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She was a household name across the country in the 1990s.
But Tania Zaetta has revealed that her gig presenting the hit TV series Who Dares Wins wasn’t all fun and games.
The show – which saw the now Bollywood actress and her co-host Mike Whitney surprise unsuspecting Aussies with death-defying and frequently record-breaking dares – took a serious toll on the star.
Of course, when regular Aussies chose not to attempt the dares, Tania was in the hot seat to try her luck at the sometimes life-threatening attempts.
Speaking with news.com.au, Zaetta reflected on how her the role affected her.
“I’m not the type of person to go jump off a building. I’m scared of pretty much anything: I’m scared of heights, I’m claustrophobic, I’m scared of the dark. I was often more scared than the contestants,” she reveals.
“Any day that it was a balancing dare, I knew the contestant would probably fail and I’d have to do it. I’d have nightmares the night before, asking the producers ‘Are you sure we can do this?”
“One of our craziest was walking across a two-inch plank of wood between two hot air balloons flying at a thousand feet. You can’t control a hot-air balloon — they go up and down and around. Then you’ve got little old me climbing out the basket and onto a plank of wood. It wasn’t all fun and games, some of those days were very, very scary.”
“But I would give it my best shot. I’m a country girl and I hate walking away from anything with regrets, so I’d just jump on in there. I wanted to be able to say ‘Well at least I gave it my best shot today.’
“It made sense when the producers were first doing the show to have the scared girl do the challenges, rather than the big macho guy who’s not scared of anything. I became the action hero girl, but the downside was poor Mike Whitney did cop a lot of flak!”
We’re just glad she got through it!
For a walk down memory lane, check out some clips from Tania’s time on the show.
This article originally appeared on WHO.
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