Fox’s quirky new celeb reality game show, Stars on Mars, took a confrontational turn on Monday night’s episode when Lance Armstrong decided to start airing his opinions on transgender athletes in sports in front of his shocked and appalled castmates.
The series is a star-studded reality TV competition akin to recent entries like Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test and The Traitors, which casts celebrities, athletes, and major personalities and places them in unfamiliar scenarios. In this case, that’s a mock Mars pod, where the celebs live while they duke it out for the title of “The Brightest Star in the Galaxy.”
So it was a surprise when, this week, Armstrong addressed MMA fighter Rhonda Rousey, asking why the creation of a separate category of competition for trans women in sports would be “unfair”—an interesting choice of words from the disgraced cyclist who has confessed to using banned substances for the majority of his career.
Other ‘celebronauts’ are seen looking visibly uncomfortable, with former Modern Family star Ariel Winter rolling her eyes before singer Tinashe chimed in, “I think we just have to care about if you otherize people.” Real Housewife Porsha Williams agreed, pointing out that they weren’t sitting at his kitchen table, where perhaps such candid, if controversial, statements would be appropriate to articulate.
Figure skater Adam Rippon heard the interaction from across the ‘Hab,’ the name for the imitation Mars living quarters. He spoke to The Daily Beast’s Obsessed about the uncomfortable conversation—and didn’t hold back on how he really felt about it.
“It was just so inappropriate,” the openly gay former Olympian said. “Nobody wanted to have this conversation. Especially on this cute little reality show where we all had to live together for weeks on end.”
According to Rippon, the next day at dinner Armstrong chose to bring it up again, announcing to the room that the “problem with America is that nobody wants to have these uncomfortable conversations.” Armstrong then directly addressed Rippon, asking him why he wouldn’t engage.
“I’m not afraid of having difficult conversations,” Rippon told me. “But if we’re going to fully open that particular conversation, I want trans athletes [present], I want people who are doing research into this [to be there], and people who are real proponents of seeing women’s sports succeed. I don’t need to hear what the greatest cheater in American history has to say about what he thinks is an unfair advantage.”
Armstrong has since doubled down on his position on Twitter, while promoting his new series titled, like his podcast, The Forward—which features a conversation with Caitlyn Jenner on trans people in sports.
The whole encounter made Rippon question whether, as an ally and LGBTQ+ icon, he should stay on the show. His husband, along with a close friend, convinced him to stay, but the Dancing With the Stars champion, who is known for his dynamism and self-deprecating humor, said he remained uncomfortable.
“It was so personal to me, and to my own experience,” Rippon said, shaking his head. “We’d just had Pride Month. I hate to see the way that trans people are talked about, because it wasn’t too long ago that that was the way that queer people, gay people, lesbians, were talked about. And all anyone is trying to do is just live their life.”
Rippon shared that in a rare off-camera moment while daily COVID tests were being administered, Winter (whose relationship with her former cyclist costar became increasingly antagonistic after he waved a cockroach in her face in Episode 4) confronted Armstrong.
“She marches right up to Lance and goes, ‘I forgot you cheated. I forgot you had seven titles and an Olympic gold medal stripped from you for being the head of a doping ring.’ And my jaw is on the ground—I cannot believe she is actually saying this,” he said.
Rippon added that before the moment was interrupted by a producer, Armstrong refuted being the ‘head’ of the ring, to which Winter responded that the court documents said otherwise. “I was like, oh my God, she spent the night reading court documents!”
Speaking on FaceTime from his California home, Rippon said that the energy between the castmates permanently shifted, even after the topic was laid to rest. On camera, he can be seen telling Tinashe how “disheartening” the altercation was, explaining that the situation is far more nuanced than Armstrong was letting on, as trans athletes often have to wait years before they can compete in a gender-affirming category.
Later in the episode, Rippon returned to the effervescent personality established his brand on, saying of the four new celebronauts introduced in the same episode, “I feel like we’re really going to hit it off.”
After weeks spent filming in the middle of the Australian outback, completing physically and mentally tough challenges, Rippon said that—with the exception of Armstrong—the cast have remained in touch after filming wrapped. (Just while chatting with us, a text from Porsha Williams popped up on his phone.)
The seemingly genuine camaraderie between castmates comes across in the show, with vibes closer to The Great British Bake Off than Big Brother or Survivor.
Episode 5, which aired Monday night, saw several celebronauts begin to “strategize” according to their confessionals. But the goofy reality show stays strictly within the bounds of high-budget space-camp, and with a theatrical introduction from host William Shatner, this inaugural season of Stars On Mars, slated for 12 episodes, makes for a fun, if occasionally awkward watch.
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