Weekend Plans With Rudy Reyes, The World’s Toughest Reality Host

Weekend Plans is our exclusive lifestyle feature where we highlight the real off-duty routines of the most exciting people in culture. 

This weekend, decorated U.S. Marine Corps veteran Rudy Reyes sits down with The Daily Wire in anticipation of his fifth season as host of Fox’s “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.” An advocate for the emotional resilience and physical fitness of all who serve, he leverages his strategies for managing his own PTSD to help others through his ocean conservation initiative, Force Blue. Here’s how he survived an abusive childhood and an ambush in Iraq, what fuels his relentless drive, and why one of the toughest guys around finds his purpose in serving others.

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I meet Rudy Reyes outside The Daily Wire headquarters in Nashville — and only one of us is wearing a shirt. Rocking an all-black shemagh-style military scarf around his neck, form-fitting tactical jeans, and combat boots, he effortlessly contorts a coiled pec tool given to him by a civilian in Morocco. Sinewy muscle fibers I’ve never seen in real life flex like an anatomically correct action figure. I look around for cameras. I’m sure I’m being punked. 

“Lauren!” He gives me a big hug. Rudy Reyes is larger than life. He greets everyone with the energy of an electrostatic field during a thunderstorm. He’s on a mission. And you better believe he’s going to finish it. 

He starred in the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries “Generation Kill,” based on his time as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After also touring in Afghanistan during his seven years with the military, Rudy carved out a successful career in entertainment as a “military survival instructor and mentor,” even inspiring the Enzo Reyes character skin in “Call of Duty,” which looks just like him.

But I first got to know Rudy as an uncompromising military instructor on the competition series “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.” Catapulting reality stars, celebrities, and former pro athletes completely out of their comfort zones, each thrilling challenge — from gas chambers to hand-to-hand combat — raises the stakes.

In the Marine Corps, “there’s no such thing as a badass,” he tells me. “There’s only trained and untrained.” I love the show, but I have to know why some cast members can’t turn off the switch when asked to fight. He says they “have never trained in an executive way to destroy something and then to stop.” It’s animalistic and savage, but that’s the point. The idea is to “elicit the violence needed to win the fight in the real world. You must be expected to already be possibly mortally wounded, and still your job is to return fire and kill the enemy.”

“There are many more people’s lives on the line than yours, and that sacrifice of self is what boot camp and your initial training is all about,” Rudy shares. “You run toward the gunfire, and you pray that you fight and die well. If you do that, you often live.”

Rudy’s energy serves convivial-workout-teddy-bear until game time. Then it’s beast mode. “When it’s time to work, it’s Sergeant Reyes,” he explains. For him, there’s almost no difference between actual military personnel and the celebrity cast vomit-crying in his presence. “It’s cruel to be kind in the business of life and death. I want the best out of them and the best for them. It’s because I love them that I’m so damn hard, and there are no excuses and no slack.” 

After shooting this season in the jungles of Malaysia, Rudy’s not kidding about the snakes and the accidental “cleanse” that caused him to drop 10 pounds while filming. But he laughs about it with the bravado of a guy in his 50s who isn’t afraid of anything. What are a few pit vipers when he was millimeters away from getting shot in the head during an ambush in Iraq? 

There’s a photo of the bullet hole in the windshield of his Humvee. He had leaned down to check on his wounded team leader’s tourniquet, which saved his life. “Anytime anybody says, ‘Rudy, are you allergic to anything?’ I just say 7.62s [AK-47 rounds] and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. That’s it,” he jokes. 

He’s lost many brothers along the way, but Rudy’s always found a way through. After surviving an abusive childhood and spending his formative years in a home for boys, he discovered a passion for the rules and discipline of martial arts.

Still, when he wasn’t on active duty, he found himself without a tribe. “I was a hardened professional fighter and killer and team leader, given immense responsibilities and doing some wild things: going undercover as bait to be kidnapped, and then killing these freaking guys. I was loved, respected, and cared for.” What he quickly discovered about civilian life was that “there was none of that” anymore.

“I was deeply depressed, so I became a workaholic. I started drinking to sleep,” he says. “I had two children from two different moms that I was not even present for, mentally or spiritually.” He wished he had been killed in combat. He “had a serious drug problem, an alcohol problem” and had completely given up, except for one thing: “The inner me, the kid that made it through the boys’ home, the kid that imitated Rocky’s exercises at 8 years old in the park. That kid didn’t f*cking give up. And he wasn’t gonna let me down.” 

Rudy got clean from his cocaine addiction and now manages depression and aggression with fitness training, as well as therapy and a bit of gratitude. He hopes to inspire other vets and private citizens struggling with some of the same.  

When we talked, Rudy had just spent time with his son, Dylan, and had an ocean dive on the books with his daughter, Belladonna. “I am having a childhood for the first time by being a father to them,” Rudy says. Bella completed the children’s program and now mentors other kids under Rudy’s ocean conservation initiative, Force Blue. “Holy moly, we’ve saved so many lives — not just under the surface, but on the surface with us,” he says. “It’s a very rich, purpose-driven life.”

First strike

I get nervous when Rudy tells me, “I’m up early, and we immediately attack.” By that, he means, “Well, I’ve got to have coffee and my nicotine pouch, and my beet juice gummies for vasodilation. You get that freaking blood flow.” 

After that, he’s on the move. “All my brothers and sisters know that I pace,” he says. “I like to think, and I squeeze my *ss, I squeeze my glutes and my legs — barefoot — and walk in circles and light up my posterior chain.” 

He listens to Jordan Peterson, the “TRIGGERnometry” podcast, or Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” series. Then, he thinks about his training for the day. “I always get nervous, just like I did the first time I walked into a weight room at the boys’ home in seventh grade, about not knowing what I’m going to do,” he says. “Seeing the bigger, stronger boys in there throwing around big weights, and me knowing it’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” But that doesn’t stop him from getting after it every day. “It regulates my mood. It makes me hunger for good quality food, not garbage.”

While he catches up on calls with his production team, he’s crafting workouts for his online community using the kettlebells and weights in his living room. “They are doing more for me, I think, than I am for them,” he says of his followers. “I’m looking at my life now at 54, soon to be 55. I’ve got another 50 years of hard work, of suffering good, and spending time with my loved ones and being in Mother Nature.” He knows the importance of staying plugged in. “I feel religiously compelled. I’ve never been this switched on and for all the right reasons, until now.” 

A tactical mindset

I had my assumptions, but as an unofficial representative of the civilian population, I wonder if Rudy still experiences PTSD. “Oh yeah,” he says without hesitating. But I’m surprised when he adds, “I love my PTSD, to be honest. That’ll be a sad day when I no longer have it. I might be just an empty wetsuit. Might be a shell of a man.”

Referencing the reframing technique of post-traumatic growth, he admits, “I’m never gonna lose my scars, inside and out. I’m never going to lose my super intense, heavy-duty dreams. I’m never going to lose that little bit of aggression that I have, and that little bit of depression. My self-esteem is still tethered to my ability to be an asset, and I’m not sure if that will ever change. But now I can be an asset for things that are so positive and good. And for the first time, I can be an asset for myself.”

He notes the contrast between his instincts and the hum of domestic life in the United States. “I love when I go to the lounge at American Airlines, and everybody’s looking at their phones,” he says. “I’ve got my book, and I’m eating consciously and looking around. I’m standing tall, and I’m observing, and I’m an asset in case somebody needs help.”

He manages difficulty sleeping and constant restlessness with his own strategies for living his best life. When his therapist asked what he liked to do for fun, he said, “I like to train really hard, and go on expeditions, and do martial arts.” He thrives on the type of combat training that involves jumping into the ocean from a helicopter and possibly losing consciousness. “And karaoke,” he says. I can’t help but laugh. “‘Dead or Alive’ by Bon Jovi,” he says. And “Heaven” by Warrant. “Heaven isn’t too far away,” he muses. “One of my favorites. Because I’m always with my teammates and having drinks and singing and backing each other up and laughing.” 

Mission directive

After our chat, Rudy changes his shirt on the fly and mists Dior Sauvage into the air. After taking a peek at the turmeric gummies and freeze-dried strawberries in his bag, I ask if he’s OK with dinner from the taco truck behind a local dive joint, Never Never. He tells me how he learned to stealthily enter a Middle Eastern farmer’s coop while on a night mission, capture a chicken, break its neck, and slice its chest open without making a sound or spilling a drop of blood. “Wait, so you were eating raw chicken breast?” I ask.

“When you’re hungry? Greatest meal you’ve ever had,” he confirms. He’ll be fine with a plate of carnitas.  

We meet up with a few cast members from the previous season of “Toughest Test” — Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson East, her husband, NFL star Andrew East, and singer and fitness influencer Jessie James Decker — along with trainer to the stars Gunnar Peterson. After spending the afternoon with him, I’m not surprised Rudy surrounds himself with people who have hearts as big as his.

I ask him for a few words of wisdom for anyone going through it. “Brothers and sisters, you’re not alone,” he says. “All of us have been through something that has hurt us — some of us, really bad. Those that survive it are compelled to reach out and help those that are going through it.” He points to the positive side of social media, advising, “You can connect to your friends and brothers and sisters from the unit or your old childhood friends or your family. I guarantee, you reach out, there’ll be 10 hands reaching back to you.”

Next, of course, he champions physical fitness. “You must get your physical fitness online,” he says. “We are a gestalt — a mind, body, and spirit. We’ve got a nervous system. We are a magical machine with a soul. You bring that machine back online and start seeing beauty. There’s a reason why we’re attracted to butterflies, the Sistine Chapel, and architecture. The beauty that we create from inside with blood, sweat, and tears is earned in a way that develops our self-esteem. When you look in the mirror and you have dignity, you’ll be surprised at what things manifest around you.”

He’s lived enough lives that he jokes, “I must be a cat.” But he’s grateful for everything that brought him to this moment. He’ll always be a mission-critical asset. “I never ever take it for granted,” he says. “I relish it. Yeah, I relish it.”

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