Olympic athlete Adam Rippon can add Stars on Mars Season 1 Champion to his list of accomplishments. FYI, Stars is a reality show where a motley crew of “celebronauts” pretends to live in a habitat on Mars.
Shot in the Australian Outback, the red dust and desolate landscape stood in for the Red Planet. Each week, the celebronauts worked together on “missions” and would then have to decide who wasn’t “mission critical.” Whoever was voted least critical to the mission was eliminated from the show and sent “back to Earth.” All accompanied by the dulcet tones and shady sarcasm of “Shatty Daddy” (William Shatner) issuing orders on-screen from Earth.
After 12 episodes and at least that many successful challenges, Adam was declared the Brightest Star. He even excelled at possibly the hardest challenge: living peacefully in close quarters with his castmates. The Messenger has the exclusive details.
Brightest Star in the Universe
After talking his way out of the first elimination (he said he was “too hot” to go home), Adam became a valued team member. He quickly established a tight bond with singer Tinashe and Real Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams. The trio ended up being the final three standing at the end.
While he’s still processing the whole Mars experience, Adam confessed that not everything was as it seemed. Does that mean they weren’t really on Mars? Color me shocked.
“I really appreciate the way that it’s edited,” he admitted, “because it makes it seem like I have a real strategy throughout … And I can guarantee you, I had maybe one or two working brain cells while I was there. I had no strategy.”
“When I first started the show,” the Season 26 Dancing with the Stars Champion said, “my only goal was to be on as long as possible … I want my friends to watch it. So [when he did make it to the final] episode, I was like, ‘Perfect, this is great, this is all I needed to do.'”
“I got to be in this final … top three with me, Tinashe and Porsha” he continued. “It was the best because we had been there from the very beginning … so it felt like, ‘Well of course we made it to the very end.'” Adam then expressed a “huge thank you to the editors … who pieced together a few pieces of audio [and made] me seem brilliant!”
Rejected by NASA, recruited by Fox
Before the show aired, Adam posted on Instagram, “I may have been rejected by NASA … but I was welcomed with OPEN ARMS … at FOX. I didn’t know FOX had a space program, but they do.”
And much like recruits bond in boot camp, Adam was surprised by how close he became with his castmates. “We lived with these people for 24 hours a day,” he said. “We saw them the moment they woke up … we saw them when they were missing their families. And we saw them when they wanted to cry and when they did cry.”
“When you get older, it’s harder to make friends,” he continued. “But when you’re in a situation like this, you have to start relying on people who you’ve just met, and it makes you feel really close and really connected … really quickly … The most real, substantial thing that we’ve all taken away from the show is how close some of us have still remained because of this whole experience.”
TELL US – WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT ADAM WAS THE WINNER OF STARS ON MARS? DID YOU EXPECT SOMEONE ELSE TO WIN?
