Candice Warner proved to be an early favourite on I'm A Celebrity, which made it all the more shocking when the former iron woman was sent packing last week.
From being a fierce physical competitor to her wholesome friendship with her camp mates, Candice was a delight to watch. Sadly, she became the second celeb (and woman) sent home on Thursday.
We spoke to the iconic athlete to debrief on her jungle experience and her motivations for joining the series.
On Sunday, Frankie Muniz opted to leave the jungle, which came as no huge surprise as he seemed out of sorts for a few days, as he spoke about missing his family back in the US. When asked if she wished she got to stay since Frankie was so keen to leave, Candice didn't mince her words.
"My time was up and everyone voted [to save the others]," she said. "It was my turn to go... [Frankie] was quite an emotional man, more than anyone probably thought."
This isn't Candice's first foray into reality TV.
In 2020, the mother-of-three competed on SAS Australia where she opened up about the most traumatic times in her life. She was grilled about a 2007 incident when photos of herself engaging in an alleged intimate act with Sonny Bill Williams in a bathroom were distributed, along with being asked questions about her husband David Warner’s ball-tampering scandal back in 2018.
After her stint on SAS, Candice hoped to show I'm A Celebrity viewers the real her — away from the scandals.
"As a mother and a woman, I wanted to show myself having a go," she said.
"I live a very comfortable life and I wanted to be just someone who is willing to put their hand up and go, 'You know what, I'm afraid, I'm petrified,' but I'm gonna give this a crack, I'm going to do my very best each and every day."
She hoped to show viewers that life goes on after considerable trauma and public scrutiny.
"I'm going to show people that if you have doubts, you can be resilient and overcome that and how beautiful life can be on the other side," she said. "I hope that I could do that. Even though I got voted off second, I still felt very proud of the time that I spent in the jungle."
When asked if I'm A Celebrity was anything like what she expected, Candice said it had many surprising moments.
"I didn't realise how challenging just day-to-day life in a jungle would be. Dealing with the dirt, dealing with a lot of downtime and reflecting on life — that was incredibly difficult and challenging."
Speaking of challenges, Candice disclosed some of the grosser aspects of jungle life that viewers don't see: like how most campers are wearing unwashed clothes.
"You get one pair of shorts, one pair of pants, one t-shirt and one singlet, and each day you are getting absolutely filthy, but your clothes don't [get washed]. If you wash them, it takes about two or three days for your clothes to dry, because we don't have a lot of sunlight coming into the camp. So it's just being dirty and quite unhygienic for a lot of the time that can be a bit gross," she admitted.
"And then there are people who go well over a week without having a shower so things like that get a bit icky. But I was keeping up my hygiene and washing my clothes and keeping busy. But that was kind of gross."
Candice is referring to Frankie and Skye Wheatley, who both admitted on last week's episodes that they hadn't been regularly showering.
"I completely get it because the water in the shower is absolutely freezing. And at least Frankie, in his defence, he didn't shower but he was going for a swim up the waterfall every single day," she clarified.
"Whereas with Skye, she would go to the waterfall but sunbake rather than have a swim. I don't know what she was doing or what she was thinking. I think she was more scared of how cold the shower was than anything else."
Then there was the shared toilet situation which carried its own problems.
"I've been on a previous show [SAS Australia] where we had similar toileting arrangements so I kind of knew what I was getting myself in for. However, it quite could be frustrating when you'd go to the toilet and the person before you would leave an empty toilet roll or you'd have a guy in there and he'd leave the toilet seat up or they'd be pee on the toilet seat. It's like... pick up your act a little bit," she said.
"There was no friction from it but we definitely spoke up and said 'Come on, guys. Just don't get lazy. Wipe the toilet seat. Be mindful of others.'... I can't imagine going into that last week, I think everyone's gonna be pretty sloppy with their habits."
Okay, gross.
Candice was the second celebrity eliminated, following Denise Drysdale and then on Sunday night, Michelle Bridges was eliminated, which means that only three female celebs remain.
In the case of Denise, Candice believes she had trouble joining the show a few days later than everyone else.
"She was fabulous. But it was really difficult for her, as she came in later and there were already a lot of relationships established. But I take my hat off to her at 75, going into the jungle, into an environment that no one can prepare you for. I thought she did a terrific job."
The iron woman plans on staying friends with fellow Sydneysiders, Britney Hockley and Michelle Bridges, but considers all the contestants her lifelong friends.
"We will remain friends as we all got along. I think that's annoying for some people because some people love drama and wanted to see that but we were all really close," she said.
"We're all very different personalities, very different characters with different backgrounds but it just worked."
Feature image: Ten.
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