After years away from reality TV, Kendal Sheppard has been proving herself to be amongst elite competitors in her return to The Challenge for the All Stars spinoff season.
Just like regular seasons of The Challenge, when a competitor emerges as an early threat, it has other castmates on notice, looking for ways to eliminate them from continuing towards TJ Lavin’s final.
Kendal recently spoke about how a few of her castmates’ remarks were a bit hurtful towards her, one of which really surprised her based on her interactions with that cast member on the show.
Kendal discussed being the focus of All Stars deliberation
Kendal appeared on a Mike Lewis video interview on YouTube (below). During Kendal’s time on the episode, Mike asked about comments that castmates Jisela Delgado and Jemmye Carroll made about her during Aftermath shows.
Their comments came after Episode 2 of All Stars, which featured Kendal under the spotlight due to the daily challenge.
Kendal told Mike that she’s generally a “people pleaser” but has been working hard on standing up for herself more. However, Kendal said she’s still finding some things difficult to deal with when returning to reality TV.
“What’s hurtful is when you know there’s names being thrown around you know, ‘she’s a liar,’ ‘she’s this,’ ‘she’s that,’ ‘I don’t trust her,.’ You know, those things are hurtful,” Kendal said.
Kendal spoke about how years ago, during her time on The Challenge: Inferno, she didn’t want people mad at her.
She had won a Lifesaver in one episode. She decided to put herself into elimination rather than a certain castmate so that others wouldn’t be mad at her. However, she said in retrospect she realized putting yourself into elimination isn’t the smartest move.
That’s why she said she wasn’t about to volunteer to go into elimination on All Stars.
A situation arrived during the second episode of All Stars as Kendal made a mistake while up on the platform above water for the trivia challenge.
Instead of hopping on a certain spot where the floor would break underneath her, and she’d fall into the water below, Kendal hopped over it. She got confused, and instead of just dropping into the water, she sat down on the platform to show she’d lost.
It made for an awkward moment during the daily event.
It led to castmates suggesting she should be voted into elimination because everyone else went through the daily, either by losing and falling into the water below or winning to remain safe on the platform.
Castmates felt she was making up excuses instead of admitting she was scared to fall into the water below.
At deliberation, Jisela was particularly vocal about why Kendal should go into elimination. Kendal ended up with the most votes for that episode’s elimination but ultimately won her event against Trishelle Canatella to stay in the game.
In Mike Lewis’ video, Kendal said she chose to stand up for herself and wasn’t going to say something that she didn’t believe was true since some castmates thought she copped out during the daily challenge.
Kendal also said if she had agreed with what they were saying, it “would have made the rest of the time a lot easier,” though.
Castmates made remarks during Aftermath show
After that episode of All Stars arrived on Paramount Plus, an accompanying Aftermath show had Jemmye and Jisela among the guests. MTV’s The Challenge YouTube uploaded the Aftermath episode (below) to their channel with a title suggesting Jemmye wants Kendal to stop playing the victim.
During the Aftermath, Katie Cooley was also there and said she didn’t think Kendal would vote for her if the roles were reversed since they were roommates and friends.
However, Jemmye told Katie she thought she would vote for her.
“Katie, she would definitely vote you in because you’re everything that she’s not,” Jemmye said, adding that Kendal sees Katie as one of the “fun girls.”
Jisela started to bring up how Kendal had a certain strategy, and Jemmye added that it was “wanting to be the victim.” Jisela said accountability is something she values and doesn’t feel Kendal owned it during that episode.
“You guys all played into her victim game,” Jisela told the other All Stars cast members on Aftermath. Darrell Taylor admitted he felt bad for Kendal, and that’s why he burned his vote at deliberation.
In Mike Lewis’s video, Kendal explained that Jemmye’s comments hurt because she thought they’d bonded and were cool.
She also mentioned Jemmye was pushing her to room with her during The Challenge: All Stars, so it surprised her to hear her Aftermath remarks after the season.
“That Aftermath thing, that really hurt. That really, really did. I did not expect that,” Kendal said, adding she hadn’t watched the episode at first.
“It wasn’t until people started messaging me all this stuff on Twitter and Instagram. ‘What the heck? What did you do to Jisela and Jemmye?’” Kendall shared about how she learned of the Aftermath remarks.
“I mean I knew that Jisela wasn’t a fan of me. That I knew. Wasn’t surprised, but Jemmye, I really like Jemmye, like a lot. It’s not like we were friends going into it or anything but being roommates, she was really encouraging, supportive, like she was really great. When I left, she’s one of the people that I really missed,” Kendall said.
“So when I heard that and I went and watched it, I was just like my jaw was on the floor. Like, ‘Are you kidding me?'” Kendall said, also mentioning that she and Jemmye haven’t talked since.
Kendall added that she “doesn’t really know what triggered that response” from Jemmye.
The Challenge: All Stars episodes arrive Thursdays on Paramount Plus.