‘I GOT DEATH THREATS AFTER APPEARING ON A REALITY TV SHOW – BUT NOW I’M DOING ANOTHER ONE’
AWELSH entrepreneur claims he received death threats after appearing on a reality show last year. Despite this, 28-year-old Dan Swygart, who was born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, is appearing in E4 reality series Love Triangle, which is made by the team behind Married at First Sight and started this week.
He says: “Before I went on Love Triangle, I asked a lot of my closest friends, ‘Should I do this?’ And they said: ‘It can never be as bad as the last time, it’s only going to get better, so go for it.’ And I agree with them.”
Speaking to our website WalesOnline’s podcast In the Spotlight, he added: “Half of me was like, I’ve done it once. I’m very proud of that show and I thought this new show would be a chance to do bigger and better things with my personal branding as well, not just stuck on that last show.”
The show Dan is referring to is TLC’s I Am Shauna Rae, which follows Shauna, a woman who survived a rare form of brain cancer when she was a child, and has the body of an eight-year-old.
Dan appeared in the second season, going on dates with Shauna – but he insists the two are “friends”.
After his appearance on the show, Dan received criticism, with people branding him a “creep” for being “attracted” to 3ft 10in tall Shauna.
Reflecting on this, Dan said: “[Me and Shauna] knew that was going to come, the bad press, but we didn’t know the scale of it. We think that story reached way over 100 million people easily. Some YouTube videos got five million views alone, and there’s hundreds of them. Hundreds of articles. Some of the biggest newspapers in the world had articles on it. Some of the biggest YouTubers were making videos on it.
“So we didn’t know the scale at which it would get popular. She stood by me throughout. I’ve got a lot of respect for her and she is still today one of my closest friends.
“I had a lot of death threats and a lot of people hating me from the Shauna Rae stuff. Changing that narrative was obviously important for me [doing Love Triangle]. It’s basically a time for me to shine a bit more on who I am and not just be tied to the controversy, if you can even call it that, around the Shauna Rae drama.”
Based on an Australian format, Love Triangle follows six singles as they spend two days getting to know two matches, all via text. But there’s a catch: they won’t know who it is they’ve been speaking to until they decide which person they’d like to go on a blind date with.
After their blind date, the “picker” and their match will move in together and test how their future would look together.
“It’s interesting because I’m in the tech world, which is a very different world, the reality TV world to the tech world,” Dan said.
“So I had a mixed response of people thinking, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure? This is a bit different from what you’re used to.’ And yeah, a lot of people were interested in how this one would go compared with the last one.”
Dan says he was “invited” to apply to Love Triangle, adding that he has “always said yes to incredible opportunities”. He admits he had some concerns about going on the show because of his business career.
“That’s been my biggest worry,” Dan said.
“My biggest worry [was my business] because I’ve got a very high profile network.
“I lived in Silicon Valley and also got backed by some of the world’s top investors in London. I’ve networked with billionaires and people have invested hundreds of millions.
“Doing reality TV is a completely different alien world to that world, so of course, I was concerned with the crossover.
“To be honest, most people I’ve told, they find it super interesting. It makes me more memorable. It makes me stand out in the business world.
“I have no doubt that the last show probably did hinder business opportunities for me, but I’m very proud of the story of me and Shauna.”
When quizzed on the type of relationship he was hoping to find on Love Triangle, Dan said: “I’m a big believer in having three types of connections with someone before a relationship. So that’s a physical/sexual connection, an intellectual connection and an emotional connection, so mind, body, soul.
“That’s why I was looking for a serious relationship. I was looking for all three. It’s very rare that you come across all three.
“I’ve got a deep understanding of myself and who I am and what I want. And I’ve been a traveller for six years. I’ve travelled the world, lived in Bali, so someone has to live my lifestyle because I can’t just settle down and live in one place. It’s like a prison sentence for me.”
Despite his reservations, Dan said he “couldn’t say no” to Love Triangle, which will run for 10 episodes.
He added he was not afraid of more threats as he wouldn’t be dating anyone “controversial” in the series.
“I don’t think the same would happen again this time, but I had the tools to deal with it this time,” he says.
“I can deal with it again. It didn’t bother me too much, to be honest, last time. It was more the intensity of it, how viral it got.”
While Dan didn’t share whether he’d been successful in finding love on the new series, he did open up about his “five-year plan”.
He said: “After four months of living in Bali, I’ve seen a huge wave coming, which is going to change the world in a significant way.
“Bali is the epicentre of new things, like lifestyle, fashion, anything with how people think. Bali and LA are two epicentres of that.
“A big new narrative which is coming about is masculine and feminine energy, and using that in relationship dynamics, and that’s a world I’d love to go into. I’m researching three, four, five hours a day into it, and it’s definitely a world I want to share and help people with.”