| Rebecca Macatee 9. Dezember 2014 – 06:03
If you watched Discovery’s Eaten Alive special Sunday, you might have been disappointed when Paul Rosolie was not, in fact, eaten alive by an anaconda.
The conservationist, wearing a special “snake-proof” suit covered in pig’s blood, got the snake to bite, but he called for help as its jaws began to crush his arms. Viewers were disappointed, to say the least, and on Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Paul called in (via Skype) to address some of the backlash.
First, though, the late-night host expressed his own grievances. “We’re all pissed,” he said. “We were promised a man would be eaten on television and he didn’t [go through with it]…What a ripoff!”
NEWS: Eaten Alive’s Paul Rosolie is not eaten alive by anaconda, gets chewed up by the Internet instead
Jimmy pointed out that the Eaten Alive special “sparked a lot of controversy,” saying, “PETA was upset about the treatment of the snake, viewers were upset that Paul didn’t get eaten, the snake was mad it didn’t get lunch—everybody was mad at the end of this thing!”
So, he asked Paul, aka “the man who caused all this commotion,” whether he was disappointed with the show’s results and the fact that he was not eaten alive. His response?” “I mean, hey, we gave it the best shot we could.”
So when Paul he “realize this was a terrible decision,” asked Jimmy? “About the time I felt my bones starting to creak,” he admitted.
NEWS: More about Eaten Alive and Paul Rosolie
He was not really troubled, either, by the public’s angry response. “I think they missed the whole point of the show then,” said Paul, adding with a laugh, “I could destroy at ‘Mean Tweets!'”
Paul went on, explaining, “The whole reason we did this job is that I’ve worked in the amazon—I’ve seen it being destroyed. Everybody knows the whole rainforest is being destroyed thing, but its not stopping it from happening. We got millions of people talking about this stuff, going, ‘Why on earth would this idiot wanna do this?’
“And this is the reason, to try and keep the place where these things live intact.,” he said. “It’s funny because I feel like PETA and everyone else has watched the last 20 minutes of the show and they’re hinging on that and totally forgetting everything else about the fact that we’re trying to protect these animals.”
VIDEO: Snake eats a crocodile, which is basically a SyFy movie come to life
“So what you’re saying,” Jimmy suggested, “is they really need to open their throats and accept all this information—not just a little part of it.”
“The whole thing,” said Paul laughingly. “Gotta go headfirst!”
Jimmy suggested to Paul that, since the show “was called Eaten Alive,” it only seemed fair that he “should be eaten alive by another animal,” telling him, “I’m sure we could find an alligator that is willing.”
“I mean,” Paul replied, “I think I owe it to the people of planet earth to get eaten by something, no?”
Yep. Jimmy had a rather, um, unique suggestion, telling Paul jokingly, “I’d like to see you have sex with a hippo.”
“I’m not sure I’d be into that,” he said.
Jimmy’s perfect response? “Think about the rainforest!”
Can you believe these TV shows are real?!
