Some 22 years ago, The Real World: Miami star Flora Alekseyeva decided to stop being polite and start getting real.
As in, following a brief stint on 2002's Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons—some six years after her initial MTV debut—"I was off the grid," Flora recently explained to E! News in an exclusive interview. "Nobody could find me. Not that I was hiding. It was just that I didn't care for any of this. I was too busy doing my own stuff."
Which meant that instead of living in a house with seven strangers, she was designing and building sleek AF homes with her Florida-based construction company RGMH and raising her now-18-year-old daughter Mia Garber with husband Mitchell Garber.
But with her teen heading off to play college tennis this fall, she realized that just maybe it was time to go back to having her life taped.
"I did my mommy duty, I did my business duty," Flora said of signing on for the fourth season of The Challenge: All Stars, premiering exclusively on Paramount+ April 10. "And I figured, you know what, who's going to have the coolest mom in the world when she goes to college? She's going to be the coolest kid. At my age, why not give it a whirl?"
Though, admittedly, the 52-year-old got thrown a bit for a loop when she turned up in Cape Town, South Africa, and learned she'd be facing off against such Challenge legends as Cara Maria Sorbello and Brad Fiorenza.
"I see all these competitors on other shows and they're just insane," she marveled. "They're super athletic. I'm like, I'm going to just try it." And even if she was sent home in the first elimination, she added, "I'll still be the coolest mom. My daughter is going to be super proud. So that was my motivation. Why not? What the heck?"
And she was sure her teen would be impressed no matter what—you know, in her own way.
Asked if the athlete helped her train ahead of filming, Flora joked, "No. My daughter laughs at me. She's like, 'Ha, Ma, you're going to get your ass whipped!'" And yet, Flora continued, she wasn't about to quit and risk the wrath of host T.J. Lavin, Mr. Don't-Take-Care-Hope-to-See-You-Never.
"I said, 'Well, listen, at least I'm going to try,'" explained Flora. "If you don't try, you'll never know." It's something she'd long instilled in her court-dominating, trophy-collecting daughter. "My thing is, doesn't matter how big the opponent on the other side of the net is, it doesn't matter how big their racket is. It only matters how you play the game. So win or lose, as long as you try, that's the most important thing."
Her goal: "I wanted to show no matter how old I am, how unfit I may be, it's still mind over matter. Just push through."
Plus, while she went in with no formal alliance and was admittedly "in a panic" when she saw her fellow competitors ("I'm like, 'Oh, Lord, have mercy, I'm going to die here'"), she was greeted by at least one familiar face, quickly reconnecting with fellow Battle of the Seasons alum Adam Larson.
"Flora is my favorite partner," the star of Road Rules: The Quest told E! News, rushing off to find the old photo album that contained a shot from them sheltering in place after Hurricane Juliette blew through Mexico's Cabo San Lucas in the fall of 2001.
Showing up more than two decades later to film All Stars, Flora recounted, there was a dearth of allies. Beth Stolarczyk, who she'd kept in touch with "for many moons," hadn't signed on, "So I really didn't know anybody except Adam," she said. "Adam was probably the one that I spoke to the most in the first initial day. And I felt comfortable because anyone would feel super comfortable with him."
Having last appeared on The Gauntlet 2 in 2006, Adam turned up as what he called "Adam 4.0," ready and eager to show off the version of himself that was a single dad working in information technology in Greenville, S.C.
"I've been saying yes for f--king years," the 45-year-old explained of his return. It was just logistically tricky due to the fact that he has full custody of daughters Hunter, 9, and Harlow, 8. "Plus I was hiding under a rock," he added. "I was just embarrassed. My life hadn't really turned out how I thought it would."
But no matter that initial vision he harbored back when he was driving an RV through Morocco, in a lot of ways things have turned out far better.
"Being a dad of daughters has really gotten me to slow down," he noted. (Not literally, though, thanks to his penchant for triathlons.) "See, I always thought as long as I gave my best, if I was a little bit crass in the delivery of my message of why someone deserved to be there, didn't deserve to be there or just whatever I wanted to say, people were like, 'Oh, that's just Adam.' And now that I've got two little monkeys, I want to make the world a better place."
And while neither Flora nor Adam can tease if they walked away from The Challenge with their bank account in a better place, they fully cashed in on the experience.
"I got an opportunity to revisit people that I met before, like Adam," said Flora. "And I got to meet amazing, amazing people who I still consider my friends and actually hang out with after the fact."
Echoed Adam, "It's really good that they take away every ounce of connection and technology that you have with the outside world because it really allows you to look inward. I think that these experiences should be available to all people. They're very therapeutic and cathartic."
Not to mention an ideal environment for building lifelong relationships. "I promise when you're around these people, it's like family," he explained. "But it's so competitive. There's just something that happens where fires will be ignited inside you, dreams will come out."