DR DREW Pinsky has revealed the cast of the upcoming Fox show Special Forces was forced to "strip naked" while filming in brutal desert conditions.
The famous 64-year-old doctor was put to the test along with 15 fellow celebrities- including Kate Gosselin, Jamie Lynn Spears and Mel B- in the reality competition show that premieres on January 4.
"From the moment it starts, you're gonna be like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening,'" Dr. Drew told The U.S. Sun in an exclusive interview while promoting Special Forces: World's Toughest Test.
"You're gonna think, 'How did they do this? How is this possible?'"
While the addiction specialist and Teen Mom reunion host couldn't spoil how the cast landed in the desert in the Middle East, he teased the timeline of events that led to the cast arriving in Jordan- Beginning with a phone call where he thought he was "being punked."
"I had been feeling sort of crappy. At that point I'd had multiple episodes of diverticulitis. I had a long Covid. I was feeling old and whiny, and I wasn't feeling myself," Dr. Drew said about his state of mind prior to the two-week training for the show.
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"I went out and I started training and to see if I could respond to what I thought would be the reasonable amount of training to do this thing that they were describing.
"And I started putting, you know, weight packs on (of 35-40 pounds of rocks) and running hills and sprinting. And I felt better, I felt great."
125-Degree Weather
He then had to take cardiac tests and "all kinds of psychological testing"- Up until this day, the cast is still checked on by staff because of the "extreme experience."
On day one, Dr. Drew said they were all "shocked" by what they had just gotten themselves into and within the first four hours, Kate, in particular, was blown away.
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"We were kind of quiet in the lunch tent, which is 125 degrees, and Kate Gosselin looked up and she goes, 'Guys, look at us. They've already changed us. We are different,'" the host of the Dr. Drew After Dark podcast recalled.
And lunch in the desert was far from any fancy meal the celebs are used to eating.
"The first day you got sort of rice and like a stew," the doc added. "But as time went on, it went down to a rotten banana and an apple. So it was more and more and more restricted. Towards the end, you don't sleep or eat.
"You're at war- It's special ops training."
NAKED & AFRAID
The celebs were led by an elite team of ex-special forces operatives, Rudy Reyes, Mark "Billy" Billingham, Jason 'Foxy' Fox and Remi Adeleke- all of whom Dr. Drew called "the scariest guys on Earth."
"The staff would come at you with tasks and demands and things where they were pointing out your shortfalls. And they would punish everybody," Dr. Drew said.
"You know, they stripped our clothes off at one point. I had to stand there naked, and then they threw us in a tank. And some people didn't swim and we had to pull each other out."
He continued: "But for me, probably the most intense thing was diving backwards out of a helicopter into the Red Sea from two-and-a-half stories up."
Overall, he believed the experience was "traumatic."
"Not traumatic in the sense that I was damaged by it, but traumatic in the sense that it was indelibly etched," he revealed.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES
Despite all the challenges the cast was put through, the show makes for "the most extraordinary television ever created" and is "unlike anything else," Dr. Drew claimed.
Further rewarding, he walked away feeling like he "wasn't old."
"I was in denial about being old and whining about that. And so, this was like, 'Oh, I get it. These are my limitations,'" he said, while noting he has shoulder problems.
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"I'm about as good as this age you could possibly be. And I'm cool with that... Now I feel great about [my age] and I also changed how I work out and stuff. I'm doing more cardio, more pushups, more running, more of the stuff we were doing out in the desert."
Special Forces: World's Toughest Test premieres on Wednesday, January 4, at 8pm ET on FOX. Watch part of Dr. Drew's interview in the clip above.
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