For those of you who missed Monday’s debut of Running Wild with Bear Grylls, it certainly made for a compelling hour of TV. The premise: each week, Bear and a celebrity embark on a grueling 48-hour trip through the wilderness.
The first episode’s celebrity: Zac Efron. And although the dashing young film star did some daring stuff — eating a worm, scaling hills, jumping from a helicopter — his bravest moment was more emotional than physical.
While taking a breather from the action, Zac opened up to Bear about his recent struggles with addiction and his time in rehab.
“The challenging part was never the work,” Zac explained. “That was never it. It was sort of the in-between work. The social aspects outside of it, I mean, everywhere you go, to a certain extent, there is press in some form.”
He added, “That can be confusing… You spend a lot of time in your house, going crazy. Pretty soon, you need a social lubricant. Once I needed that, it became to go anywhere. It got to the point where I was caring less about the work and waiting more for the weekend.”
Fortunately, Zac’s time in rehab seems to have given him a new perspective on life. “I just really never again want to have to take anything from the outside into me to feel good about my outside, to be comfortable in my present skin.”;
