HE is the ripped US Marines veteran filling the boots of sacked Ant Middleton on TV’s SAS: Who Dares Wins.
But in an exclusive chat with the Sun on Sunday, new chief instructor Rudy Reyes today reveals how life in the military was nothing compared to the drink and drugs hell his war traumas plunged him into.
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Rudy, 50, quit the Marines in 2005 after seven years’ service including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, then turned to TV and film acting work in the US before going on ever-wilder benders to blot out his demons.
He fell in with biker gangs and brawled in bars, and in 2016 contemplated ending it all after losing custody of his nine-year-old son Dylan.
He said: “I had PTSD and had been in a mental institution for veterans. My violence was used against me in court. I was not well.
“I have never felt so low. I thought, ‘I am worthless.’ I don’t know if it was day or night when I came close to killing myself because no sunlight could get into my loft apartment.
“I was only saved because I heard this voice, a god’s voice. It was a feeling that, ‘There is more for you to do and it’s going to be OK’.”
Combat hero Rudy signed up to Channel 4’s SAS show after Brit ex-Marine Ant, 41, was given his marching orders last year for allegedly making inappropriate remarks about women.
Rudy is relishing a new start but admits he got into so many fights between 2011 and 2015 that he was lucky to dodge jail.
He said: “Marines do two things — kill people and break s**t. I got into fights all the time, I was very dangerous.
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“One friend said, ‘If you want to mess with Rudy you’d be better off if I started up this chainsaw and threw it at you’.
“One time I kicked a man so hard, sending him flying across the room, that people thought I had shot him.
“He smashed against the bar and as he fell, I stomped on his neck.
“This was in a ’hood kind of club but they thought I had a gun so let me get away. I think he was very badly injured. I was on a plane the next day. I f***ed people up and had no ability to defuse back then.”
Rudy had begun to unravel, post-Marines, as he tried to break into acting. He now realises he had depression after losing comrades and witnessing the slaughter of civilians and children — which he recalled in 2020 BBC documentary Once Upon A Time In Iraq.
He said: “You can imagine how many of my brothers were killed. I never went to a funeral because I was still fighting, and I struggled with survivor’s guilt.
“In between doing TV and some movies, I fell into hard drugs to cope with my depression. I was in and out of relationships and began drinking tequila, vodka and red wine, and doing drugs more and more.
“It was shady in TV. I met shallow people and the industry is rampant with drugs.
Abandoned as child
“I didn’t drink until I was 36, and I was 38 when I first tried drugs. It seemed to help with my depression and sense of isolation.
“I was modelling, doing fitness, movies and TV, but had so little self-esteem. I didn’t care that I was killing myself. I was used to pain, used to being exhausted and hungry or very cold or hot, so I thrived on the misery. I accepted the chaos.”
Rudy also had a very tough childhood. He was abandoned by his parents, then the gran who raised him in south Texas died when he was seven. By the age of 12, he was in a boys’ home.
He said: “When I showed up, I had worms in my stomach and an infection in the back of my eyeball because I had been living in filth. The home was hard and sometimes I had to fight.
“When I was 13 or 14, an older boy tried to rape me but I fought him off.
“The home taught me how to fight but also the value of work.”
Rudy still has no contact with his son, but a good relationship with daughter Bella by another woman.
Now living in Charleston, South Carolina with actress fiancée Jade Struck, 23, he hopes his children will see him on the SAS show.
He said: “I had to hit rock bottom to find my way back. I started the same day I almost took my own life. No more drugs and alcohol.
“I decided every day is about being the greatest man I can be. If my son sees me, he’ll be proud and, through his eyes, I can be proud of myself.”
- SAS: Who Dares Wins returns to Channel 4 this evening at 9pm.
TV Rudy lives up to his name
RUDY reckons he has more ‘decorum’ than predecessor Ant, who got the boot for alleged remarks about women.
So Channel 4 bosses may be alarmed at how Rudy refers to the fairer sex in our interview.
He let rip a stream of sexist language, calling them “bitches” and “chicks”.
Describing his drink and drug-fuelled bar-brawling years between 2011 and 2015, he told us: “The fights were normally because of bitches.
“I would walk into a bar and the next thing you know some dumbass’s woman is looking at me and then the trouble would start.”
Recalling one incident, he added: “Some chicks were talking to us and then these guys came over and started trouble.
“I grabbed one of them and smashed his head into the bench three times. I whupped his ass and everyone freaked out.”
Ant left the show last year after four women accused him of making “lewd and suggestive comments” on set.
Rudy had previously attacked his SAS predecessor, saying he would not say “misogynistic things” and had more “decorum”.
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