‘Fear’ — of snakes, spiders, suffocation — indeed a big ‘Factor’ for NC mom of 4
Barely eight minutes into the premiere episode of the freshly rebooted “Fear Factor” reality TV series, Tyler White of Denver, N.C., is shown reacting in — appropriately — terror.
Her mouth drops open. She grabs the arm of a teammate. Before her is a giant apparatus that has vacuum-sealed a pair of human stand-ins in a massive plastic bag, equipped with only a breathing tube to supply them with air. And White quickly realizes that she is about to be encased inside one of these things herself.
“I am so absurdly nervous,” the 35-year-old stay-at-home-mother of four says into the camera, “because one of my worst fears is tight spaces. ... This is going to be hellacious.”
But if you want the truth? In the moment, White actually was a little bit relieved.
See, she grew up in and around the Charlotte area watching the old NBC version hosted by Joe Rogan back in the 2000s. So she knew darn well what was eventually coming for her and her 13 fellow contestants as they navigated the new Fox incarnation. It subs “House of Fear” into the show’s name, character arcs into the show’s concept (it’s now a 10-episode serial with eliminations each week, having jettisoned the game-show bent to the original), and “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville into the hosting job.
White explained just last week, a few months removed from filming: “I was really thankful that the first challenge wasn’t food-related. I really didn’t wanna do that straight out the gate.”
Have no — ahem — fear, though. White and the rest of the cast members on the new series, which enjoyed a “special advance premiere” Sunday night but officially debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday, will absolutely have to feast on some very, very gross things moving forward. (Cow stomach, anyone?)
In her recent interview, the UNC Charlotte alum and lifelong area resident discussed her strategy for getting through disgusting-food challenges; “trauma-bonding” with other contestants; and how she was able to get away with leaving four kids (ages 9, 6, 3 and 1) with Dad, for the month-long production of the show.
The conversation has been edited to improve flow, for clarity and brevity.
Q. Did you always want a big family?
Yeah. I’m an only child, and when I was young, it didn’t resonate with me. But as I got older, it struck me that, when my parents die, I’ll have no one to talk with about, “Hey, remember when Mom used to that?” “Remember when Dad used to do that?” That made me really sad.
But funny enough, after the third son, we thought, This is nice. We’re good. Luke, my husband, told me on a Monday, “Babe, I think I’m gonna get a vasectomy.” I was like, “Great!” Friday? Four days later? I was pregnant. Surprise! But it was a little girl. I mean, it would have been great either way, but it was really cool that it was a little girl. So now, there will be no more children from us. Four is enough.
It’s a lot of fun. But my house is constant chaos. Constant.
Q. I’m surprised you got the pass to go do this.
My husband was the one who was like, “Babe, you should do this.” Because I lived with my parents as a kid, I went to college and lived with my parents, then I met my husband really young, got married, and moved in with him. So I was never alone. And he was like, “I think it would be really good for you to go and be independent for a little bit and make decisions. Hard decisions, probably.” I was like, “Are you sure?”
And at first I was tearful. My daughter wasn’t even 1 yet. She hadn’t started walking. I was like, “I can’t go! I can’t leave them!” But my husband said, “Yes, you can. You can do it. You can do hard things.” So I did. I left. And he had the kids all by himself that entire time. He was a champ.
Q. That must have been really hard to go a month with zero communication with your kids.
I remember telling my husband, “If Daisy walks, can you tell them to tell me?”
When things got hard or sad, it made me miss them a lot. But also you’re so busy from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, and we wouldn’t go to bed till well after midnight. You’re so dead-tired. Then it starts all over again. You’re so “in it,” you know?
Oh, and I’ll have you know, my daughter didn’t walk until I got back. But my family said they wouldn’t have tried to get a message to me even if she had. They said, “She could have walked 20 times and you would have never known.” I said, “That is so rude!” They’re like, “We couldn’t let you be distracted about that stuff. It could have knocked off your thought process” — which I completely understand. But when I found out I hadn’t missed her walking, I was like, Praise the Lord!
Q. So how did you get picked to be on the show in the first place?
Have you seen “Squid Game: The Challenge” — the Netflix (reality-competition) show? Well, my husband watched it, and he goes, “Tyler, I want you to apply for this.” I’m like, “I’m not applying for this.” He was like, “Let me do it for you. I’ll do everything.” So I said OK, and he made a little video and submitted it.
Q. Why didn’t he apply for it?
I think because I can be a little eccentric and dramatic, and be loud. And I think he thought people would rather watch that.
Anyway, in September (2024) — I’d just had my daughter, and I was sitting in the waiting room of the NICU, waiting on the nurse to let me in, doped up on medicine — they called me for “Squid Game.” The woman said, “It would film in January, out of the country.” And I’m like, “My daughter’s in the NICU. She’s early. There’s no way I can do this. I don’t even have a passport.” She was like, “Well, I’m gonna push you through.” But it didn’t happen.
Then early last summer, I was sitting on my couch, and I got a text from a guy who said, “Hey, I cast for ‘Squid Game.’ I saw your video. Would you like to do ‘Fear Factor’?” I read it to my husband, and he was like, “Absolutely.” From there, it all happened very quickly.
So it was an opportunity that kind of landed in my lap.
Q. Well, having seen the original show, and knowing that its bread and butter has always been eating gross stuff — that didn’t make you have second thoughts at all?
Well, I’m a really picky eater. I don’t eat sushi. That seems disgusting to me. But at the same time, I thought, OK, if I can hold my nose and just imagine in my head that it’s something else, I feel like I could get through it. I told my husband, “If I’m having to eat something crazy, like a cockroach, I’d just go, Potato chip, potato chip, potato chip” — you know, say it in my head.
As it turned out, I think more so I’m terrified of anything involving tight spaces. You see in the previews, we’re getting covered in cement, and that truly scared me, because there’s rebar (keeping the contestants trapped in the pit being filled with the cement). So even if you needed to get out quickly, you can’t. That messed with my head a little bit. But I got really close to someone in the house during that. She was like, “You got it. Be still. Take deep breaths.”
I think that’s another thing you don’t realize, is how much you start relying on these other people to help you. I’m really close, still, to a few of the other people who were in the house, which seems so crazy, because it’s a show. But you’re trauma-bonded. It is a game, but you’re doing very scary things. They’re the only ones you can really unpack that with, and talk through what was scary, what was not. “How’d you feel with this?” “How’d you feel with that?”
Nobody outside of those people can understand what you’re talking about. I mean, how many people have been zip-locked in a giant bag? Not many.
Q. I would love to see the waiver they made you sign before you went on.
Right? There were many, many, many, many pages, and there was a lot of re-reading done.
It was interesting, though. You have to be very cognizant of the creatures and the animals — which you should be, obviously, because they’re living things. And great caution was taken so that they wouldn’t try to feed on us. But you can’t control if you spook a creature, an animal, and they bite out of fear. So that was always in my head, always: Just be calm. But that’s so much easier said than done, especially when there’s a python wrapped around me, which you can see in the previews. I was not calm.
Q. What would you say is perhaps your oldest fear? Something that you carried with you onto the show, from as far back as childhood?
Spiders. I think I was in second grade. It was around Christmastime. We used to get real Christmas trees, and we would have pajama-party night, where we’d hang out on the floor and watch a movie, eat pizza and popcorn with my parents, then go to sleep. And I remember one morning I woke up and my leg hurt really bad. I pulled the cover down, and on my thigh I had this big bump — and come to find out, a brown recluse crawled off our Christmas tree, crawled under the covers and bit me. That stuck with me, because I’m like, Even at night, at home, when I’m not doing anything, I could get bit.
So that caused long-term PTSD, obviously, because I’m 35 and I still don’t like them. And I think at every turn while doing the show, I was very worried it was gonna be something with tarantulas. You remember in old-school “Fear Factor,” when they put your head in the box, and they put the tarantulas all over your face? I just kept waiting on that to happen to us.
Q. I assume they asked you all this stuff in the pre-interviews, so they can take that information and use it against you!
OHH, yeah. When we were on the phone, I remember I was like, “Luke, should I lie? Should I lie and not tell them my true fears? Because then they’re gonna make me do ’em!” And he said, “No, you have to be honest.” So I was. Then on Day One, it was one of them: confined spaces. Although I thought we’d be in a coffin.
Q. When you were in that giant vacuum-sealed bag, you had a panic button you could have hit. How close were you to using it?
There’s actually also a specific phrase that you could say if you want out. To be abundantly clear you want out.
But listen, every challenge we did, I was bound and determined to not give up. All I could think of is, I’ve done all this to get here, I’ve left my kids at home, and I’m not going to fail. This is going to be worth something. I didn’t want to let my kids down. Or my husband, but more my kids. Can you imagine? If I’d gone home on Day One? I’d never hear the end of it. From my son, specifically. So, no. Failure was not on the table.
Q. What did you learn about yourself through this experience? I mean, now that the show is over — for you at least — do you have a different perspective on the concept of fear in general?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I’ve learned I can do hard things. Be strong, be brave. That’s what I kept trying to tell myself when I was out there. I look back on all the things that I accomplished in there and that brings me a lot of peace. Particularly now that I have a daughter, I wanted her to see that as a woman, we can do really hard things. And I think it’ll be cool that this will live out there on the internet forever, that I can call it up when things get crazy at home and be like, “Y’all, sit down. Look at mom do this. You can do hard things, too.”
I mean, am I gonna go out into the middle ocean just to tread water? No. But if I’m at the museum with my kids on a field trip, would I hold a tarantula? Yeah. Because I don’t want to miss out on a cool opportunity with them.
It’s mind over matter: Do I want to hold this tarantula? No, but I’m gonna do it because my kid wants me to — or to prove that they can do it, too.
This story was originally published January 14, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
