Interview with MTV The Challenge: Battle of the Exes Dustin and Heather

Dustin and Heather were the second team to be evicted unexpectedly. Unlike Vinny getting himself and his partner Sarah sent home due to inappropriate behavior, Dustin fell and was in turn received five stitches in his knee. Because the couple was unable to participate in challenges, they were immediately sent home from the game. Dustin and Heather were one of the few couples who were actually together and remain as a couple today. Currently they are starting their lives out in South Jersey, participating in the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Walk and videoing their journey as a couple together on their YouTube blog. Dustin and Heather took some time out from their busy schedule to talk with TheCelebrityCafe.com to tell us what their experiences were like on MTV's The Challenge: Battle of the Exes.

TheCelebrityCafe: Dustin, let’s not beat around the bush, how did you manage to put that giant gash in your knee?

Dustin: Oh, it was giant! It was life changing-I was actually down doing…I don’t know, something by the pool and I came up and you know, Heather was laying out in the sun, she caught my eye…I actually just went to run up the stairs. It rains a lot in the Dominican Republic and the stairs were kind of gooey from it raining for two days straight and I slipped and fell. Like literally, I do a lot of stupid stuff, I do back-flips, I jump off of things into the pool; we were all doing crazy stuff, so it was crazy to think about all of the stupid things I do the entire time we were there. We were jumping off of walls and rolling down hills, I get hurt walking up some stairs. It was ridiculous. At first I didn’t think it was anything and of course I looked down and, it was a pretty big hole. I look down and I’m thinking, “What is that?” it was my kneecap. Then Heather came up and was like, “What!?”

Heather: No, I came up and I was like, I had never really seen him actually hurt, so I’m thinking he fell and ‘nicked’ his knee a little bit so I’m making fun of him for how he fell. Then I look down and I see the top of his knee, I can see part of knee cap and I said, “Yeah, that’s not good…”

TCC: Did you have a feeling that you would be sent home after the accident?

D: Part of us wanted to think that they wouldn’t send home another team right after they had sent home Vinny, so we thought, “Maybe they’ll do something,” ya know?

H: Watching him and, I mean, he has stitches he can’t really move his stitches for a week, and we usually have two challenges a week, and he couldn’t bend it really well. Especially if we had to go into the Dome, it would have torn his stitches apart. So I knew there was a pretty good chance that we were going home.

MTV was definitely worried about the water, because there was so much bacteria in the water, we couldn’t even drink the tap water. It made them nervous to even have him in the water, especially when the doctor told him he needed 10 days to heal. So that would been like 3 challenges, I think they would be OK with me doing 1 by myself, but they definitely wouldn’t let me get away with doing 3. Especially if we went in the Dome, I couldn’t a Dome alone.

TCC: What was your strategy going into the game?

D: Well our strategy was kind of take it day-by-day, relax, understand that Heather had been involved in karate, soccer and dance and this and that, and I have just been my crazy self all of my life! As far as athleticism goes we knew we were going to be pretty good, so we just had to give it all we had you know?

Heather: We knew that we weren’t going to be too bad athletically, but we also knew that we were rookies. So, we already had this target on our backs. I mean, there was a decent amount of rookies, but our strategy originally was to just band together and ultimately try to throw something in the other direction. [It] started out good because there was Paula and Dunbar, who were veterans, ended up in last place but as you guys saw in the first challenge when Nate and Priscilla went in the entire plan changed a little bit.

D: As rookies, we wanted to sort of band together. We were like, “Look, all we have to do is not come in last and we will see what happens.” Anything else could have been taken care of. But, Nate got up there and obviously had some trouble. Part our strategy was going in there with a positive attitude. With my story it was going to be kind of hectic, I was worried about that a lot going in. But I just prepared myself and what happened on the show and it being a year later, I had kind of dealt with everything so I was thinking I was just going to go in there with a positive attitude and if these people want to be rude, let them be rude. That was a lot of the worry before going into the house too.

TCC: Were you two afraid that living in that house would affect your relationship?

D: No, that wasn’t a problem at all. We had been in a situation like that before.

H: It helps that our relationship started on camera in that kind of intense situation, so we weren’t as worried about that hurting our relationship. Competitions and all, going in there we were worried because we didn’t know what the theme of the story was going to be. We didn’t know if they were going to put us against each other, we didn’t know if they were going to have some twist where we had to send each other home that worried me a little bit. Once we found out that we got to work as a team, we were feeling pretty confident.

D: Plus at the time we were doing a long distance relationship so we were just kind of excited to hang out with each other no matter where we were.

TCC: What is the key to surviving in a house full of exes?

H: Not getting into other people’s drama [laughs].

D: You need to make sure to find time to hang out by yourselves, if you know what I’m saying. But then again, you need to make sure to be social. There would be times that I wouldn’t see Heather for hours at a time because I was out working out with the dudes and hanging out and bullshitting and she was hanging out with the girls or something. I mean, there is no radio, there’s no internet, phone to call home or anything.

TCC: Had you stayed in the game, who would be your target to get out of the game?

H: We always had to go first, but if we didn’t have to go first and God forbid we pulled out a challenge and won, we were going to send in Johnny and Camilla or Paula and Dunbar, that was the plan… The thing with us was, we were rookies and we already had a target on our backs, so even if we sent in someone who could come back and gun for us, it didn’t matter, because everyone was gunning for us anyway because we were ‘the new kids.’ So we figured if we ever get the chance to, why not just send someone in that was going to send us in to begin with and give it a whirl and see if they go home. And even if they do come back, they were already going to send us in to begin with.

D: The only reason we didn’t get sent in the first three times is because Wes was there. They were going to send us in both times. And the third time, when Paula and Dunbar won power couple, they literally said…

H: ...Well, it was just kind of noted that we were new and they were going to send us in as many times as they could possibly do it, they would rather save their own people so they could screw then over later. So we were like what the hell, if we get a power couple, we might as well throw in the tough people!

TCC: So who needs to step up their game right now?

H: Well, being rookies we would really love to see Jasmine and Tyrie do well and kind of step their game up and possibly win won. I feel like if they don’t, they don’t really have much of a chance.

TCC: Is that who you would ultimately like to see take home the money?

H: If we had a choice we would like to see Jasmine and Tyrie because we started off with them or CT and Diem because in the house, Diem was one of the closest people I was to and we had a good relationship. I know she would use the money for a really good cause, so I would love to see her win.

D: Yeah CT kind of took me under his wing too, we had the most fun out of all of the veterans and we actually got along as much as I didn’t think it was going to happen, the veterans and I got along pretty well.

TCC: Having been in that situation, and now having stepped out of it, would you go back and do it again?

H: It’s definitely hard when you’re there because of the lack of communication with the outside world and everything it entails it’s extremely stressful. The challenges are really fun, if we could do challenges every single day I would not even take a second thought at saying yes. But right now we are also in a situation where we just moved to South Jersey and are living together now. We are looking for jobs and are just starting out our lives together so I think with the situation we are in right now would be kind of hard to just drop everything and do another. But, I mean if the situation presented itself in the future, I would say possibly.