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At the start of Stars On Mars, 12 celebrities had landed on “Mars.” Adam Rippon was declared the brightest star in the galaxy by the end of Stars On Mars. It all came down to Adam, Porsha Williams, and Tinashe. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Adam about that game-changing final challenge and how he was fully prepared for Tinashe to become the champion.
“When we were getting out to do this last part, I really wanted Tinashe to win,” the DWTS champion revealed. The final mission featured a pop quiz element and a physical challenge. Adam admitted that he was willing to wait for Tinashe to finish the second half of the mission “so that we could just win together.”
Adam Rippon with Tinashe and Porsha Williams. (FOX)
During the last part of the mission, the 33-year-old noticed that Tinashe was struggling as they faced the grueling desert heat in Australia. “Somehow, I started to make it a little bit further along because we had to assemble a rocket to send our message back to Earth,” Adam explained. “I could see Tinashe was struggling a little bit more than I was at that point, so I ran over and tried to help her with her rocket a little bit because I was like, she’s got to win. She has to win. I kept going with mine. I was pretty much done, and she was still struggling a little bit. At that point, she was like, ‘Adam, just put us out of this misery. We’re both sweating out of our brains.’ So I kind of, against my own will, ended up winning.”
In those final moments, Tinashe truly gave her blessing to Adam. “I did need that,” the Olympic figure skater admitted. “I kept being like, ‘We win together. We’re both winners.’ She was like, ‘No, you won.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I refuse to believe that.’ But with her blessing, I did get to be the brightest star in the universe, which I really appreciate because not a lot of people can get that blessing from Tinashe.”
Even though filming has been over for a while now, Adam has kept in touch with his fellow celebronauts. “I really think that’s been my favorite takeaway from this whole experience was there were just so many incredible people that I’m so lucky that I got to spend this time with, and now I consider them friends,” Adam told HollywoodLife. “I used to be a figure skater, and I feel so connected to a lot of my skating friends because in those high-pressure situations of a competition, you see somebody at their best and you see them at their worst. In this situation, we’re living with these people, these strangers, 24 hours a day for a month. We see this person the second they wake up, and we see them right before they go to bed. You really get to know somebody really well, really quickly. It’s something that’ll bond you forever.”
Adam Rippon competing in ‘Stars On Mars.’ (FOX)
Adam is no stranger to intense physical challenges after his figure skating training for the Olympics. The Normalize This podcast host admitted that the “mental component” of Stars On Mars was “just as tough” as the physical component. “You’re away from your family, and we were really limited with them in the communication we could have at home,” Adam noted. “With my husband [Jussi-Pekka Kajaala], I was like, ‘I’m not going to call you the whole time that I’m there. I’ll text you and update you.’ I didn’t want to get on the phone, I didn’t want to FaceTime because I didn’t want to be emotional about missing home. That’s a month of not talking to your family.”
He continued, “In addition to the show being so much fun and something that we bonded over, we really became close with each other as we experienced those real-life emotions that we were going through of missing your family or being overwhelmed by a situation. I think that’s really where everybody became really close.”
