Canadian woman attempts to survive 21 days in the jungle for TV show, naked
Naked and Afraid is a TV show that puts male-female duos out in the wild to survive completely naked, and a Canadian woman told us about her experience on the show.
Vancouverite Sunny Forsythe spoke to Daily Hive about the gruelling mental and physical conditions she had to endure for the Discovery show.
“My time there focused on mental health, learning ways to grieve, teamwork, fighting the elements and facing huge fears.”
Forsythe faced those fears by being dropped into a bug-infested jungle.
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If you’ve never seen Naked and Afraid, here’s the abridged premise as the 17th season is underway.
“What happens when you put two strangers — sans clothes — in some of the most extreme environments on earth?”
We asked Forsythe what she was doing before she agreed to take on this daunting challenge.
“I was actually working in the sleep apnea industry,” she said.
She had seven years of experience doing that before she started teaching first aid. Then, the pandemic hit, and she left the medical industry.
Forsythe’s interest in the wilderness started in elementary school and Boy Scouts.
“I had a short haircut,” Forsythe said with a laugh.
She had always been fond of nature.
Okay, but naked?
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Considering the premise of the show, as a woman being paired with another man, both completely naked, we had to ask if that reality posed its own challenges.
“For me and my partner, not at all,” Forsythe said.
“We had the most amazing respect for our significant others,” she added.
When she encountered her partner, Forsythe recalled sharing a distant fist bump.
“There’s nothing sexual about it.”
Surrounded by wolves
Michael Roeder/Shutterstock
“I never thought of applying to the show until February last year. We got that huge dump of snow.”
Forsythe wanted to do some winter training, so she slept outdoors in Quarry Rock.
She offered the following piece of information almost casually regarding that Quarry Rock camping trip.
“I got surrounded by a pack of wolves.”
She initially tried to pass them off as coyotes, but they were “really big.”
She realized really quickly that they weren’t coyotes.
“At least on the show, there’s a medical team on standby.”
She started a fire, and the wolves eventually moved on. The encounter ended without any real danger.
She put in her application for her show the next day, not thinking there’d be a callback.
She got a callback
Forsythe got a callback, and she shared why her journey on this TV show was so personal and important.
“I went out there just for the mental health aspect and to learn how to grieve my dad.”
Her dad unexpectedly died. He had drowned, and they found his body, but they weren’t able to find any answers as to why.
“I went out there to let my body learn how to be present and process everything. It was an incredible experience.”
It wasn’t just an incredible experience; it was a terrifying one; as Forsythe recalled, one of the realities was the risk of being eaten alive 24/7.
“The bugs out there look like fruit flies, so you don’t feel them, but the venom that they have will cause oozing wounds. At night, you’re trying to sleep, and they’re all around you.”
While that might be a nightmare for those scared of bugs, the psychological impacts of those realities were a significant factor.
The takeaway
After all was said and done, Forsythe walked away from the experience with many new psychological tools, like the ability to be present.
“I had a moment out there that was so surreal,” she said.
She recalled being able to catch herself in her own breath and feeling the circulatory system of her body.
“This is wild,” she recounted.
She was able to bring that feeling home, with an added ability to grieve, like she was hoping she’d be able to achieve when she set out on this wild and naked journey.
“I was able to go out there and give him [her dad] the closure that he needed, for him to move on and have peace and rest.”
If you want to learn more about Forsythe’s daring time on Naked and Afraid, including where she was placed, her episode airs on March 17.
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