What happens when you put young, hot singles on a tropical island for the summer retreat of their lives and tell them to commit to commitment for a chance to win $250,000? Welcome to the world of Too Hot to Handle, the Netflix reality show that has seemingly taken over everyone’s screens, and conversations. With the newly dropped season 6, contestants who previously had no idea what show they were going on are now completely aware of what they’re signing up for. Which meant more twists, more drama than ever, and a new side-kick to Lana, the renowned cone that sees everything, Bad Lana, but what was it like for contestants on the show? Demari Davis, the winner of season 6 tells us what the experience was actually like, and how his life has changed since. 

Ever since his brother nominated him for the show, his previous stockbroker life turned around, and came onto our screens thinking his brother’s plan for him to settle down ‘might backfire’. “For him to say that to me, I was like, bro, are you serious? I know how he was before he got married and stuff. It’s kind of funny to see that. For him to say you need to chill out. It was really funny to have that, because we’re best friends”, says Demari with the biggest grin across the screen. “I probably talk to him more than I talk to anybody else in the world. So, it’s like, wow, okay. Maybe I actually do need to fix something.”

In the previous seasons of Too Hot to Handle, contestants were coming in blind with priceless reactions to finding out what show they were on. For Demari, the experience was only a little bit different. “I’m not a huge TV watcher. I still did my research, I watched a few episodes from every season before going on the show. But a lot of it, I was winging it. Not gonna lie, I didn’t really go in there trying to be so prepared to the point where I’m like, oh, I know every step is gonna happen. I really just wanted to have the experience. Some people understood the show or they’d been huge fans of it. So they understood certain different aspects of it. But me, I was almost blind, honestly.” He even recalls being casted as part of the starting lineup was surreal. “Immediately, I was like, y’all think I’m attractive?”, he laughs.

Demari explains the Too Hot to Handle show as a ‘what you see is what you get’ experience. Reminiscing on his time entering Lana’s retreat, he says, “this is the exact scenario that happens to me in real life. In my intro, I talked about how women usually approach me, I’m tall, I’m a pretty good looking guy. It just usually happens like that. So when she came up and did that, I was like, oh, okay. I wasn’t expecting it to happen here, but I’m all for it.” Demari recalls model Brianna Balram’s entry into the retreat remarking, “honestly, I wish you guys could have seen her(Bri) walking in. When she first came in, she actually went the wrong direction. Everybody else just walked one way and they went down and I could see how it built up. But she walked a totally different way, on accident. She’s five foot five one, but for some reason her legs look like a mile long. She looked amazing.”

Demari and Bri’s relationship was definitely an uphill battle. In Bad Lana’s company, the retreat went rogue with behavior regular Lana definitely wouldn’t approve of. Bri kissed both Demari and fellow castmate, Chris Alli just a few hours into the commencement of the retreat, following which she went into ‘supposed elimination’, which in season 6, is banishment, a new type of hell where you’re confined in a room without windows having to watch your significant other get to know other singles in the retreat. While Bri is sent off to banishment, a new grenade, Valentina decides that Demari is her top pick and chooses to take him on a date, which Demari eventually extends. And kisses Valentina. “There was no way for me to predict that Valentina was going to come in. I feel like that’s the craziest grenade in Too Hot to Handle history, honestly. When she walked in, I was like, oh, damn, what am I supposed to do with this? I had some nearsighted thoughts, we’ll say. And I ended up kissing her, obviously, as we all know”, he says with a cheeky grin. Demari adds that Bri and him couldn’t really have a discussion about their exclusivity before that date. “We had the talk after Bri came back from banishment and she was all about me. I think had we had a discussion, I could have probably done a lot differently. Even if we didn’t, I should have done it differently.”

Demari also reveals that it was Bri’s reaction to the kiss that brought up a change in his attitude. “Usually, I’m able to get away with stuff like that. Or I’m able to talk my way out of it. You can’t be intimate on Too Hot to Handle, so obviously, I can’t really show affection to show her. I had to tell her with my words and show her with my words that I understood. And I really respected her standing on her boundary.” Lana, who was eventually extremely impressed by Demari and Bri’s growth on the show, nominated them as finalists. “You want to know what’s crazy? I forgot that we were there for money. You get anxiety going into these cabanas because it usually means you’re losing money. That last cabana, I went into it thinking somebody did something that they wanted. I know it wasn’t me, but god, who else? We’re literally almost at the end. And then she talks about the prize money. I know we’ve been talking about the money the whole time, but I just didn’t even conceptualize that we could be in the running for winning. I didn’t even think about it being couples, honestly.”

Bri and Demari, who went from a rocky path with distractions along the way, Valentina Rueda on Demari’s side and Jalen Brown on Bri’s end, to successfully becoming an official couple by the end, eventually get voted to be the winners of Too Hot to Handle Season 6 along with a whopping $100,000, alongside individual winner, Gianna Pettus who won the remaining $25,000. “We had the hardest journey of couples there. So it made sense. We were really able to reconcile and make things work together in there. And it really was an amazing journey. Then, I asked her to be my girlfriend on national TV. When you look back on it, we were, if you think about it, we’re supposed to win. But I didn’t think about it that way, just because I was so involved in the situation. Literally not getting a break. There’s something happening in every single episode. So it was a very intense situation. But I’m happy that it ended like it did.” 

Demari tells us what everyone has been speculating all this while, him and Bri are no longer in a relationship. “We are no longer together. She posted about it and did her due diligence on that side. I’ve decided not to say too much about it, but we are still close and I believe that we still have a really good relationship. There’s nothing but love on both of our ends. I know mine, especially, and I really just want the best for her.” He also mentions that his favorite memory on screen was asking Bri to be his girlfriend. “I was very nervous. I wasn’t too sure if she was going to say yes or not. Obviously, it’s such a quick experience. So not knowing, and then her saying yes, and me actually having the gumption to do that really taught me something about myself and my confidence. And I’ve been leading with that confidence ever since.” Demari plans to take this confidence forward into his modeling career and hopes to be an actor in the future. It’s safe to say that his platform has been growing, and he even plans to move to LA. “I’m going to try to keep showing my personality”

“You’re never going to be able to please everybody. So just try to please yourself. And whoever is your tribe will be with you.”

Reflecting on the retreat and how it helped him grow as a person, Demari remembers his word from the final workshop of the season, ‘respect’. “I didn’t even think, honestly, that the things that I was doing were disrespectful. I was just doing things because, like, I just felt like I wanted to do them. And I wasn’t thinking full-picture, big-picture things in the sense of all of the relationships that I’ve been in. It’s allowed me to move forward with that life of actually being more considerate, even though I have been a very considerate person. I don’t think that I was being considerate in that respect.” The camaraderie between all the cast members shines through the screen, and Demari opens up about his friendship with Chris being a big part of his experience, especially as a man of color. “For me it was more so trying to represent myself as a black and older man. It is hard for us to share and be open with our feelings. We haven’t always had that space and it’s kind of not like a manly thing to do most of the time, in theory, but being able to share myself and actually understanding that there’s actually more power in being able to share the emotions that I’m feeling, exactly in that moment. Chris and I were really expressing our feelings at the chess table and our emotions about the things that we’ve been through in life and why they’ve shaped us to be the people that we are. It really allowed me to open up even in my other relationships. Me being able to open up with Chris and be honest with him about how I feel allowed me to open up more to Brie and tell her exactly how I feel. I think that that was really instrumental and very positive in that process.” Ultimately, the cast stay close friends and hang out often, Demari adds, and they share incredibly enjoyable memories from the retreat. Despite not being able to play music with no access to phones, they would come up with their own form of entertainment through Chris beatboxing, Charlie and Louis rapping every single day, and Demari and Chris playing chess. 

After the incredible growth we get to witness on our screens from Demari, he says that future casts of Too Hot to Handle should ‘be their authentic self’. After the show wrapped, Demari has said the changes in his life are ‘crazy, to say the least’. After emerging with immense growth from the Netflix show, he mentions his enthusiasm on the possibility of joining another reality show. ‘I want to do some talent shows. So if Netflix has a talent show that they’re coming out with or something like that in the future, maybe that. I would do the challenge again if they did an all-star thing. I wouldn’t mind doing another dating show. I’m so game for all of those things.” When asked what we can expect to see from Demari in the future, he says ‘more’ with the widest smile on his face. Having already dropped music and working on more, we can’t wait to see more of Demari’s infectious energy on our screens!