Tyler Cameron Thought of Hannah Brown to Get Through ‘Special Forces’

Bachelor Nation’s Tyler Cameron kept Hannah Brown in “the back of his head” while completing season 2 of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

Cameron, 30, opened up to Brown, 29, about his time on the reality show during a Wednesday, November 29, podcast episode of “Better Tomorrow.” During their conversation, Cameron shared that to get through the intense training, he told himself, “If you don’t finish this and Hannah finishes it, you’re a loser. You’re soft.” (Brown won season 1 of the show earlier this year.)

“Did I in some way help make sure that you completed it?” Brown asked him.

Cameron replied, “You were in the back of my mind. I’d be like, ‘If Hannah can do it, you can do it. But damn, it’s only gonna get harder from here.’”

Brown later questioned whether The Bachelorette or Special Forces was harder for Cameron to compete on.

“I’ll be honest with you, both are mental warfare,” Cameron said. “Trying to date you, trying to be in good grace with the [Directing Staff], that’s warfare.”

The duo then agreed that the dating show “somewhat prepared” them for the Special Forces course.

“One of the real big similarities was on The Bachelorette, you would see somebody start to crumble … and on Special Forces, the same thing would happen,” Cameron explained. “As soon as they gave you an excuse to get out, they start to crumble.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Brown revealed that Cameron called her “ten minutes before” starting the 10-day long course. Although she was unable to pick up, Cameron told her he wanted to “know what the heck I’m getting myself into.”

Cameron previously told Us about reaching out to Brown, saying, “I tried calling her 10 minutes before they abducted me and she did not answer. So I got no advice from her.”

He continued: “No advice was given, but I did talk to her once before about it and she said it was very hard. And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hannah, it’s hard. But I’ve been through football camps and all that stuff.’ She was right.”

Cameron was Brown’s runner-up on season 15 of The Bachelorette in 2019. Although she chose to break things off with him at the finale, they reconnected on the After the Final Rose special and decided to go on a date.

Through the years, they maintained a close relationship and even nearly rekindled things when they quarantined together during the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.

Brown later opened up about their relationship in her book, God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life’s Best (and Worst) Moments in November 2021.

“My heart was on the line. And he broke it. With a supermodel,” she wrote at the time, referencing Cameron’s brief romance with Gigi Hadid. “No matter how much we talked, and connected, I always felt like his bench girl. Like I was the backup player who never got to play in the game,” she added, noting that it became too difficult to be his friend. “His last poetic words to me were, ‘Well … if you rock with me, you rock with me. If you don’t, you don’t.’ I wish I was making that up.”

Brown moved on and found love with Adam Woolard. The two got engaged in August.