Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - WE’RE ON SPECIAL FORCES!

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

In this episode, we’re finally spilling a secret we kept for far too long.. which is all about our time on SPECIAL FORCES!! We take you through the experience day by day- what it was really like to be on the show, how we tackled it together as a couple, the ways it pushed us to our absolute limits, and how it broke us down (in the best way possible). Tune in tomorrow at 9PM Eastern on FOX (and every Thursday after that!)- and if you miss it live, you can catch it streaming the next day on Hulu. We’ll be recapping each episode here on the podcast, so we hope you watch along with us, share your thoughts, and join the conversation :) This was truly the most incredible journey we’ve ever been on, and we’re beyond honored to have been chosen. We are SO excited to relive it with you all, let’s do this!  @RealityClubFox  Love you guys! Shawn & Andrew ▶ Head to https://www.HomeChef.com/EASTFAM for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life ▶ Guys. https://www.Dupe.com really is that simple. No account, no signup. Just type “dupe.com/” before any product URL and watch the magic happen. ▶ You’ve never tasted strawberry like this. Go to https://www.kachava.com and use code EASTFAM for 15% off your next order. ▶ Click https://www.BranchBasics.com to shop their Premium Starter Kit and use our code EASTFAM for 15% off. ▶ Try the new GoGURT protein we talked about, it’s amazing! ▶ https://bit.ly/3HCC0BY Subscribe to our newsletter ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. What's Sean and Andrew? This is going to be an interesting one. I don't know how many parts this will be cut up into. We have a secret that we've been keeping for a while. In real time, we are filming this on June 20th. I have no idea when this will air.

And we return from this excursion on June 18th, the night of June 18. So we're about 18 hours removed from this. But we have alluded to this for quite a while, but the adventure that we just went on was a TV show. We did the Fox TV show together called Special Forces. World's toughest challenge. And that is a proper tagline. Yeah.

That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. Yeah, it was fun until it wasn't. Yeah. But we're able to finally tell you now, and we wanted to kind of give you the live debrief while we're still in it. You'll notice we're probably more mellow than usual because we just got abused for about 10 days.

Not actually, but kind of. Well, I'm not sure. Can I start by saying, I would do it again. I would do it again. I would opt to not do the last day again. but it pushed me personally physically and mentally past any limits I knew I was capable of going I ended up saying in my exit interview that you know back in my day when I did gymnastics I knew what I was capable of I kind of lost my identity for a really long time after that because I

didn't know who I was outside of gymnastics went on to get married became wife kind of found my identity in that and then the past six years I've been doing the baby thing getting pregnant having babies and I've kind of lost my identity since then so this is the first time I regained a confidence of like I know what I'm capable of and I needed that but damn that was hard and Sean's capable of quite a lot it turns out so the show is based on the premise that they want to bring celebrities in to get trained by some special forces instructors to kind of give them a day in the life or in this situation a week and a half in the life of what these high level soldiers go through. And so you're placed in

barracks and you do all these extreme challenges, these hard physical workouts, and then a lot of mentally taxing things as well. And there's a couple ways to leave the show. It is a challenge. There's no reward to making it to the end other than like pat on the back yeah um but you can voluntarily voluntarily withdraw or vw just like tap out you can get removed from the course by the instructors if they don't think you make certain standards or you could die or you can get medically withdrawn which means like a lot of people got medically withdrawn broken ribs broken noses someone left because they ended up getting a horrible chest infection um if if the medic deems you unfit to continue, then you get pulled. But even though it is a reality TV show,

it does not feel like one when you're there. There is no pampering. There is no luxury. There is no like, oh, you're only going to film for eight hours today and then you get time off. You are truly immersed into a world with the special forces where you are at their begging call whenever they want. So at any time and any point in the day, 1230 midnight, 2 a.m. 3m. They can call you out of the barracks to line up and go through a workout

or do it. You could do what, they can do whatever they want. Yeah, it's like they didn't get the memo on what reality TV is supposed to be. They like miss the whole, they miss the whole point of it. You sleep on cots.

Yep. You have two pairs of clothes. Yep. One that you really wear. There's no laundry. You go to the bathroom on piece of plywood that have a hole in them. Yep.

There's really no doors on it other than like a piece of wood that blocks out. You can see everyone's head while they were sitting there pooping. The food you have is terrible. You eat anything from bland carrot soup to simply bread to...

I will say at one point, though, it started tasting good to us because we were just getting so hungry and, like, that it was edible. I think that's the point of the show, though, is to strip away all the luxury and comforts that people are used to and to say, hey, you can make it through

this hard stuff if you choose to. Yeah. And if you don't try to pull the parachute on your own experience. It takes away a lot of the vanity and the materialism, the selfishness, and teaches you discipline and respect to authority. And just we got to get the most incredible, beautiful insight to these guys' lives and what they've been through. We got to hear so many of their stories. They would come into our barracks at night and share with us some of the things that they have gone through.

It was the most humbling experience I've ever had in my life. Yes, it was hard. And yes, it was, you know, really, just really pricking hard. But there was a lot to take away from it. I think Andrew and are still in the decompression phase where we're like what the frick just happened to us. But I think the farther removed we get from it will be able to see how much wisdom they were able to share with us

in such a condensed period of time and how much we actually get to learn not only about ourselves, but our other fellow recruits and bonding. with them. There was something really cool about bringing 18 celebrities together and stripping away their identities, like everything that makes them individual and stripping you down to such a raw, vulnerable state. We got to know everybody not because they were, you know, Heisman winners or, you know, they had one of the most successful podcasts in the world. Like, we truly got to know them for them, which was really beautiful. Yeah, and you don't have any access

to phones or the outside world, so you're just getting to know people based off your interaction with them. which is really nice to not be jaded by whatever scandals or success people have previously had and just get to know people based off how they treat you and others. And when Sean says it's really hard, there's a couple of things that go into that. So you're doing a lot of fear-inducing activities. Simulating, drowning. Yeah.

It's really fun and extreme things, like once in a lifetime. That's part of it is just kind of facing those fears. and like dealing with the adrenaline that comes with that. And so we did everything from simulating a plane crash into the water to repelling down a dam. And let me give an asterisk. The simulation part of it is not like, oh, you are on land and they pour buckets. No, we actually got strapped into a plane and a crane took the plane and lowered it

into the water until it was fully submerged and were fully strapped in. and it's not until you're submerged a certain amount of time before you can attempt to rescue yourself and get out. So, like, they truly exploited fears. They took every possible fear of claustrophobia, heights, authority, pain, interrogation, kidnapping, explosions, like, all of this. Yeah. And put an activity or a challenge around it to see how mentally tough

you are in being able to push through some of your biggest fears. Yeah, and as it was reality, TV are onboarding to the show included sitting down with a psychologist doing an hour-long interview just for them to get to know you and they're taking notes on any quirks or blind spots that you may have, any fears that you may have. You take a 340 question psych quiz. You take a couple personality tests. You do a couple more interviews with other people in the medical field. And so they get to know you really well and they kind of purposely put you in situations that they know are going to be uncomfortable specifically for you, as well as the other

cast members. So, um, I think all of those psychological personality trait tests were personally just gifted to the interrogators. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that, again, a couple different categories of hard. The fear is one.

And we jumped out of helicopters, repelled down 300 foot dams. We, uh, got gas masks. We got, um, a couple different height stuff you had to jump through a canyon a claustrophobia test where you had to crawl through like 800 meters of these tiny tiny tunnels that like i had a hard time fitting through let alone andrew yeah at one point it would fill with water and you would think you were drowning so that's one hard and i would say that was the fun version of the hard for us the other the other hard was just how your um your body coped with 10 days of pretty much nonstop action in the 15 degrees of hair and heat with abnormal food you're not sleeping well

you're breathing in dust and so that's where the lung infection came came in for one of our one person specifically but we all kind of had this desert cough we called it and so that was very uncomfortable you have to deal with certain injuries and nicks and bruises

that you don't get to like pamper yourself with so there's not like readily available a PT of any kind, you literally are just dealing with it on your own. Yeah, and you can't just opt out of the next activity to give yourself a little break out of it. We had like a first aid kid available that was about it. Sean, do you ever think about what a day in the life of someone like Taylor Swift or the Rock must be like? Yes. Jetting between time zones, rehearsals, meetings, workouts. I honestly don't know if I'd last 30 minutes before crashing. Same. And while we don't exactly live that life, our schedules can feel just as nonstop, which is why we have been

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because if your shirt's not tucked in or your boots aren't zipped up or... Or you're not out on the square in time, which is usually like to give you a three-minute window. My mom was asking me about this. She was like, did you have time to like shower? And the answer is yes. So like in any given day,

we'd probably have a couple hours of downtime. Not all bunched together, but like we might come back and have two hours, but we don't know we have two hours. There's no schedule. They will literally like drop you off and say, get ready for the next thing. but they do not tell you when.

So you're sitting there and you're like, okay, maybe I should go shower. But God forbid, you get in that shower and they call recruits, you have three minutes to get out of that shower, get fully dressed, fully packed, and presentable and on the parade square. If you aren't, then we usually,

it would end up being punishment workouts, which always sucked, which would always include dunking yourself in an ice cold tub and rolling around in mud and crawling on your hand on your like elbows knees and belly through rocks yeah always so is it worth taking a shower with that being the potential penalty probably not um and yeah so it's very random and unplanned when you're needed and that's hard to deal with and so you need to always be ready, but you don't know for what or when it's going to happen. You might be sitting

in a car and then all of a sudden someone bangs on your window and they say, all right, we have to go on a 45 minute sprint through the village and save all this kit. And there's no warm up involved. So your body, it's just like a weird place to be physically and mentally because there's just, you just always need to be on. And in addition, you're wearing a microphone. And so there's this hypervigilance that you feel of like, okay, I, I want to make sure I don't say anything I'm going to regret. And I want to also be intentional and, like, say things that I'm proud of and that might positively impact anybody watching it.

So there's, like, there's just a lot going on in that sense. And then I would say the fourth way it's hard is the last day includes interrogation. And I would say level one torture. And that was very hard. That was when Sean says hard. That's what I think of when I think hard. The other stuff is kind of like, oh, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That was the interrogation was really hard.

It takes you to a place mentally that you've never been before, nor should you, nor should people. And I don't ever want to go back. Yeah. But I think, again, what I said earlier, I think as time progresses and we get further away from this, there was an aspect of hard to it of these four men who were leading this. were absolutely incredible human beings. Their ability to look at each and every one of us and see our flaws

way more than we ever could and push us to break through them was incredible. And I remember there were many times where like Andrew would get called in and to talk to them and they would have these one-on-one sessions with you or they would want to get to know you better

so they could push past, you know, boundaries or like limitations or garings or guards that you had and they could see you very clearly and there are multiple times Andrew and I would come back from those not together but separate and be like I'm so confused

but it's like the farther you get through the course you started being able to see these things a little bit better in different ways and be like holy crap I actually think there's something there that they're talking about or they're seeing

and that's a level of hard where like even when you get to the interrogation they're exploiting all of these things to you and you're trying to like look at yourself in a reflective way and say how do I deal with this and yeah it it was just it was the most like um it's like self help on steroids it really is there's a certain amount of self-awareness that you gain from being put in such an uncomfortable position um with a bunch of strangers you don't know and all of a sudden you're using these toilets and seeing like make an eye contact you know like it's just uncomfortable and

so many different ways, along with the physical and the fear, that you learn a lot about yourself, which is good. And what you do with that learning, whether you stand up to it and confront it and tackle it or you bow down to it and walk away from it is also informative. And then just being pushed and prodded in so many different ways was really good. And there is something really special about bonding through that type of struggle. I'm really glad that Sean and I were able to do it together. Shout out to Fox. Thank you,

I think Fox, for letting us do it together. We'll see after the edits. It was, it was from us, who knows how it comes across. It was such an incredible experience to do together. Yeah. This was filmed in Morocco. Yes. A tiny little village

in central Morocco. Wars is that. Yeah. And so, Sean and I were away from the kids for, I guess, 13 days altogether. Which was so hard. But that's why we intentionally took the family vacation around the world leading up to this so that we could ride the high of that binge being together into this time away. To give you guys the timing, just so you're aware, since it looked very different on social media because of having to hide a lot of this, we went to Japan, Singapore, and Dubai for two and a half weeks, got back. and literally left for Morocco 24 hours later. That's also why we're mellows because our body has no idea what time it is.

We've been just rolling for four weeks. But we got to Morocco. We had to do a bunch of interviews for the show that you do all before. The actual show was filmed and got acclimated to the production crew and some of the other cast members. and then the first day we woke up really early we had an hour and a half long drive we got in a bus

with all the other cast members and then next thing you know you're captured by hostels and a bag's put over your head and you're thrown in mud and it all happens very quickly it's all very overwhelming you don't know what's going on

you're getting yelled at and they make you change into different clothes one girl that was on the show didn't wear a bra it got weird but that kind of begun the next that began the next nine days of sticking around for as long as you wanted to that day we jumped out of the helicopter which was insane I don't I've never been in a helicopter before never so that was really special again you can see all

this on Fox if you want to watch it it's going to be way better than our description but hopefully this gives you a little behind the scenes. I think we can skim through some of the activities. And then we are thinking about when it comes out, week by week we'll do a debrief of each day that they show because there's just too much. I mean, yeah. So day one, we jumped out of a helicopter.

We also had the most insane physical challenge that I'm still... I think it was the hardest one we did. I'm still injured from. I at one point Andrew and I were at that for that activity so with every single activity or challenge you did they would change up teams groupings whatever it was a solo journey so like we're each there as individuals competing on our own not necessarily against each other because multiple people can win and cross the finish line or the course finish line but on some days we did like duos and they would pair us with another person or triplets or four whatever That day there were two teams, Andrew and I were on separate teams. And at one point, we're like crossing each other, hiking up this mountain, carrying sandbags that were like 60 pounds. And we just caught each other's eye. And it was kind of like this, what have we done?

Oh, dude. Because it was, I thought I was going to pass out. I almost got heat stroke. Yeah. Dude. You're carrying 60 pound weights up, up slippery rock slopes that are very steep. And the Moroccan landscape. in this part of the country.

Imagine the Sahara Desert, but it's not beautiful, soft sand dunes. It's like rock, scree. And so carrying 60 pounds of that, your body is in like full activation mode. And that's after we did the mud workout. That was like a half hour long. So that was brutal.

It took me the rest of the day to recover from that. And there were a couple other things that we needed to do in the meantime. So I did not think I was going to make it past day one because I thought my body was going to shut down. Yeah. The next day. No, it was that night we got woken up at 12.30 a.m. And had to do another workout in like the courtyard square.

So that's like the jumping in the water, rolling through the mud, crawling through the rocks, doing pushups, burpees, pull-ups, monkey bars, tough jumps, sit-ups. And you're doing it until at the mercy of the instructors. The end of the summer and back-to-school season always feels. like the busiest time of year. You got sports practices, homework, work schedules, you name it. And dinner usually ends up being the last thing on our to-do list. Same. That's why we've been leaning on Home Chef. It saves us from the nightly what's for dinner panic in those last minute grocery runs. Home Chef delivers fresh, pre-portioned ingredients straight to your door with more than 35

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were done or they would tell you when you were done but as soon as you finished it they would extend it it would be something else something new something further and harder and that that pushed me my panic took over in those situations. My body is literally physically reaction to you describing this. Other contestants have gotten done with the show and have described a PTSD-like condition for weeks after the night, but I'm able to sleep. There's certain things that carried over into home

that were based in camp, like needing a buddy to go to the bathroom anytime you get up or like flinching at night because you're worried about getting yelled at. Have you noticed anything like that? Just you describing it, I literally got sweaty palms. The only two things I've noticed so far is like I woke up the very first night in the middle of the night having to pee so incredibly bad, but I couldn't get myself to get

out of bed because in my mind I was still in the interrogation holding room waiting for someone to come get me. And so I just remember thinking like, oh, frick, I'm going to pee my pants. Like, where are they? Are they coming? Because the only thing that like helped me survive the interrogation was they went through the rules

and one rule stated if you had to pee you could raise your hand and someone would come get you. But like there were times where I'd raise my hand and it took 15 minutes for something to come get me. So when I woke up in the middle night I was like, where are they? That one. And then one of Bear's favorite toys is a blower.

Oh my gosh, don't. And like a leaf blower and that was part of the sounds that you had to listen to for 18 hours and the headphones for the torture or whatever why can I hear that so clearly in my head right now and he was playing with it yesterday and I was kind of like I think we're going to throw that away yeah uh so late the first night we did that workout then we woke up and had to walk up countless flights of stairs we then simulated an airplane crash into water and then we boxed that episode two is going to be a good one to watch to be honest just watch it watch episode two um and again we started

with 18 recruits and slowly it whittled down based off medical withdraws or voluntarily walking away um to a smaller and smaller group day by day day day three we uh we we learned how to take care of casualties or injured soldiers which was savage. The largest man on the face of the earth. Oh my gosh.

Another incredibly different. We were carrying like 300 pounds. Every one of us annihilated our hands because we were carrying a stretcher that was metal and it had been sitting in the sun so it was scalding hot. So when you carried it,

it just ripped skin off your hands and every single one of us I think I ripped six fingers just like skin literally falling off trying to get through this and then we had to walk a tightrope between two buildings that that evening yeah that's when I got yelled at for the first time day four we did this insane rappel down a 300 foot dam and then we also did the tunnel crawl uh which is also going to be an episode worth watching day four it might be one of the best challenges they've ever done in

the history of the show and by best she means miserable it was panic yeah panicking inducing. I hyperventilated. I made it through, but like I had an absolute panic attack. I'm a pretty mellow guy. I'm able to deal with most things. I almost did not deal with this. But watch that one.

Day five. Oh, we did a sick, like synchronized diving movement. It's like, imagine a trust fall, but extreme. That was probably one of my least favorite things we did. Because I thought I shattered my face. I thought my face

was busted into a million tiny little bones. I landed in the water and I literally couldn't breathe for probably 60 seconds. Yeah, that was a crazy one. We also had a relay race challenge workout that day. Which one is that?

The kit carry, the truck kit carry. That was so horrible. Day six, we had a narwharf, hike and had to span the distance between two cliffs on on a mountain. And we also played tackle football in the mud with no helmet or shoulder pads that day. That one's going to be worth watching. That's going to be worth watching. Day seven, we got gassed. Yep. And then we took an epic hike down a beautiful canyon. It was like the first water we saw all week. And then And we wrote letters to loved ones that evening as well, which...

Death letters. Honestly, if the whole experience only included that, it would have been worth it. I don't have my letters. They're not at home? That wasn't them? Oh, dang. I know. Shoot.

It's okay. Sorry. I'm sure they're going to air it, so. And then day eight and nine are kind of blended together. I think that'll be the last episode. But we had a mountain workout where we had to carry. tires, ropes, and chains up the hill, which was savage.

I about broke on that one. And then we had to do a land navigation thing and then you get captured and the interrogation slash torture begins. I will never forget that last workout where we had to carry chains and tires and stuff all the way at the hill. I was just gassed.

Like my body was gassed. My mind felt gassed. I was just kind of done. DSQ. walked with me, 90% of that way. And it was the words he was speaking to me going up that hill was on repeat in my head until I crossed the finish line. It was encouraging?

Oh my gosh. Wow. And it was only because of that that I finished. Wow. I kept, I literally could hear his voice for 18 hours. And I can't repeat what he said because it's every curse word in the book. But like in such,

an amazingly motivational way. Wow. If you were to watch, like, if you watch this whole season, I had the hardest time with DSQ. He was just kind of like, he was the tough one for me. We had the hardest interactions.

I was most intimidated by him. I think because maybe he like, he saw a lot of my weaknesses very clearly and talked through them. He's a phenomenal coach. I even said this at the end. I was like, you made me want to be a better person

from like the very beginning so it was this like full circle moment going up that hill when he started saying like encouraging things to me and I just remember thinking I just like held on to that and when I didn't know that when we were in interrogation and I'd start to feel panic I would just like hear his voice

and I'm like okay freaking one more hour one more hour one more hour wow um a couple of takeaways that i had from the show were that i did better in team environment than individual like i really thrived anytime there was a group involved uh whereas individual i just didn't i wouldn't as engaged or i didn't i definitely didn't enjoy it as much and i think the lack of enjoyment led to lower performance um i also learned about myself that i'm too ruthlessly focused on the mission in certain situations where I should have a more

zoomed out perspective on other important things. I think that's a self-reflective thing because I think that was an admirable thing that they liked. Yeah. It was a quality they liked about you. Not a flaw. Okay. I guess we'll see.

And then there's a bunch of self-awareness, reflective things. that I shared in the interviews, again, watch the episodes to get it all. I thought you did a phenomenal job. But you were an incredible leader. I think you were able to be human through it and not turn off. I think it was really cool to see you win

almost every physical possible challenge we did, but still be lighthearted and loving and then push through a lot of pain. which is, I respected you. Thanks. It was really fun to get to know you better. They say to know is to love. And I feel like I got to know a new aspect inside of you that I had not seen.

That I turned into a robot. I need to fix that. Yeah, it was, I feel like I saw a gymnast Sean, which I never knew Jimnishon. It was a different person. She's scary. She's scary. I mean, you'll see it if you watch a show. My biggest issue with.

Coming from the DS was that the only way I know how to compete is to go numb. And they said, you need to learn how to be a human and compete as well. Yeah. We got discharged and had to go through this whole process with a medical team, a psychiatrist who said pretty much for the next two weeks, so we're a day and a half into the two weeks. Our body is going to be just adrenally fatigued. And if you think about athletes,

to talk about the importance of visualization and how that really mimics the physical experience of actual practice with the fake explosions and the real yelling and the actual high intensity things we're doing, I do feel like we got a really unique perspective

on the life of a soldier on deployment and a soldier in the heat of training and I gained a whole new respect for the people that have served our country. I'm deeply grateful. It's going to be a good show to watch, to be honest. I don't know what didn't happen on that show that does well on TV.

I will say this too, to anybody listening who, if you're ever given the opportunity to do something like that, I think you should. Yes, we're sitting here saying it's the hardest thing we've done in our life. But I think because of that, we got to grow as people, as parents, husbands, wives, individuals. We got to gain an understanding for our servicemen and women that we would have

never have never had. Even though like we worship the ground servicemen and women stand on already, that just took it to a whole new level. I can't recommend it enough. Yeah. I won't do it again. I also think, I can't recommend it enough. There is something to putting yourself in actual scary situations.

that forces you to then proceed with life and not make little things pretend scary. You know what I'm saying? I agree. When you know what real scary is, everything else gets put in perspective and right-sized. And there were some scary things. And there were some real injuries as part of that scary.

So we all got beat up, bruise, cuts, blisters, thorns and palms, feet torn up. I belly flopped from a third story. jump onto the ocean and bruised every inch of my legs in my body. Thought she got a concussion. I thought she got two concussions separately. The Christy one and the backwards truss fall. Oh, yeah.

And then I got two bloody noses separately. Yep. I thought I broke my nose. Multiple times. And then I might have cracked a rib. Yeah. So it was real. It was real, but it was a real good time now that it's done.

I'm glad we did it. Thank you to Fox. Thank you to Evan at Fox. Thank you to Q, Rudy, Billy, Foxy for all the efforts you put into organizing that. Thanks to production. Shout out Liddy, Daniel, Becky. Sarah. The whole squad.

Trevor with the rope safety. Rob with the diving safety. The freaking audio squad that would be up at night swapping battery packs. The mountain airing squad who had to save us from getting lost in the. desert Dave everybody um hope we get to see you guys again hope you all listening watch the show it will be entertaining yeah to say the least yeah and we'll probably doing more specific recaps but we wanted to give you the live decompression since we're so near to it now um but that's how we got and that's the secret we have no more secrets no more secrets i don't like keeping secrets from

yeah we're not good at it it's not natural to us. We'll let you know when it comes out. That's how we have. I'm Andrew. I'm Sean. Until next time.