Morning Wire - From Orphan to TV Star: Rudy Reyes’ Rise to Prominence

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

Rudy Reyes discusses his humble origins from an Oklahoma Orphanage, to a nationally recognized figure. He breaks down the lessons he learned from the military and what he hopes to accomplish with his platform. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 3017- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsors:Alliance Defending Freedom - For a limited time, every dollar you give to ADF will be MATCHED but only while matching funds last.Go to https://JoinADF.com/WIRE or text WIRE to 83848 to have your gift to ADF doubled. Fast Growing Trees - Visit https://FastGrowingTrees.com to get 20% off yout first purchase when using the code WIRE at checkout.- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's the passion and the love and the duty to excellence in all things that makes us different. That was Rudy Reyes, Marine Recon veteran, and star of the hit show Special Forces, the world's toughest test. In this episode, we sit down with Rudy to talk about his rise from an Oklahoma orphanage to the star of a major network show. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley, and this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. I'm gonna fanboy. We're so glad to have you in the studio. It's really fun. Everyone at DailyWire's been buzzing about this all week.

So all of us excited. There's a lot to talk about. There is your show, Season 5. Streaming on Hulu, like you said, that has become a massive hit. I want to hear about that. But first, we were thinking, tell us a little bit about your background.

How in the world did you become this world-famous guy in TV series and scripted and unscripted. How'd you get here? First, I got the Golden Lottery ticket of being born American first. Amen. And it's really true. When I was talking to Lauren earlier, I had a tough childhood, and eventually became an orphan and was thrown away.

I know they used the word as bastard. You know, I didn't, I had somebody else was my dad. And it was hard, so I used to pray, right, until six or seven years old for some help. I had two little brothers, and we were in poverty on the border of Texas, Mexico. Well, things didn't get any better, didn't get any easier. So I learned to adapt. And I took charge of my little brothers. And after seeing Rocky and First Blood, I trained and made sure my little brothers trained with me.

every day. A few years after that, we all had worms and lice, and still we trained. Wow. And I built my self-esteem by taking charge of my life first and foremost with physical culture. I read comic books. I saw heroes. I saw Stallone. And I wanted to be like that. and that gave me hope to overcome the immense abuse and neglect. Then I was taken to the Omaha home for boys. Also tough, gladiator academy sometimes. You've got to fight all the bigger kids.

Everybody comes from a tough background, and everyone's sad or angry. Everybody's been thrown away or the parents are dead. parents are in prison and we were taught to work and grind to run the home I started working in the kitchen

and working the farm we had to do our chores we lived in barracks and our house parents were all military veterans and their wives we were taught etiquette we were taught manners

and we went to a public school to be social even though they all know that we're the orphans, the OHB, Omaha Home for Boys, the homeboys, and we had to overcome stigmas. Like real life, like real freaking life, you had to make it on your own

with making self strong, adaptable, create alliances, soft skills, communicate, even though you're all overcoming pain. I became a wrestler, fell in love with the wrestling mat and the weight room, and the rest is history, I found that being excellent at sport

put you in a different class of people. Started going to tournaments and I saw families that were actually there for their kids. I was like, wow, it'd be so amazing to have a mom and dad be there, right? And I knew right there, competition is the critical factor. So I said, I'm going to compete the rest of my life in everything I do because it leads me to a higher person.

place and a better place with better people who care. And that was the bedrock of my life. After kickboxing and doing martial art and training with China's national team and fighting the Russians and the Chinese. Like Rocky. Yeah, yeah, I just found myself in that made a narrative of authentic heroism, meaning sacrificial. And that's why I joined the Marine Corps. We were going to war in Kosovo, and I was vegetarian because it kept my weight down. I fought at 155. I'd never used a weapon to kill anybody. I had to fight, but I fought now in the ring, and there are rules, and you don't want to kill each other.

You're bringing the best out of each other to defeat each other. But because of those ethics, I know that they're going to send another young man to go fight. another American man, I must do my part. I didn't know much about the military except the movies, and I just heard the Marine Corps is the freaking hardest. So I said, well, very well. Marine Corps it is. Infantry, I excelled as the Honor grad and the Iron Man,

and then went to School of Infantry, meritoriously promoted, and the honor grad again, put on a really tough detail, and then had the opportunity to try out for recon of 300,000 Marines, there's only 300 recall Marines, and we're the best in the business, and it's not the kit, it's not the gear, it's not the guns, it's the passion and the love

and the duty to excellence in all things that makes us different. I somehow make it through selection and start my tutelage, find myself on the ship when the towers were hit, just leaving Timor, and we are snapped to to go fight in Pakistan in Afghanistan in 01.

We take Kandahar. Almost a year later, we're home, and long before the civilians knew, we were preparing for Iraq. And so we were already now preparing for Iraq. We were there in months before, doing probing missions and training and preparing. And then when we led the invasion,

first Recon Battalion, my team, my brother teams of Bravo Company somehow survived that freaking blood band. and it was turned into a book, Generation Kill. Generation Kill was then picked up by HBO, and they needed someone to teach and train the culture and the physical confidence and strength of these recon Marines because they were very dedicated to making it authentic.

So they reached out to me, they couldn't find anybody to play me. They auditioned a bunch of other Latino actors, and they were either too sweet or like, to, because, you know, I'm a street person. Or did not have the physicality, because I was a fucking monster. I was a freaking monster. I was a freaking monster back then. They're like, well, wow, after you've seen Rudy Reyes, who are we going to get to play him? Unbelievable.

Why don't you play yourself? And that show becomes a hit, a huge hit. It's renowned more now than ever for the global war on terror people because it captures the culture of all of us. It's all of our stories. It's not just recons. It's all of our stories. The gallows humor. The ridiculousness of the suffering and the dysentery.

The danger. And then the levity through laughter that we need to get through it all. And that's kind of what got me into entertainment. I've been doing survival and military-type work since. Done some modeling. Do whatever it takes to keep bringing in some money and building my abilities. to be an asset for my kids and an asset from my community. And it's worked so far.

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Fastgrowingtrees.com code wire. Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use wire to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. So discipline and competition drove you through a lot of this. Do you see that really translating

with even Generation Kill, anybody that's been on a set realizes there's a lot of discipline involved all that stuff, but then you had the focus of the physicality of it. And do you see all of this the entertainment world as a competition in a sense? Yes, I do.

Yes, I do. And aside from you all here at Daily Wire, which I've been fans of you all for a long, long time, most of our industry that we work in now does not have a depth of character or soul, and there is no higher calling they're pursuing. Our world in media and entertainment for the most point, is buying and selling people to sell,

paying people money to sell narratives. And it's really, really hard on the, on my, it's been hard on my soul. To not get the job because you're too good. To not get the job because so-and-so A-lister's, agent does not want you standing next to him. Because remember, in the world of entertainment and smoke and mirrors, there's so little of it is real.

But when I saw the impact you can make with story, and I remember all my Rocky films in First Blood, and then watching Blade Runner, and then watching Michael Mann's thief, and then Manhunter, and then Lastho Hecans and Heat, and don't forget Miami Vice I'm seeing story

and what made a narrative and the passion of story, music, and the human connection playing out what it does to people. It inspired me. Once I found myself in it, I said, all right, Rudy, you're going to find a way to make it,

and that's what I've been doing. It's wild to me to hear your story. I mean, so what inspired you? Sylvester Stallone, these movies and all these things. And then you find yourself in movies. You know, you also have the reality TV show, which is

fifth season. I know, can you believe it's so awesome. Another huge hit. And it does, that one feels like it does have a mission. It is. You know, what would you define as its mission? You know, what, how about this? Special Forces is not a military show. It's a human transformation

show that under the guise of military selection. It is a human transformation show. We know myself, Billy, Fox, E, Q, Chris, we know our process works because we saw what it, we witnessed what it did to us

and generations of men like us, all the way back to the Greeks. We want to see these people break through and find out who they really, really are because

we actually care about them. That's why we're so hard on them. That's why it is cruel to be kind. We're not kind. We're incredibly cruel to them. It's because we love them and they do break through every single recruit that leaves our course no matter when they leave it they are all changed for the better and they'll tell you the very same thing these

wonderful recruits who are not exactly spring chickens like me push themselves for an ideal that they don't even understand but still they continue on and they are changed afterwards Can you just describe for people who are not familiar with it, the structure, like what your show is? Yes. Yes. Okay, on Special Forces, which Fox brought us over from the UK. The original is SAS, Who Dare's Wins? SAS is the British Delta Force. And it's run by Billy and Foxy. Billy is SAS. Foxy is SBS, which is their SEAL Team 6, right? He's the greatest brothers freaking been there and done that. We've been in, Billy and I have been in combat together. in Ramadi Billy's been a POW twice, freaking tortured these brothers

when it comes down to the bona fides they've been there done that, got the T-shirt and these are my teammates we've been running this really docu-style

infotainment this special course in the UK all around the world so for our audience out there we only insert to very very difficult environments and conditions to imitate combat conditions.

Arctic, jungle, desert, urban, amphibious. Because these places are a character in the program itself. Is the actual environment is a character. The first enemy you must

overcome is the jungle when you're out there. The first enemy you must overcome in the ocean is your hypothermia. You know, it's not me. And it's not the bad shooting you. First, you must overcome yourself. You can see already how this can be so transformational for these people who are top of their class, and whether it's acting, modeling, or sport, but now to be, in a sense, in the deep end of life in which all their preconceptions about who

they are and who they think they are must be discarded to survive. So we run this selection In the beginning, we did not take numbers. So they're recruits. We call them recruits. We don't call them their names. They live in barracks. We build Porta Johns, so they can do number one and number two out of plywood, and they've got to see each other and talk to each other

while they're doing it. It's the rough conditions. There's no mirrors, there's no snacks, and it's always on. You'll see me sometimes. come in at four in the morning with explosives and smashing the trash can for the Rudy awakening to get them up and on the parade square and thrash them. This is all to teach a state of readiness

and to switch on something inside of you called human potential. So no matter how long they last, they are a better version of themselves. It's humbling and beautiful for me to see as well. That's why I get close to some of these recruits. I see what they've been through, not just with us, but in our mirror rooms where we do our tactical questioning, we find some have been abused, some have been betrayed, some have lost

it all, the veneer and the beauty, or the sports accolades you find is a shell to cover some difficult things that they have gone through and maybe have not addressed. When the audience sees these heroes, and of course me and the boys, we've all been to the very bottom before our way to come back up to the top. And they see their sports heroes or the people they love from movies and TV share and break down crying about, you know, physical or emotional sexual abuse, about staying in an abusive relationship. and although portraying such a tough human being and such and the rest of the audience, like I'm not alone. We're not alone.

I think this is a deeper meaning of the program. So is it like a survivor style thing where people drop and you have someone who lasts or how long does the course go? Okay, so we run it like our selection. It's eight to 15 days, depending on where we're at. We start with 20 or so. We run taskers that are mirrors of our real training evolutions. Hostage rescue, hand-to-hand combat, gas chamber, underwater helicopter escapes,

squad operations, ultimately hitting them at the base and they've got to go on the run. We track them down with dogs and helicopters, ultimately snatching them up, putting them in the bag and now they're being interrogated by professional special operations interrogators from the UK, some of them who have to remain anonymous because they are still active. The goal is to make it as long as you can to at the end of interrogation and the interrogations are hard core to be standing on that parade square

at the end and sometimes we have one sometimes we have two sometimes we have three but we never know there's no price money there's no yeah all those

regular reality TV shows people you don't get a rose? There's not a rose somebody gets you a rose right? They're like whoa whoa I mean, I'm only doing this for pride and self-respect. So a lot of them, after a few days, I'm out. I don't got enough pride and self-respect to endure.

What I love is the young or the small female actresses. They end up being the toughest and the hardest. All showbiz people that started when they were kids. The punishing hours, which I know you all know about, the constant rehearsals, checking and testing and doing it again, the patience it takes to not flash, meaning get angry, when you do this kind of work. The female showbiz people do very well

because no one ever thinks they're that strong, no one ever thinks they're that tough, and they're used to failing or being told they fail and they don't break down when the men fail, which they do, their whole self-concept and ego is shattered. And they normally give up.

The one time I failed, I felt exactly like that. I think a lot of people will be surprised to hear that, that the young, the actresses a lot of times are tough. Who are some people we might recognize that have been on? I don't know. Oh, I can tell, oh, okay, I can tell you now

because I saw that it's going to, out. Well, we've had some rad folks on. My favorite, my favorite is Brody Jenner. I didn't know any of his history or anything like that, aside who his father was and such. Because remember, I guess when he was really famous in the earlier 2000s, mid-2000s, I was in warfare. And I was, I had no idea of popular culture. He was such a humble leader, gentleman. every time he succeeded he shared the praise to the team every time he failed

he took on all responsibility he was physically robust never showboated a thing and the character in him is the character that we look for another one was Carrie Hart who is not exactly young

the motorcycle pro Pink's husband mentally physically spiritually tough a pleasure to work with because that you know what as an instructor

when you see great attitudes it makes you excited when you have a bunch of bad attitudes man it makes a workplace bad negative right a couple of females have been oh of course freaking Sean Johnson

the little pocket rocket she's the smallest person out there and everyone carries the same weight everyone carries the same pack we had to march them up the mountains and putting on chains after chains on them and I was right there

I can see it like it was yesterday she started getting dizzy and she almost was done for as a heat casualty everybody gets dehydrated we push them to the absolute brink oh and that freaking jeage deuce

the real housewives of New Jersey's daughter tough Italian American that had pride and did not give up. Like sliced alone. Yes, there's these revelations that you've seen these people

that are also a discovery for them too. I don't think they even knew they had it. This next season, we've got some pretty salad folks. Remember, I don't know their names because I know they're freaking numbers as recruits. There is a handsome NBAer who's half Italian and half black and he was his sports announcer

for ESPN. This is the best MBAer we've ever worked with. Normally professional sports men maybe because they've made so much money and are used to such special treatment. They don't like what they're doing with us because there's no special treatment.

You're a dirtbag like everybody else. You know what I'm saying? you prove us otherwise, you're all equally worthless, right? We're not used to that. And in our course, just like in our selection, if there's mistakes made, everyone pays. This man, handsome cat, I think he was 14, number 14 of 15. This MBAer was fantastic.

He got around all the recruits. He was always pitching in for work. We do lots of team tasks, mostly carrying heavy, heavy stuff through mountains and jungle. he a lifetime work uh playing for the laicers and then the clippers you know his knees are not good still he just drives on um it's it's really all it's so strange too because remember i know these recruits as numbers and as recruits and that's how they are addressed the whole time um but i name's reduced to numbers yes just like we were just like we were just like we were just like we were just like we're

We were. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Even in boot camp, you can't even speak to you about yourself except in the third person. Now you have, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Before we let you go, I want to talk about your nonprofit. Oh, Force Blue. Force Blue. Can you just tell us, it's interesting.

You know, I looked into it. I hadn't heard about it as much. I did some research before this. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about Force Blue. Okay. It is the greatest accomplishment of my life. And what legacy I'm hoping to leave behind.

Force Blue, first of all, creating it is what switched me back on to believing in myself. Because I went through a real hard time after the military and then contracting and then being in Hollywood. I had a real hard time with drugs and alcohol, violence, and depression. when I found out that the reefs are dying and that the animals and the whole society's subsurface are at risk of dying, I think I had flashbacks of Fallujah about a family that helped me fight there

and then ultimately I was ordered to leave because we had to go back home and they were killed by the death squads because they knew that we were leaving. And it so broke my heart, as part of the reason I probably had so much depression and hatred towards myself for some time.

These reefs were in danger. I'm a combat diver, but finally I'm underwater during the daytime. We only freaking combat dive with weapons out of submarines and pitch black, and when we hit the beach, we're going to be killing the enemy, right? I get to see the beauty,

see the animals, and I said, if this, we've got to fight and protect this. Talk to my other teammates. Well, what are we going to do? We've got to figure something out. Let's work with reef scientists. Let's work with marine biologists. And let's get to work.

Rebuilding and protecting coral reefs. Recon Marines. Green berets. Parare rescue. Navy SEals. S.S. SBS. We created Avengers of the Ocean.

And we started with six men. And now we've got 60. We are sponsored by Noah. We are sponsored by the federal government to protect our underwater national parks. We rebuild in Okinawa, in Indonesia. We are global now. This will be our 10th year anniversary. We are saving lives subsurface and saving our lives.

Because if a warrior does not have a purpose, he will turn upon himself. And now we have a children's program. So next week, I will be doing Force Blue, our children's program, OCS Ocean Conservation School with my daughter, who's already been through, and she's going to help me and mentor the youngsters, and that's what I'm doing next week. Forceblueteam.org.

Check it out, donate, get involved. It will inspire you, and it's something that is so, so, so positive and fills me with pride, honor, and I hope it's something left behind after I go. I mean, this was a wild ride of an interview. I had no idea. what you were going to bring with. This was so awesome. Thank you so much for coming.

You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. Oh, you know, Lauren reached out to me to do a little, you know, a little video thing or whatever. I'm like, man, heck, and, you know, hex, no. It's always better live when you get to see people and connect to people. If I could give one piece of advice to anybody out there that wants to be more than they think they are, take every opportunity, take every meeting, and improve your position always. So you must push yourself. So that's why I'm here and I'm so glad I came. Thank you so much.

You're welcome, brother. Pleasure. It's awesome. Thank you, man. Thank you. That was Rudy Reyes, host of Special Forces, the world's toughest test, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend?

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