Naked and Afraid

I came across a casting call for the Discovery Channel show Naked and Afraid last night, and I submitted an email to them. I've only watched the show once, but it was interesting. Two strangers of the opposite sex are put into the wild without anything (including clothing). They then have to survive for three weeks.

The casting call was looking for survivalists, and I have virtually no experience in that area. But I figured, why not submit anyway. I'm sure that they have more challenges in casting that show than most others. After I sent the email last night, I got on their Facebook page this morning and found an online form to fill out. About an hour or two later, I got an email from someone at the production company asking for a phone number and a good time to call. I answered, and she called about 20 minutes into the time window I gave her.

I gave her my life history, including my college degrees, my stint working for the New York Public Library, my current IT career, and my part time nude art modeling job and how it came to be the main topic of conversation with Regis when I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She also asked about my church and how being a Southern Baptist conflicted (or not) with my being a nude model. She also asked about my political affiliation, and I told her about my run as the Libertarian Party candidate for State Representative in 2012. When she asked about my outdoor survival experience, I was honest and told her that I didn't have much. I did give her the pitch that the first half of the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away would have been boring if the main character had been a survival expert before he crashed near that island, that it was his struggle and discovery that made that movie compelling. When she asked me which environment I preferred among jungle, tropical island, desert, or swamp, I chose tropical island. I told her I chose that because rainfall is fairly regular in the tropics and that making some kind of container for rain collection would provide me and my companion a clean water supply for the three weeks. Swamps had a lot of water, I said, but a lot of it is stagnant. And finding water would be a struggle in a desert. She seemed pleased with that response, and she told me that most people chose the tropical island but don't really give a survival reason why...

I think it was a good conversation. She said she thought I was a good fit for the show (mainly because I was more than comfortable with the nudity involved) but that she had concerns about my survival skills. She said they would talk about it and get back to me next week. If I were selected as a final candidate, I would be flown out to Los Angeles for more interviews. I put my chances at getting into that final candidate status at about 10 percent because of that lack of survival experience, etc. But it would certainly be an adventure...