I’m a beautiful person, but I’m still a killer
New Who Dares Wins boss Rudy on his brutal childhood, channelling his inner rage and becoming a TV heartthob
SAS: Who Dares Wins returns to our screens tomorrow night and there’s a new chief in town. Rudy Reyes, who is replacing Ant Middleton, may have movie-star looks and a demi-god physique, earning him the nickname “Fruity Rudy”, but beneath the steely muscles lies an even steelier core.
“I’m a beautiful person, but I’m still a killer,” he says.
Former special forces sniper Rudy has survived war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq as a team leader of the US Recon Marines, an elite unit of only 300 men – and an equally hellish childhood of abuse, neglect and poverty.
When we meet over Zoom, initially I can’t see any sign of the “warrior”, which is how he describes himself. He is excitable and affable with a surprisingly gentle baritone voice. But when we start talking about Iraq, his eyes narrow and he switches to a cool, focused calm.
The Battles of Fallujah and Ramadi in 2004 and 2006 were his third war and “by far the most horrific of anything I have ever experienced,” he says. Fallujah was then regarded as the most dangerous place on earth, and his men faced “360-degree threats”.
“Every moment you are not looking for the enemy and trying to destroy them, they are gaining ground on doing the same with you,” Rudy explains. “You couldn’t trust anyone.”
He describes how everyone and everything was a potential threat, and therefore a potential target… a youth digging a hole at night could be laying an IED, three vehicles spotted together at night could be an ambush. And threats had to be eliminated.
“We had our rules of engagement,” he says grimly.
ON MARCH 31, 2004, he ate breakfast outside of Fallujah with four American contractors working for Blackwater Security – former Navy Seal-trained Stephen “Scott” Helvenston, Wesley Batalona, Jerko “Jerry” Zovko and Michael Teague. Everyone was on edge.
“There’s a feeling you get, you know eyes are on you and it’s almost electricity in the air that you’re going to be hit,” Rudy says. “You just know it, you feel it.”
The four contractors left in SUVs bound for the city but were ambushed by insurgents, killed and dragged from their vehicles. Their bodies were mutilated and burned and two were hung from a bridge. Pictures of their grisly end were broadcast around the world.
Rudy heard of the men’s interception over the radio. He was “accustomed to death”, but when he learned of their fate, he was incensed.
“Knowing they were in pieces, and being defiled – I used that rage for energy,” he says.
Within an hour, his men hit a hardpan desert area close to the bridge where they set up mines and engaged in fierce fighting over several days. A helicopter was shot down right above Rudy’s head.
“We just started engaging, engaging, engaging,” he says.
He speaks as if he’s back in the action, firing his gun at the enemy, remembering every explosion. When he reached the suburb of Al-Karmah, his men dismounted from their Humvee to attack the enemy on the other side of a canal.
Rudy was nearly killed by a rocketpropelled grenade fired in his direction. His heavy gunner hit an enemy vehicle and its bonnet sailed into the air, swirling in smoke.
“It was very cinematic and in slow motion – a Michael Bay film production of an explosion,” Rudy says. “There were 15, maybe 20, other insurgents on the other side of the canal laying down and they all watched this thing float up in the air. That’s how we could ID them right there. My men could shoot them up at close quarters. And that was just the third day in Fallujah.” He never questioned when the fighting would stop, he says.
“It’s almost a Samurai expression of complete surrender of one’s individuality to something much bigger,” he explains. “If any of those brothers had been from the UK, I would have used the same pain and rage to inflict upon the enemy.”
It’s no wonder that when US TV station HBO made a miniseries called Generation Kill in 2008 about his experiences in Iraq with the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion that they gave up looking for an actor to take the role and asked Rudy to do it.
Now 50, he has witnessed so much death and destruction, SAS: Who Dares Wins must seem like a holiday camp, although not for the rookie civilians. The seventh series, shot in Jordan, sees them grappling with searing heat, dehydration and sand invading every nook and cranny of their bodies.
Joining Rudy is a fellow newbie, former US Navy Seal Remi Adeleke, plus SAS veterans and TV old hands Jason “Foxy” Fox and Mark “Billy” Billingham.
Much fuss is made of the US and UK’s “special relationship”. Rudy has admired his British counterparts from afar for decades so was “blown away” when Channel 4 asked him to become the show’s new top dog.
“I had read all the SAS books on Andy McNab and Chris Ryan when I was doing my Marine Recon training,” he says.
He also watched TV coverage of the SAS storming the Iranian Embassy in London, to free hostages in 1980.
But while Rudy is a “hard taskmaster”, he is tender and kind too. In episode one, he gives a pep talk to one struggling contestant before she undergoes interrogation.
“I’m a father, a leader and an older brother so I couldn’t help but have compassion for these people,” he says. Rudy is of Mexican descent and never knew his father, a US Marine who left for Vietnam shortly after he was born.
His mother, only 16 when she had him, remarried and had two more sons with Rodolfo Reyes Snr., an ex-Marine and police detective after whom Rudy is named. He died seven years ago.
“He was really the only father I’ve ever known,” Rudy says. “And he is who I consider my dad.”
Rodolfo Snr. inspired Rudy’s love of martial arts, taking him to Rocky and Bruce Lee films at drive-ins. But the happy times didn’t last long.
After his parents divorced, Rudy and his two brothers were shunted around Texas from one set of relatives to another. His mother remarried and the children spent four years with their grandparents in Kansas City until their deaths in 1979.
They ended up in extreme poverty in Texas with their stepfather, who had remarried. “My father had PTSD and an alcohol problem and he was never home,” Rudy says.
“By the time I was 10 or 11, my brothers and I had been neglected for so long we had lice and worms. The embarrassment of my little brother Michael scratching his head
and saying to the teacher, ‘Excuse me, miss, but I think I have fleas…” Rudy had been trying to hide the desperate circumstances of his home life and was devastated when the truth came out. “Everybody starts making fun of us and, of course, they throw us out of school,” he says. “We did not have any money or medicine to get rid of the lice so our stepmother just shaved our heads.” Things got worse.“I had rotten teeth as well,” he admits. “We didn’t have dental care. The infection in my teeth was so bad that it was behind my eyes and nose, so I smelled this rot every single day.” He initially attributed the odour to the squalor of his home environment, where an outer wall was missing, until realising to his horror that it emanated from his mouth.
“I had this big boil on my gum that I had to cut open (to drain) every day,” he recalls. “It stunk.” Malnourished and rundown, Rudy contracted hepatitis.
But even at his sickest, inspired by his hero Bruce Lee, he spent hours doing pull-ups at the park across his street. I’m not sure how he physically mustered the strength. He reflects on this.
“The child’s mind and fortitude,” he suggests. “Maybe that’s why I became a recon marine. Maybe I had that underlying grit and refusal to let anything stop me.”
The authoriities, alerted to his pitiful situation, eventually intervened and the three brothers were sent to the Omaha Home for Boys in Nebraska. Rudy had to remain streetwise – he has previously spoken of trying to fend off an older boy who tried to rape him when he was 14 – but for the first time in years he had stability and could access regular food and medical care.
Best of all, he had access to a wrestling room, stacked with equipment and weights, to pursue his martial arts dream.
“If you followed the rules and you worked hard, you got privileges,” Rudy says.As soon as he was 18 he took custody of his younger brothers. “Maybe all of that toughness, deprivation and degradation was a catalyst,” he says. “I have not stopped climbing since.”
He never planned to shoot a gun. His reasons for joining the armed forces were more to do with his empathetic nature and his strong sense of justice.
“I saw a documentary about orphans and Kosovo. I’m an orphan,” he recalls. “When I saw those children out on their own in 1998 and President Clinton said we were putting boots on the ground, that’s why I joined the Marine Corps.”
HAVING suffered PTSD too, he understands Rodolfo Snr. was not mentally well when he was growing up. But his dad attended all of his martial arts tournaments when he was older. “He was my biggest fan and very supportive,” Rudy says. “He taught me about discipline and that my fortune was the good fortune of my brothers.”
He remains close to his siblings Ceaser, 48, and Michael, 47. They’ve been through their ups and downs but their relationship remains strong.
“They’re the only real blood I have and that I’m close to,” Rudy says. “The rest are my veteran family”.
A divorced father-of-two, Rudy is engaged to Jade Struck, 23, and beams when asked about her. “She’s the yin to my yang,” he says. “She gives me so much love and support and has given me purpose.”
He says he’ll be with her for the rest of his life. “It’s the first time I’ve had anybody really love me and I’ve let that love in,” he says.
I suspect that once the new show goes out, he’ll be receiving a lot more love. So is he ready to become a UK household name? “I don’t know what that looks like,” he admits. “But if what’s happening on my social media right now is any clue… holy smoke, this is big.”
‘By the time I was 10 or 11, my brothers and I had been neglected for so long we had lice and worms’