Three of Celebrity Treasure Island’s stars reunited for a socially-distanced catch-up, and revealed all the unseen drama from this year’s hit reality show. 

Just when you think Celebrity Treasure Island has washed away forever, a gift arrives on shore. The reality show’s three finalists – Chris Parker, Edna Swart and Lance Savali – aren’t ready for the season to be over either, recently reuniting for a catch-up filmed for Lance Savali’s YouTube channel Mosaique.  

It’s an unofficial ‘CTI Finalists Tell All’ episode, filmed in a random Auckland car park. Glamorous, it is not. A must watch? Most definitely. If you’re a fellow reality TV nerd who loves discovering how the sausage is made just as much as you love eating said sausage, this surprise video is a delicious buffet of meaty treats. Chris, Edna and Lance reveal plenty of behind the scenes drama, including what really happened when the cameras left each night, their biggest regrets from the island, and whether they’d do it again.

There’s no time to worry about what TVNZ thinks about these secrets being spilled on YouTube. Climb into a beanbag, plonk yourself in your nearest car park and let’s rip into 10 things you didn’t know about this season of CTI. 

1) Edna had two phone calls written into her contract

Edna proved she was a total boss babe by ensuring her CTI contract included two phone calls to her business partner while she was on the show. “I didn’t know how long I was going to be away,” she explains. Lance’s response to Edna’s clever piece of contract negotiation? “You little shit”. 

2) They stole food during car rides

We watched CTI contestants forage in the wild for food, but who knew the back seat of the producer’s car was a veritable bounty of sustenance? Not only did the finalists reveal that each day the teams drove (rather than walked) to the challenges, but sometimes the crew would leave apples, muesli bars or chips in their car. 

“We would scavenge the car and look for them,” Edna says, who even blames a forbidden muesli bar for making her lose the one-on-one challenge with Richie. “I mowed that thing as soon as I could,” she says, but it seems the only thing that muesli bar tasted of was sin. “I lost because I felt naughty.”

3) Production spilled the beans about crucial moments in the game 

Edna and Chris discovered Lance had Richie Barnett’s clues when producers accidentally revealed the truth. Chris pretended he knew Lance had the clues, confirmed when a crew member said “hang on, I thought he hadn’t told anyone”, while Edna fished the truth out in a similar way.

Lance’s response now? “That was bullshit,” which is the same reaction many of us had during the finale when those clues meant absolutely nothing. 

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4) All the contestants visited the forbidden hill

That “secret” meeting between Lance and Chris on the hill earned them a telling off from Mum and Dad (hosts Matt Chisholm and Bree Tomasel), but it wasn’t the first time contestants went out of bounds. Lance revealed he went up the hill “all the time” and Edna said she got chased by security there, while other contestants used to enjoy sitting up there “by the toilet”. 

The three finalists also reveal there was a “weird platform” on the hill that never got used. Justice for the hill portaloos, justice for the weird platform. 

5) Art Green used to talk about aliens at night

Look, it wasn’t just Art Green, it was Lance and Joe Daymond too. But Art Green was there. Art Green knows. 

6) The pivotal moment in the game was when Jess took Candy for lunch

All three agree that had Jess chosen Edna instead of Candy for the steak lunch challenge reward, the game would have been different for them. Edna could have persuaded fellow diner Anna Simcic to vote for Chris and Brynley for elimination, splitting up the show’s power couple. 

Instead, Candy pushed for Edna to be nominated, and then used her special card to swap Buck out for Edna at elimination. Brynley was eliminated, and the rest of the Awesome Foursome alliance made it to the final three. 

7) There were a lot of rules

The final three describe CTI as being on school camp. Contestants weren’t allowed to steal the food from challenges (they still did) or to talk on car rides (they still did), and they weren’t allowed to see the challenges on the way to the final (they wore diving masks blacked out with spray paint). Edna recalls an incredible story that involved her telling producers she had her period, taking her clothes off and raiding the tinned food supplies, which is exactly the sort of commitment that gets you to the final three.  

8) Culinary queen Edna put crushed TimTams into rice 

Tired of a month-long diet of rice and beans, Edna took to smashing up chocolate TimTams and adding them to the rice. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?” Edna asks about her absolute genius Rice à la Chocolat. “It made me feel sick,” Lance replies. 

9) The lunch after Lance teamed Jess up with Candy was super awkward 

Emotions boiled over in CTI’s last week, when Lance betrayed Jess and Edna by pairing them with Candy and Buck for the final challenges. We saw Jess express her disappointment, but there were a lot of feelings that didn’t make it to air. “I would rather shave my hair off and eat it than relive it” is the way Chris describes those moments, while Edna says, “I’ll never forget it. It was the most awkward lunch I’ve had in my life, because it was daggers.”  

10) Life outside the CTI bubble was a challenge

“It was hell,” Edna says, describing a tumultuous period in her life in the months after the show ended. Her health suffered and her business nearly collapsed, and she took several months to recover. Lance, however, ate two Burger Fuel burgers upon returning to Auckland and spewed them up immediately, and then took off to Australia. 

Chris Parker also found it hard to adjust to the real world. He went straight back into corporate and comedy gigs, and found himself standing in the shower saying “you won Celebrity Treasure Island,” out loud, just to share the secret…with himself? Truly remarkable, much like the whole season itself.