants like Christopher “CT” Tamburello, Wes Bergmann, Cara Maria Sorbello, and Trishelle Cannatella all have very impressive resumes.
Devenanzio is not only the all-time Challenge champion with seven titles to his name, but he’s also appeared on Traitors, House of Villains, Worst Cooks in America, and he spent five years as the host of NBC’s 1st Look. And even though he’s now 43 years old and would be quite justified in declaring himself too old for this shit, he’s still willing to spend several months a year trapped in an overseas Challenge house filled with maniacs in pursuit of his elusive eighth ring.
He’s one of many veteran players on The Challenge: Vets & New Threats, which premiered in late July. The twist this season is that every Challenge mainstay is paired with a newbie from another reality show. In the first episode, Bananas joined forces with Survivor 45 winner Dee Valladares. Unsurprisingly, the other teams correctly sussed out that they were a major threat.
During a whirlwind press New York press tour, shortly after coming back from Rome, where he attended the wedding of the Challenge’s Kyle Christie, Devenanzio stopped by the Rolling Stone offices to chat about the new season, his short stint on Traitors, how he keeps his aging body in shape, and his hopes for Challenge 50.
You got all the way to the end on Challenge 40, and that was a grueling season. Did you give any thought to simply taking this season off?
Nah. I took my little break. I took my little Season 36/37 break. And I say this every season, but I mean it. You never know when it’s going to be your last one. I’m all about keeping the franchise rolling. And I think now they need the OGs more than ever to hopefully keep the torch going. And once we found out the location, and when we found out who some of the cast members who were going were, we realized we were going to need a pretty strong veteran contingency in order to hold down the fort.
I’m like a protective father, man. I literally look at The Challenge as a child of mine, and I want to make sure it has the best care. And sometimes the best care is not bringing in a bunch of — as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar put it — a throbbing scum of fame-hungry desperados.
We’re like the Alamo. That’s how I felt on 40. I felt like the reason why I really dug my heels in the way that I did on 40 was because I felt like I was the last line of defense. If I go down, then basically these new kids are going to run roughshod over our franchise. I couldn’t let that happen.
Speaking of 40, a lot of fans hated the karma points.
Who are you telling? You’re talking to a guy who hated the karma points more than anyone.
The entire point of the game is to outsmart and outcompete the others. It’s not to make them love you after you kick them out.
It shouldn’t even be called karma because it has nothing to do with karma. It was more of a popularity contest. The problem is that people don’t look at my body of work and go, “You know what? You’ve done well, therefore you deserve this.” It’s more like, “You’ve done well, therefore you don’t need any more.”
That’s what happened with me. My best friend Leroy [Garrett] gave me one karma point. Laurel…and I was the only one that had this girl’s back and went to bat for the entire season…she gave me one karma point. And both of them were like, “Oh, it’s nothing personal. We just feel like you’ve won enough and you don’t need any more.” And I think that’s just wrong.
There were a few people who obviously deserved getting one karma point from us because we had it out. But that’s what it all kind of boiled down to. It had nothing to do with karma; it just had to do with who was the most popular. It wasn’t even who they wanted to see do well; it was who they wanted to see not do well.
The final was really heavy on swimming, which strongly favors people with that one skillset.
Yeah, it was unfortunate, dude, because that season that I put together…I really had my back against the wall the entire time. Those are always the ones that give you the most satisfaction winning, because as the saying goes, “The most beautiful view is after the toughest climb.” And some of my most difficult seasons, like Free Agents, Rivals One, were my favorite wins because of the road that I had to get to in order to win at the end.
I always feel like if you don’t see an elimination, if you don’t have to get dirty throughout the season, and then you win a final, those are the wins that I’ve considered in the past, the ones that aren’t as satisfying, but not everyone sees it like that.
You don’t want to coast.
I’ve never been able to. I always think it’s so unfair for other people to get a chance to coast and then go to a final. And for me, it really has nothing to do with my game. I could show up…You’ll see what happens this season on 41. It doesn’t matter if these people know me, don’t know me, have read about me, have no fuckin’ clue who I am. I’m the one that everyone wants to get out day one.
This happened on Challenge USA on CBS. Many of them had no idea who I was until I walked in the house. Yet, day two, it was like, “We’ve got to get Bananas out.” I had the most votes stacked up against me. This season’s no different, these new threats, [they have] no clue who I am. You’ll see night one whose name’s already getting tossed around for being eliminated.
But that’s kind of like the bed that I’ve made for myself. I am totally fine sleeping in it. I just wish people, fans too, would give me a little more credibility where it’s like, “Oh man, why he didn’t really do this well this season? Or how’d you not win?” It’s like, “Do you understand the road that I’ve had to forge to get to this point? It’s 10 times harder than anyone else.”
That happened on Traitors as well. You were murdered first.
There was nothing I could even do about that. At least on The Challenge, it’s like, “All right, you want send me in? Guess what? I’m probably going to go [into elimination] and I’m probably going to win and I’m probably going to come back, and then I’m coming for you.”
Traitors is like in the dead of night, they give fuckin’ Dan [Gheesling] carte blanche authority to just make this unilateral decision to murder me, which had nothing to do with the strategy of the game. It had to do with his tiny little ego.
After 40 ended, did you patch things up quickly with Tori Deal and Michelle Fitzgerald?
Yes. And 40 was funny because…I don’t want to say that I was “acting,” but I felt like there was a role that I created for myself that I had to see through. I became the heel. I became the anti-establishment. There was this alliance, and I became the antithesis of that alliance. And what happened then was that anyone who was associated with Tori was fair game. Olivia [Kaiser], Michele, Jordan [Wiseley], anyone in that little group. So even once things kind of mellowed out and it was getting close to the final, I’m like, “I have to continue this storyline on.”
Now, once the show was wrapped and even kind of before…I mean, I’m not going to sit here on camera and have this big apology, like, “Okay, let’s be best friends again, Tori.” I would rather just wait until after the season. But yeah, we’re good now. I love Tori to death. I love Michele too. Devin and I were actually just in Rome for Kyle’s wedding, so we’ve kind of squashed it, too.
But I really do try as hard as I can to not take my work home with me, although sometimes it’s more difficult than others. But you’ll see there’s a very, very noticeable carryover effect going into this season from last season with Olivia. For some reason, she still harbors resentment toward me for her going home. I don’t know why.
How do you train differently for a Challenge season at age 43 than you did at 23?
I like to compare myself to a pitcher who, when he was new to the league, had a fastball that nobody could hit, but has lost his velocity, so now he has to be good at throwing dirty pitches and has more junk in his arsenal. I’ve just gotten a lot better at the political manipulation type game and the social game.
It’s not that I haven’t always had a strong social game, but I used to rely purely on my athleticism and my physical skill sets. I’d walk in the house, put a middle finger up to everyone, and be like, “If you want to get rid of me, go ahead.”
But I just train, man. I stay in shape. I own a gym, Rumble in South Florida. That’s literally what I do. Six days a week, I’m in there for cardio and for strength training.
I’ve also entered the world of biohacking. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with peptides, but peptides are essentially like a cheat code, man. They’re a fountain of youth. I’ve been on a peptide regimen now for the last three years. They’re amino acids that aid in cellular regeneration. And that’s what, as we age, starts to slow us down. So I’m able to keep up with the younger guys.
Every veteran is paired up with a rookie this season. What are the upsides and downsides of that?
They don’t know what they’re doing, so that’s difficult. And it’s funny because even though people have never done The Challenge, they think that because they’ve done another reality show, they know how to play the game. The Challenge is a whole different animal. And it’s funny when you see people from Survivor or from Big Brother, Reindeer Games, whatever the hell, come in and try and play the game that they played on that show on The Challenge because it doesn’t translate.
On The Challenge, you are in the open with your game playing, with decisions you’re going to make, because it will get exposed. If you’re not exposed this season, the next season, you’re going to have to deal with it. So it’s almost better to just deal with it now. Whereas Survivor and Big Brother are much more like cloak and dagger. You can hide in the corner and lie to everybody and keep secrets because it’s not going to get exposed until the person’s gone, and you’re never going to see them again.
You are paired with Dee in this new season. How much did you know about her going into this?
A little bit. I wish I knew a little more because I wasn’t totally familiar with her body of work. We’d met once or twice before. We actually met the first time at the Season 40 finale party. She’d already known that she was going on The Challenge, didn’t even tell me. Once I found out she was going, I was like, “Why? We both live in South Florida. You couldn’t have given me a heads-up?”
I was familiar with how she played in Survivor, and what I liked about her game on Survivor is that she almost, kind of like me, has no remorse in the way that she plays. She is there to win and doesn’t care who she has to bulldoze in the way to get there. So I was almost like, “Probably better to be paired up with you so that way you can use these powers of deception and manipulation against other people.” It’s been a few seasons since I’ve had a showmance. So why not?
She said she was hesitant to be your partner since it puts a target on her back.
That’s the way they made it look. That’s the way it’s edited. That is not reality. And here’s the thing: I like to be upfront, whether it’s a relationship outside of the show or anything. I want people to know what they’re getting into. I want to let them to know that there will be some upsides to this, but there’s also going to be a lot of downsides that come along with either partnering with me or dating me. And with her, I told her both ways.
I told her, “Listen, I have a tremendous amount of knowledge of how the game works. I’ve got a lot of relationships here that we’re able to leverage. However, you’ve already seen coming in how much attention has already been placed on me. Being my partner, then you are going to be kind of tied to that.” She’s like, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
That’s the conversation that we had because I was going to have the first pick. I was going to be able to choose who I wanted as my female partner. And I told her first, I was like, “If I choose you, I don’t want you to feel like I’ve now just compromised your game by being your partner.” And she was like, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is what I want. I want to be kind of like the villain. I want to be the heel.”
But then in the interview, it made it look as if it was like, “I don’t know, this guy’s kind of liability.” You know how it is. For a storyline, it’s much better for her to be worried about being a part of me than owning it.
Did you clock Yeremi Hykel as a big threat from the moment he came into the game?
Right from the beginning. Right from the jump. Everyone’s like, “This motherfucker ran up this mountain faster than anything you’ve ever seen.” He was on the way back down before half the people who’ve made it to the top. The guy’s an ultramarathon runner. Jordan’s not here this season. We’ve basically gotten a new and improved Jordan.
Usually, it’s like if you have some really impressive skill set, you want to keep it in your back pocket. The guy’s got no problem talking about how he runs 75 miles for fun. I’m like, “Buddy, I’m done after four.”
I’ve never seen a rookie class, or threats we’re calling them, that are this confident. Usually, a lot of times, the threats will come in, they’ll look up to us as the vets, like, “What do we do? How do we play the game?” These people didn’t care. They were going to come in, and they were going to play their own game. Sydney [Segal] is another one, dude. She came in with two middle fingers up to everyone. She’s going to be great. She’s doing really good.
This is very random, but why did Nia wear jeans when you climbed that mountain?
Okay, here’s the thing. You know what we were told that morning? We get out of the hotel. We’re like, “What should we wear?” They were like, “Oh, just wear something casual, like something you’d wear to the airport.” I’m like, “All right.” I wear Crocs. Luckily, they gave us other shoes, but I did the first half of that first episode literally on a mountain wearing Crocs. And then out of nowher,e TJ’s like, “All right, we got some shoes for you guys. You’re just going to run. Follow this trail to the house,” making it sound like it’s going to be like an afternoon little jog. It couldn’t have been any different than that. But yeah, I felt bad for Nia wearing pants, and C.T. wearing another human being.
He did show back up in dad bod mode again. Did that surprise you?
Nah, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. That’s what the guy does. He’s like a yo-yo. It’s almost like he looks at The Challenge as fat camp. I’ve never seen anyone lose weight faster than him in my entire life. The guy will just fast for like a week straight. It’s like, “Where’d you go?” But yeah, he’s kind of owned it at this point.
Watching him get picked last by the threats was pretty shocking since he’s a Mount Rushmore Challenge figure.
This is what I’m saying. I think that the rookies this season came in, and it wasn’t about folklore. It wasn’t about what you’ve done in the past. It’s like, “What are you doing right now? How are you going to compete in this game right now?” And I think a lot of these guys were just hip to the game right out of the gate. I think that initial charge up that mountain showed everyone where everybody stood.
It ranked us. And I think they saw how horribly, other than myself, the rest of the male vets did. And they were like, “I do not care about beating this guy in the final now.” We’re going into this season without the benefit of intimidation or the threat factor. It’s just not there.
Who is your number one? Nany? Leroy?
It’s always Leroy. Leroy’s my guy. And Nany, obviously. Aviv [Melmed] is obviously one of my closest friends outside of the show as well, one of my angels. So yeah, pretty much the same crew I usually go into every season with if they’re there.
I love seeing Aviv back in the mix after all these years.
Yeah. What’s happened with a lot of Challenge people who have stepped away, they have a very difficult time adjusting and adapting back to the flagship show, which is why most of them are more comfortable in All Stars, which is basically the retirement camp for The Challenge. Because the game’s just different. The game moves so fast, it changes so fast, and the competition gets so much better. Not just the competition; just kind of the way you have to be, the way you have to move, the way you have to act changes all the time.
One of the things I attribute my success to on The Challenge over the years is the fact that I’ve never stepped away. I’ve never stepped away and started a family. I’ve never stepped away and gotten married. Now, obviously, there’s some drawbacks to that as well. I’m one of my only friends in my age bracket of my friend circle who isn’t married and doesn’t have a kid. But then it’s like, they’re looking at me and they’re like, “Take your time, dude. You’re not missing out on anything. Trust me, what you’re doing is way more fun.”
But because I have never stepped away and because I’ve stuck with this entire time, it’s then enabled me to stay on people’s TV screens, be in front of their faces for the last 19 years. You don’t know when you’re going to have one of these epic viral moments. I’ve been on the good or bad side of almost every viral moment that’s taken place on The Challenge over the years, and I think that’s what’s really enabled me to separate myself from the rest of the pact and use the same platform that we’ve all been given to launch podcasts, clothing lines, spinoff shows, other opportunities for other shows. So I think that’s kind of been the blueprint for me.
When you read the fan forums, the names of players they want again are usually Landon Lueck, Coral Smith, Eric Nies, Evelyn Smith, and Svetlana Shusterman. Do you hope to see them all back someday?
So here’s the thing. I would like to see them back. The question is, what are they going to contribute? Here’s what people don’t understand. When you talk about a Landon, freak athlete. The guy is arguably one of the best athletes who has ever played the game. Boring as fuck to watch, dude. Like literally like watching a candle melt. Same with Horacio [Gutiérrez].
These guys are great at the athletic part, but The Challenge is so much more than that. The Challenge is the social aspect. Ninety percent to 95 percent of the show is what you’re going to do in the house. That’s who I always look at as the people that are going to be the most fun to watch coming back, would love to see.
But also, a lot of them have moved on. They have families. They have careers. And there’s a certain way if you have a 9:00 to 5:00 corporate job in America, you can’t come on reality TV and do what you need to do in order to be entertaining. Because you do have so much more. I don’t have that.
I don’t have a corporate job back home or a boss that’s going to get mad if I act a certain way or whatever. So I’m able to just kind of be the unhinged version of myself and do what I need to do. But would I like to see some of them back on? Yes. Would they? It’s just difficult to see after this much time has passed. Like, Evelyn’s a lawyer now. Evelyn went to Harvard and is a lawyer. She can’t come on and be like Evelyn of the past. So I don’t know.
Some fans want to see you and Sarah Rice as partners. Could that ever happen?
That’ll never happen. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell. And the reason why has actually nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want to be on a show with her. I wouldn’t mind. Here’s the thing. The way The Challenge works is there is a tier system, and it’s the way to keep it fair. You get paid based on the number of shows you’ve been on. Sarah wants to come on and get paid the same as someone who has done 25 seasons, and she’s done four or five or whatever. So it’s never going to happen from that perspective.
Plus, especially at this point in my career, I’m not the Salvation Army. I’ve worked very, very, very hard. I’ve spilled a lot of blood and a lot of mud to get the branding and the notoriety that I have. And I am very cautious of who I interact with. Because, okay, Wes and I, for example, that rivalry or that banter, that back and forth, benefits both of us. This is the way that I’ve always seen it. That’s even true about me and Devin to an extent now. I feel like he’s put himself in a position where it’s like, “All right, we kind of both benefit from the back and forth.”
Sarah and I, at this point, there’s only one person who benefits from us going back and forth, and it’s her. And I am not going to donate any more of my social capital to her podcast or whatever to try to get attention from me. I moved on from that. She got the shit end of stick on Rivals 3. She’s never wanted to come back to have a shot at redemption up until, for whatever reason, now. And it’s too late.
How did you and Devin squash it?
Actually, in Italy, in Rome. After 40, he obviously had his reasons to dislike me, and vice versa. I guess I meddled in his relationship a little bit. But I’m not going to lie, and I will say this on record, and I said this before…I was, I think, a little bit misguided in what I thought the intentions of his relationship [with Michele] were. I saw it as a game move. If it is, then this is the longest play I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I was like, “If they stay together after 40, it’s simply to prove me wrong. Because if they break up, then they’re both going to have to admit that I was right.”
But they’re still together. I was just with him in Rome. He speaks so highly of her. They’re actually moving to South Florida, near me in Delray. They’re getting a place together. So I mean, it seems like they’re in it for the long haul.
I think Devin just wants to occupy the same space that I do, and there’s just not enough room, Devin. There’s just not. He also wants to wear my skin as a coat, so I think that’s part of it as well.
I’d love to see Kyle back. I really miss him.
I miss him too. I think he was supposed to actually be on All Stars 4 or something. But he was filming on Geordie Shore, and there was a conflict there. The guy has not changed one bit. I love him to death. I mean, he’s still a total maniac. I think he’s the best UK addition that the show’s ever had.
I would love to see you back on Traitors and actually play the game. Do you think that’s possible?
I do think it’s possible. I do think it’s in the cards. It’s actually potentially been in the cards over the past one or two seasons. But due to creative changes or my scheduling, we weren’t able to make it happen. But a little birdie told me there may be an All-Star season on the horizon, and if there is, then that might be the best way for me to make it back. Because I agree.
The thing about Traitors that I love… House of Villains, great show. Loved it. There’s no gamers there. So I literally felt like I was playing with children. My reality television IQ was so much higher than everyone else in the house. I’m like, “This almost isn’t fair.” But I love the show. I love being able to be on and be my total. They almost lean into the messiest version of who you are. That show’s amazing, but it’s not a competition.
And the thing is with Traitors is there’s always this debate out there in the television game world like, “All right, could someone on Survivor survive on The Challenge? Could someone on The Challenge survive on Survivor? Could someone on Big Brother? This is the best to ever do it. This is the best. Big Brother Legend, Survivor Legend.” Challenge never gets mentioned in the mix, even though we’ve done it harder, longer, faster, fuckin’ better than anyone else out there. But whatever.
Traitors is the first time saying, “We’re going to put you all in this format that none of you are familiar with, and then we’re going to see who does the best.” So I was really looking forward to taking the skill set that I had acquired over the years on The Challenge and applying that to a whole new realm, and I didn’t even get the opportunity to do it.
And even though I wasn’t there for the win, I took so much pride in Trishelle and C.T. being the sole winners of Traitors because I felt like this is proof that we are fuckin’ good. The Challenge never, ever, ever gets the love and the credit that it deserves for not just the space that we’ve created, but we’ve maintained.
Road Rules just had its 30-year anniversary. We’re on Season 41. The fact that we have done it for this long, the show is still around, the show is still relevant, the show is still groundbreaking, the show is still evolving. We were the first ones to start cross-pollinating from different shows and bringing other cast members in. So the fact that we’re still doing it, and then we go on a show like Traitors where you’re building up all these Big Brother and Survivor legends, and guess what? The Challenge people beat all of you.
If you could design the format for Challenge 50, how would you design it?
Please go back to an old school format. Keep it fuckin’ simple. I want you to put this in bold at the top of the article. The rest of this interview can just go away. What they need to understand, if they want this franchise to survive, is that we’ve got to keep it simple. We don’t need explosions. We don’t need spies and lies.
Dude, the best seasons in my opinion were the old school, The Duel, The Gauntlet, the Inferno, Exes, Rivals. You know why? Because it’s so easy to understand. It’s like two teams, badasses, good guys, exes. And we don’t need a curveball every challenge. Maybe one throughout the season. But for fans, this is why fans have such a hard time following. If I’m sitting here and I’m in the game and TJ’s explaining the rules and I’m lost. what’s the casual fan going to do?
I feel like in this day and age, it’s almost like, “Dude, you know the fans, you know what they want. Just, please, go back to old-school formats.” Nostalgia is in now, all right?
I want a hall brawl where you guys aren’t holding pillows.
I bet you do! I wouldn’t hall brawl at this point. I’d be like, “Nope, my neck is too important. TJ, I will see you later.”
To wrap up here, do you want to still be doing this in your fifties?
If I stay on these peptides, I’m going to be an infant in six months. So yes. Here’s the thing, as long as it makes sense for what I’m doing in my life and the projects that I have going on, The Challenge is such an important part of who I am.
And it may sound weird, but I understand now why growing up, when you hear these [older] athletes, and it’s like, “Dude, fuckin’ retire already, man. Walk away from the game.” I know why it takes so long, it’s because you get institutionalized, and it really does become a part of you. And it’s like there’s so much nostalgia and there’s so much reminiscing, and some of the best and worst moments of my entire existence took place on The Challenge. It’s almost like an emotionally abusive relationship that’s really just difficult to get out of.
I want to do it for as long as I can. I want to keep the torch burning for as long as I can. I want to show my haters, as much as they hate me, that there’s still a whole lot more for them to get ready to hate.
