Sharing her side of the story. Ahead of elimination on the Wednesday, September 4, episode of The Challenge: War of the Worlds 2, host TJ Lavin announced that Faith Stowers decided to leave the show — with no explanation or footage revealing why she left.
However, in a new interview with Us Weekly, the reality star opens up about what happened and her decision to leave Thailand. The night before her exit, cameras caught her getting into an argument with Stephen Bear and Kyle Christie after she was woken up in the middle of the night by them yelling loudly across her room.
“A lot of the challengers caught a bacterial infection in our lungs so we were coughing constantly. I almost vomited from coughing so much,” Stowers, 30, tells Us exclusively, adding that she was given medication she could not drink on which also made her very drowsy. “I’ve been through noisy, sleepless nights. This isn’t my first Challenge. However, this is the first Challenge I’ve been involved in that we were sick. It was very difficult for a lot of us.”
However, she “didn’t want to come off aggressive” so just asked the guys to be quiet. “Bear gave me this disgusted look, like, ‘Who are you?’ No one on the shows who have been on this show for years and earned their right to be cocky have ever looked at me like that,” she continued. “I was so irritated and I heard them say ‘F–k off.’”
With that, the Vanderpump Rules alum decided she’d get them back by getting a pot and pan and banging them together twice above Bear’s head, just after he went to sleep. Afterward, she got in bed but Bear woke her up shortly after to ask why she did that. During their discussion in the hallway, “it went from trying him to explain himself to being an asshole,” she says. “We started to exchange words back.”
Others in the house were laughing during their argument and soon, it wrapped up and she went to bed. Security remained in the house to ensure that nothing happened and soon after, the Ex on the Beach alum was called out of bed for an interview about what happened. So, she went to the confessional room; when she left, Christie and Laurel Stuckey were waiting.
Christie, 27, continued to ask her why she woke him up. “I was repeating myself calmly and he got really upset. I thought that Laurel, as a woman, would defuse it, but she didn’t,” Stowers continues. “I kept saying, ‘It’s not a big deal, why are you so angry?’ I was willing to let it go and would laugh with Bear about it the next day but Kyle escalated it.”
Eventually, Christie stood up and walked toward Stowers.
“Where I’m from, that’s aggressive,” she shares, adding that Theo Campbell and Bear had also come into the room and joined the conversation, which made her uncomfortable. Security remained in the room during the conversation.
“It was really freaking me out,” she said. “Why are people treating me like I’m a terrible person? It just really made me uncomfortable because I don’t fight.”
Eventually, Leroy Garrett convinced everyone to go to bed.
“I was so shaken up. As I went into the room, Kyle was yelling and called me a whore or something. I responded with, ‘Oh, your momma,’ because I didn’t know what else to say,” Stowers adds. “I started thinking and decided, I can’t do the show like this. I felt hurt and felt like I shouldn’t be involved in this situation.”
With that, she woke up the next day and told everyone she was leaving. Bear apologized and Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio brought in Christie to do the same; many even begged her to stay.
“I was in the military for seven years, I’m not gonna leave because I couldn’t get sleep,” she reiterates. “I can handle that. It’s just when people are disrespectful when they don’t need to be.”
The Challenge airs on MTV Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
