Kyland Young may be one of the most junior contestants on The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras, but he’s got a distinct advantage over some of the others: He’s used to living in isolation from the world thanks to his long stint on Big Brother.
Young competed on Big Brother 23, where he spent a whopping 79 days as a houseguest, and made it into the final four as a result of his persistence.
“I think that the biggest benefit I had was Big Brother because Big Brother is such a long show and so isolating,” he told TV Insider. “You’re in this house, you don’t get to see sunlight like five days a week for three months, you’ve seen no other human beings. And you’re just on 24/7.”
According to Young, who is part of the new generation of Challengers in Era 4, being used to living in a show bubble for so long makes him more adept than even some of the more senior contestants.
“Coming into The Challenge environment, I’ve noticed how much that helped. Battle for a New Champion, [Season] 39, we were filming for, I don’t know, like two months or something. And so you could see in people how the strain of the game can get to anybody after like four or five weeks. But because I spent 12 weeks locked in a house, in such a small area, I think that that sort of messed me up in a way that has helped me feel prepared to be in this sort of contrived environment for extended periods of time.”
Young is one of 10 contestants in Era 4. He previously made his Challenge debut on the CBS spinoff The Challenge USA‘s first season and competed in Season 39 before joining the massive lineup for 40.
He also teased a major change that fans can expect from this generational format, saying, “Usually when people come into the game or there’s a new season, there is this big conglomerate of vets who kind of like push one rookie group to the side and throw them in. This was just not the case.”
“Everybody within their era had people that had so much history,” Young continued. “They weren’t willing to turn on them. So everybody came in with a stacked alliance to a certain degree. It wasn’t like the same person is getting thrown in every time. It’s just not that typical season. So it really added a lot to it this time. It was cool.”
The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras, Wednesdays, 8/7c, MTV