Kenny Santucci says he still gets hate for the sexual assault allegations made against him in 2011 by Tonya Cooley, his castmate on ‘The Challenge,’ but now says he sees the lawsuit and its aftermath in a new light.
During a new interview with the Challenge Mania podcast, Kenny explained that, although he still continues to lose opportunities because of the lawsuit, he now believes it happened for a reason— to get him off TV and onto a different career path.
As longtime fans of ‘The Challenge’ will remember, Tonya filed a lawsuit against Kenny and fellow cast member Evan Starkman, as well as MTV and Bunim-Murray Productions, claiming that she was sexually assaulted by Kenny and Evan while filming ‘The Challenge: The Ruins’ in 2009.
In the lawsuit, Tonya claimed that she got drunk and passed out in ‘The Challenge’ house one night and that Evan and Kenny proceeded to take off her bikini top and squirt lotion on her, before taking another male castmate’s toothbrush and rubbing it around and inside of her genitals, all while producers watched and cameras rolled.
Kenny and Evan have always maintained that they did not commit the crimes Tonya accused them of, but the pair still received a permanent ban from the show. MTV settled the lawsuit with Tonya for an undisclosed amount of money and all parties were barred from talking about it.
Despite the fact that the lawsuit was settled more than a decade ago, Kenny says it still affects his career to this day.
“The amount of opportunities that I lost through all the f**king ‘Challenge’ s**t… still to this day, there are opportunities where they go, ‘You know, we found this thing on the Internet,'” Kenny told hosts Scott Yager and Derrick Kosinski. “And I go, ‘There was nothing to it. I was never in court. I never paid a f**king dollar.'”
@mtvooch Kenny Santucci finally speaks and says “NO ONE TOUCHED THIS GIRL” IN REGARDS TO THE TONYA SITUATION! HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT IT? #thechallenge42 #zachnicholspodcast #johnnybananas #caramaria #mtvthechallenge ♬ original sound – MTVOOCH
The former reality star says that people hold on to the fact that he and Evan–through MTV— chose to settle the lawsuit.
“It’s like, if I say, ‘Hey, these two guys touched me,’ your attorneys are gonna be like, ‘How much is he asking for? $10 grand? Give him the f**king $10 grand and end it. Because if it goes any further, it’s going to cost you $60 grand.’ That’s how the legal system works.”
Kenny clarified that, while he didn’t have to pay Tonya any money over her claims, MTV and the show’s production did.
“Bunim-Murray was like, ‘Shut the f**k up, we’re just gonna pay for everything and then move on with your life.'”
He went on to, once again, deny that he ever assaulted Tonya.
“It’s always like the ‘Challenge’ fans who are like, ‘Could you believe what he did [to Tonya]?’ And I’m like, ‘No one touched this girl! I swear as Christ hangs on the cross, may God strike me dead right now and kill everyone in my family.”
Kenny then asked Derrick— who was in the house on the night the alleged assault took place— if he saw anyone “touch this broad.”
Derrick denied seeing anything go down.
“Was it a joke that went wrong? Sure. Whatever,” Kenny said. “What were we, 25 at the time? Hang me on that cross. But…you get to a point where you have to realize this happened for a reason. And I have to take full responsibility for that. I have to take ownership. We were f**king drinking, we were hanging out, we were telling stupid jokes. It was the times, I’ll take full responsibility for everything.”
The podcast hosts noted that Kenny is now more willing to talk about what happened, something Kenny attributed to him trying to learn from the experience.
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“Now I have to realize: what does this teach me?” Kenny said, adding that Tonya is the only person who has made claims against him like this.
“It was one person, you know what? It happened for a reason. It got me out of doing television and put me on this other track. Maybe I’m met to help other people in another way,” he said.
Kenny— who, earlier this year, spoke about being suicidal after the lawsuit broke in 2011— called getting banned from ‘The Challenge’ “a dark time,” but insists he used to it better himself in the fitness arena. (He also hosts the Strong New York podcast.)
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“I am OK with it, and whatever people are saying [about the lawsuit] I’m OK with,” he said. “But still to this day, I know nothing happened…all the people who were there said it didn’t happen. It’s all a bunch of people who weren’t there who are like, ‘Oh, this happened!'”
Kenny went on to give his thoughts on ‘cancel culture,’ something he experienced before it was an actual thing.
“Since like 2020 I feel like the world has shifted so much, into this, like, cancel culture. And people want to cancel you no matter who you are…everyone has been f**king cancelled at this point. Society forces you into like, ‘you need to pick a side’ and no matter what you say, you are f**ked. So you might as well say what you want.”
In February, Kenny appeared on the Rare in NY podcast and reflected on being “cancelled,” calling it, “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.”
He also discussed how badly Tonya’s lawsuit affected him.
“ … I literally wanted to f**king kill myself,” Kenny claimed. “And I’m like, if this happens, then I lose. So, I needed to figure out what could keep me going, what could keep me happy … so maybe one day, if I do get the chance to tell my story, it’s like, maybe there’s probably somebody else who could benefit from it. So for me, it was a lot of like, ‘Okay, how do I get beyond this?’”
Tonya has never discussed the lawsuit and left life in the public eye after the incident.
You can listen to Kenny’s full interview with the Challenge Mania podcast here.
RELATED STORY: Former ‘Challenge’ Star Kenny Santucci Claims He Was Suicidal After Sexual Assault Lawsuit Involving Tonya Cooley
4 Responses
Of course he acts like he was a teenager just doing guy stuff when he was actually a 25 year old man. That’s a fully grown adult. I’m glad this has followed him. Maybe in another 15 years, he’ll actually be willing to have some accountability. For him to deny touching her when he was filmed is certainly audacious. I hope this interview violates the terms of the settlement. He deserves that.
I just watched a ton of challenge episodes and seasons this summer and it always surprises me to see how long ago it was filmed because he really looks older
Aww…gee…poor Kenny still gets hate for sexually assaulting someone.🙄
I believe wholeheartedly that he did it. Evan and Kenny were HORRIBLE to women on that show. Sexually inappropriate is putting it mildly. They felt like they were entitled to do what they did. And the fact that MTV kept the cameras rolling is sickening. FYI if cameras were rolling I’m sure they got it ON CAMERA so why bother with the denial?
And listening to him I see he hasn’t changed and will never care to understand the gravity of what he did.
Sorry, Kenny. Everyone who watched the show saw what you did. Kenny and Evan should have been criminally prosecuted for what they did to Tanya. Tanya was a sloppy drunk, that much is true, but no one — drunk, sober, high, etc. — should be sexually assaulted the way Kenny and Evan did to her. They thought it was funny to rape her with a toothbrush while she was passed out. They thought they were cool. Kenny was an arrogant, misogynistic ass to a lot of the female cast members, so he’s full of shit that he never did anything.