Former cycling champion Lance Armstrong has threatened to quit the celebrity reality series Stars on Mars after clashing with lefty actress Ariel Winter over Armstrong’s stance against trans women competing in women’s sports.
On a recent video teaser for the show, Armstrong throws up his hands over the constant arguments with Winter, Entertainment Weekly reported.
“Ariel, let me make this really simple: I don’t need the drama,” Armstrong says in the clip. “I busted my ass for nine days, I’m gonna bust my ass on the 10th day, and I’m going to auto-select myself to leave.”
But as Armstrong announces that he is fine with being voted off the show, former Housewives of Atlanta star Porsha Williams shuts the cyclist down.
“Nah, I don’t like that. What are you talking about?” Williams retorts. “That’s not even fair for the team for you to say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna opt out.’”
Armstrong reiterates that the show is adding four new contestants — Andy Richter, Ashley Iaconetti, Paul Pierce, and Cat Cora — and he doesn’t need to waste his time hanging around only to be constantly attacked by Winter.
But Williams still wasn’t having it.
“Nobody’s giving up,” she tells Armstrong. “I’m tired of people giving up because it’s really making the experience not fun. I thought we were having fun because I thought everyone who was here now actually wanted to be here.”
Still, in the video, Armstrong remains adamant, saying, “I’m not living in this [habitat] another day with certain people.”
J.B. Hagar (L) speaks with Lance Armstrong in front of 800 bikes to be donated to students and families of Robb Elementary and Flores Elementary schools during Operation Get Out’s Bikes for Kids giveaway on August 27, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Gary Miller/Getty Images)
The teaser trailer for the upcoming episode comes on the heels of reports that Winter, 25, went on a tirade against Armstrong off the air after Armstrong mentioned that he feels that transgender female athletes need to have their own category in sports and not be allowed to compete in women’s sports and proposed a similar situation for a “Mars colony” plan.
According to the Daily Mail, fellow contestant Adam Rippon told TooFab “that Winter called out Armstrong while they received their daily Covid tests, and said: ‘I forgot you cheated. I forgot you had seven titles and an Olympic gold medal stripped from you for being the head of a doping ring.’”
Rippon added that former Modern Family star Williams also told Armstrong she doesn’t want to hear about “an unfair advantage from the greatest cheater in American history.”
Perhaps showing her state of knowledge, when she first came on the series, Winter thought that Lance Armstrong was famed astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died in 2012. Early in the show, Winter told one of the other contestants, “‘ Lance Armstrong is a real fucking astronaut. Google him. He is so cool.”
Eventually, Winter was set straight, and she admitted she was embarrassed by the whole thing. “That was part of my like fear coming on this show, that I would say something stupid and I literally… I outdid myself,” she later said.
Armstrong has been focusing on the issue of transgenders in sports since he began a podcast series to discuss the issue and featured Caitlyn Jenner as his first guest.
The series, Stars on Mars, simulates a colony on Mars and features “Mission Control commander” William Shatner giving the celebrity crew weekly missions. As in many similar reality shows, one contestant is eliminated weekly.
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