With the second season of The Challenge: All Stars spinoff, viewers have seen two-time champion Jodi Weatherton return to their screens after a lengthy hiatus from the show.
Her arrival to the spinoff series put an early target on her back. That’s due to her having won the show twice and generally being considered a tough opponent in the game.
However, Jodi recently revealed she was all set to appear in the first season of Paramount+’s show but was eventually told they couldn’t bring her on board.
Jodi says she was close to appearing in All Stars’ first season
The first season of The Challenge: All Stars featured fan-favorite OGs returning from MTV’s Real World, Road Rules, and Fresh Meat shows.
That included former champions Mark Long, Derrick Kosinski, Darrell Taylor, and Kendal Sheppard. The season nearly had another champion, Jodi Weatherton, amongst those former winners.
During a recent episode of MTV’s Official Challenge Podcast, Jodi spoke about getting contacted by Mark Long ahead of the first season, and she’d initially thought it wasn’t going anywhere. However, then things started to go somewhere with the All Stars spinoff show taking shape.
She revealed she’d been living in Germany at that time and was super close to appearing in the premiere season of the spinoff.
“I actually was called for the first season and was onboard. Filled out the background check information, the deep sheet—the whole thing. I was like in the process,” Jodi revealed to Aneesa Ferreira and Tori Deal.
However, she said there was a snag in her casting process, and she got a call that she wouldn’t be able to join the cast.
“They called and said, ‘Hey, we talked to the background check company. Because you live in Germany, it’s like a 23 to 30-day process, and we just don’t have enough time to process you,'” Jodi revealed in the podcast episode.
Jodi shared that she’d been pretty excited to be leaving Germany at the time due to them being “deep in the pandemic,” with lockdowns and a curfew. She said she was “super sad” not to be able to appear for the first season.
However, she said she received a call on her 40th birthday about appearing on All Stars 2. That made for a pretty nice gift for her and the fans.
Jodi felt ‘pressure’ ahead of her Challenge return
During her podcast appearance, Jodi also spoke about her initial feelings upon realizing she was returning to compete on The Challenge.
It was a mix of emotions, as some of her thoughts involved her history with the reality competition series.
“I was excited, but then I also had this feeling in the back of my head like, ‘OK, I won the last one I did. I feel pressure to like go back and perform.’ You know just that uncertainty of ‘Do I wanna go back into it or just kind of like leave it where it’s at?'” Jodi said.
Jodi originally appeared on MTV’s Road Rules: X-Treme season in 2004 before joining The Challenge. She competed in The Inferno II, The Gauntlet 2, and The Duel seasons, winning the latter two.
She was also the first woman to win a season of The Challenge individually, as previous seasons had featured competitors in teams. Jodi’s achievement gave her a significant part in the show’s history.
Her return to The Challenge: All Stars 2 has certainly shown she’s still among legends. In just the first episode, Jodi was on the winning team for the daily challenge alongside her former castmate, Derrick Kosinski.
By All Stars 2, Episode 3, viewers saw more of what Jodi’s capable of and why she’s among the best all-time competitors from the show. There are likely more performances on the way, and thankfully fans get to see this particular OG appear in the cast.
The Challenge: All Stars 2 episodes arrive Thursdays on Paramount Plus.