While speaking with Joe Rogan, David Hurwitz recalled the exact moment his dreams came true as a television producer for the television show Fear Factor. Hurwitz, along with collaborator, Matt Kunitz, was watching a woman drink worms out of a martini glass when it hit them that they’d created something America would not be able to live without – gross-out television – but at the cost of their “souls.”
“I think the glass had, like, three earthworms and a silkworm in it,” Hurwitz tells Yahoo Entertainment now. “We watched her try to drink them, and then her gag reflex kicked in. We looked at each other and went, ‘We’re going to hell.’”
Instead, the show was extremely successful and shot to the top of the ratings by Nielsen. Fear Factor first aired in June 2001 and was hosted by podcaster Joe Rogan at the time. The show was an immediate hit, and it began competing against the other big reality shows of the day, Survivor and Big Brother.
“Everyone was saying, ‘All the networks are looking for the next Survivor,” Kunitz told Yahoo. He began his television career with MTV working on the Real World and Road Rules reality television shows.
Hurwitz could not agree with his longtime collaborator anymore.
“At the time, it was really just Survivor and Big Brother,” Hurwitz said. His first shows included The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel and Joe Rogan, as well as the reality series Before They Were Stars, which was popular in its day. “There was no such thing at NBC as the ‘reality TV department.’ Literally, the gentleman that oversaw specials like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was our executive!”
Fear Factor was not an original idea by Hurwitz and Kunitz. Instead, it was something they “borrowed” from European reality television and gave it an American twist. The show was based on the Danish program Now or Neverland. The original show made contestants put their well-being on the line in dangerous stunts. Hurwitz and Kunitz knew that if they were going to make this show a hit in America, they had to go big.
Fear Factor was a hit from its first day on the air.
Rogan solidified his persona because of Fear Factor, narrating the gross stunts in his gleeful manner.
“We were getting 18 million viewers — that would never happen today,” Kunitz says. “The gross stunts were great, not only because they were visceral and offered something you’d never seen before, but it also helped with the budget.”
However, one stunt went too far and doomed the show. The show originally stopped airing in 2006 but was revived in 2011 to celebrate its tenth anniversary. It bombed.
“They said, ‘We want this to be bigger and better than ever,’” Kunitz told Yahoo. So, Rogan, Kunitz and Hurwitz gave the network donkey seamen.
“We didn’t go rogue. Everyone signed off on every challenge, from the network to the studio,” Kunitz confirmed.
Nevertheless, they all got it wrong when they decided to use donkey seamen in the show’s revival. They forced the crew to test the stunt, and Joe Rogan watched in horror as they did it despite the horror of it all.
“I remember that Joe felt so bad, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of $100 bills and just gave it to the poor guys,” Kunitz said.
When TMZ reported on the donkey seamen challenge, it crushed Fear Factor and sent it into the “where is it now” pile. The stunt was never aired because it was too gross.