The Zach Nichols Podcast - The Marlon Williams Interview! | ZNP EP. 158

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

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Hey, it's your boy, Marlon Williams, aka Black Zoo's from Real World Portland. Rivals 2 challenge. I'm in the building. All right, welcome back to Zach Nichols podcast. I'm here with this nice tan from Arizona, but more importantly, in the house, Marlon Williams. Black, Zeus fit. What's going on? What's going on?

And the big fettuccini. Yes, sir. I look like Shrek today with the green, baby. The current. It's a lot of green, dog. You know what it is, baby. Patty's days over. Let's go Michigan State.

Go green. Go white. Eliminate. King. Oh, stop it, man. Give me a round of a pause. Like, oh, you're starting to do a lot of applause. Now, I will say, someone was talking shit about you about your form in that. Oh, were they? Not just the way the harness looked like a thong. Okay. Bro, I got a couple of nice butt comments, real shit. But guys, we have a good comment. Someone said, nice butt. That was the first time I ever got that. I don't know. You guys probably got that before. I never got nice butt before. But, oh, yeah. Appreciate it. We got great dumpers on this couch. But someone that you know actually said if you were.

real man, you would have straight up beat him, not turned around and pulled him. Oh, really? Yeah. All right, well, they How about that? You can call him after that because his name is Bennett Esty. Okay. Bennett, first of all, all, all right, I didn't even give it to Bennett on this couch because I would go

crazy. But yeah, no, I won an elimination this past weekend. Back-to-back tug of war. Yeah, for the business and everything. Yeah, yeah, back-to-back tub of war. You know, they're beefing it. I had to use what I got. Against Theo, who's the current elimination King. You know your boy Jordan is

like literally having people just straight up eviscerate each other. Straight up scrap on Astro Termin. Period. You're getting strawberries everywhere. Dude. Bloody knees. Like people just giving it their all to get a golden ankle. Yeah. Bro.

Hospital visits. Yeah. To get a golden ticket. Yeah. Hey, he's that guy though. He's competitive. He's competitive. I do got to, before we move on from the elimination, I do got to say it wasn't a fair fight. Obviously, Theo is just, he's a little he's little compared to me. You know what I mean?

And he didn't have the right shoes. So I want to, if he wants to do it again. You were wearing untied Nike dunks. Hey, I'm just trying to give him. Untied Nike dunks. I'm trying to give him credit, though. I'm trying to give him credit. I give anyone credit who would strap themselves back to back with a 400 pound man.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, this guy adds. This guy adds pounds to me every time he talks to me. Today we're, today we're talking. I'm going to say 400. I wasn't going to say 400. No, no, it is.

No, it is 400. Okay. But I be, I'd be bump it up to 400. it's really 390 and then today we're on the phone he goes 415 pound man i'm like dude fuck you i'm just going off by the way i'm just going off by the way he just added 15 pounds i saw i saw you eat them donuts no no i'm going off damn i want how much plumber crack shows when you fall down this guy and how the pants are fitting all right man let's focus on our incredible guests that we have here black zeus fit aka marlin williams i got some accolades here we got some accolades here we got

some accolades first of all anytime we have a real world kid in the house we got to give a round of applause. And you were one of the last legit seasons of the real world, too. After you, they started to do the explosion thing. Yeah, they did all a little spin-offs and stuff. Yeah. I think our season, I think our season

was like second to last. I think they did one more like classic and then they started doing all the weird stuff. And your season was great. Bro, our season had drama. Yeah, your season was explosive. Bro, every day I will wake up and I'm like this is a pressure cooker. I'm like, okay,

who's pissed? who's got an attitude. Naya's pissed. Jordan's pissed. They're always pissed. They're always pissed. Every morning. Yeah.

Johnny's just La La Land. And what are you, though? I'm in the middle of all of it. Why didn't you say something? That ain't got shit to do with me. I wasn't even there when it happened. Like you shouldn't...

Oh, no. He took a lot of heat. A lot of heat for just trying to stay out of it. Let's talk about the casting story. How did you get cast on the real world? Did you go for it or did it fall on your lap? I would say like, 50-50 because honestly I wasn't

even looking to get casted and I mean I went online because I was looking up this was back when MTV was still doing videos so I saw a song at like 2 a.m. So I was like let me go and see if it's on MTV and then like it had one of those little banners pop up and it was like would you ever like to get casted?

And I was like yeah, fuck it. So I filled out like the whole questionnaire. I think it was like a dude it was like a 300 or like 400 400 question questionnaire and then I got a call and they were like hey you know we're calling me about your questionnaire.

You want to do a casting thing? And I was like, this lady's bullshit. I don't even know who the fuck I'm talking to. How did you get my number? And I think the first time I hung up and they called me back. And they're like, no, this is serious. Like we, like, you answered this, this to the questions. And I was like, oh, she's serious.

So I did like, I think like two over the phone interviews. And then I did like a Zoom interview. The Zoom actually was kind of cool because I was not taking it serious. I was just bullshit in the whole time, like just cutting up. And they were like, okay, cool, we'll let you know. So then like, I think like two months went by. I didn't hear shit. I had forgot that I had even like applied.

I was like in college at the time. Well, actually I wasn't in college because I was on academic probation. So I wasn't actually going to class, but I wasn't telling that to the parents. Everybody thought you was at college. Yeah, they thought I was at college. In college. Yeah, I was on campus. We both back in college.

I was on campus. At some point in time, right. Then they had called me back like, like, I don't know. I think it was probably like two. Two months later, they were like, yeah, we're going to fly you out to LA, did that whole thing. And there was then another like two weeks or something went by a while went by. And they were like, yeah, you're going to be flying out. And I was like, oh shit, this is real.

Like, I actually got cast. I'm going on the real world. Like, I'm going on the real world. Like, it was like, I, and it was so surreal because like the entire time I was like, I know I'm not going to get casted. But I was like, if I keep going this far, I might as well just fuck around. And the next thing you know, it's like, yeah, you got cast it. You fly out this date, whatever. And I was just like, you're not going to say.

say no to a free flight. No. I'm not going to say no to a free fight. And then at that time, I'm like, I'm a college kid broke as hell. I was like, I'm not going to say no to a free living either. Literally as simple as that. Of course.

You're going to give me a crib and food and that's crib food, alcohol. Yeah. I'm going. It's a no-brainer for me. I love hearing these stories because it really is like so effortless for the people that have the it factor. You show up and it

happens. They don't want to cast people that are trying their hardest to get on. I think they, I truly believe this after all the stories we've heard, plus my own story, like the people, like, I didn't even fill my questionnaire out. It wasn't in paper. And I was like, nope, not filling that out. Nope, nope. And I handed it in.

I'm like, I got shit to do. And then the next thing, you know, they're like, well, can you come to this interview? And I'm like, really? These people are like writing you essays and I'm like not giving a shit. But they want that because they want people who are going to be themselves. So I believe that one 100%. Yeah. The people that don't try are usually the ones that are like, yeah, we want that guy.

Yeah. Or girl. You put him on camera. That's what we need. He's going to do something. You end up on this real world season with what we know as very iconic figures in the game today. Were any of them a culture shock for you or were you used to people like that in your real life? No, I was pretty, I was pretty used to that.

I mean, like, a lot of those people just, because at the time I was in college, so you're in that kind of like more melting pot where you're just meeting a bunch of people. I think if anybody was a culture shock, it was probably me. Yeah, to them. Because everybody was like not expecting. but I mean I feel like everybody in there I could relate to on some level so it was never like a weird weirdness about it I would say Jessica was a little annoying no way you get she don't say she got my goddamn nerves yeah what was it what was it about Jessica that didn't match well with you it was just like the like you know 21 going on 16 maturity level I was just like girl grow up like I get it southern bell you get taken care of it I guess I

I get it. I get it, but we're not that young. Do you feel like she was someone who came in and was like, this is how I want my edit to be, this is how I want to be portrayed and tried to stick to that? Because I feel like that's what I got from her on just the few challenges I did with her was like she refused to just be authentic and let it unravel from there. Instead, she was like, no, I'm this, this, this, this and this. And this is what I want to be portrayed on TV. And that usually makes it way worse to film with those types of people. and it also makes it really like production hates those types of people well i think that concludes the free preview of the zach nichols podcast so go to patreon

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