Toa: My name is Toa, the Polynesian warrior.
Hellga: I'm Helga, the Viking warrior.
Justice: I'm Justice, the American warrior.
CraveOnline: What goes into choosing the gladiator names? Were you worried all the cool ones were taken?
Justice: No, actually Justice is actually my middle name. My name is Jesse Justice Smith and I like Justice because that's what I go by.
Hellga: And Helga is a Nordic word for butt kicker so that's not a problem.
Toa: Toa is the Polynesian word for Warrior and I came up with that myself. It's kind of in me already, so it's an extension of myself.
CraveOnline: What gladiators do you remember from the original?
Toa: I was a big fan of Nitro, Malibu, all the guys who were so entertaining and so athletic. They're all icons.
Hellga: Definitely I looked up to Zap. She's actually a friend of mine now, and Sky because she's the only one that's taller than me.
Justice: Yes sir, I was a big fan as well. I look up to Nitro. He's a real good guy. He's also on the set training us and helping me out.
CraveOnline: What gladiators have you bonded with so far?
Justice: Oh yeah, we're all like family over here. Everybody, we get along fine, we hang out with each other and we've grown to love each other actually, in a short period of time.
Hellga: Yeah, I'm really amazed. A lot of times, different athletes can be really competitive with each other. Just different groups of people can have different dynamics but we all get along so well, it's just been effortless.
Toa: We've been together for about a month right now through training and shooting. It's kind of like summer camp, when you get together with your friends and then you've got to go, wait for next season. It's kind of sad that it's come to an end, but it's only the beginning. So it's awesome.
CraveOnline: What was the audition process?
Toa: Actually, I got to bypass all that. I was a late entry. The rigger who's doing all the games, he's a friend of mine who works in the stunt industry as well. He told me about this and I came down the day before they did the final cut, and made it.
Hellga: A photographer that I worked with submitted me. He actually worked with the first show too. I was there at Gold's Venice doing my trial. It was fun. It was a lot of fun, saw some friends and I'm here.
Justice: It was pretty interesting for my audition as well. I wasn't invited actually. I went with a friend that was invited and I was waiting on him. Then they came out and asked me to audition. I did and my friend was like, "Sh*t, I knew I shouldn't have brought you to the audition because your mohawk's bigger than mine, plus you're 10 years younger." It was very interesting. He didn't get the part but he loves that one of us did.
CraveOnline: What are each of your backgrounds as far as training to build those bodies?
Hellga: I've been a bodybuilder. I also compete in the World's Strongest Woman. I was third and fourth in the world for a while. Now I'm a rower. I think I'm just an inherently big person and most of the people in my family are big Dutch and Swedish people. But the World's Strongest was something I just lucked into. A girlfriend of mine is an Olympic athlete and she knew people that were casting for that. My numbers worked out. I wound up in Zambia, Africa competing in 2001.
CraveOnline: So how many hours do you train and what are your routines?
American Gladiator: Toa
Hellga: It depends. For the strength things, it's usually more like about two hours and it's a lot more about food timing so that I replenish my body to store new muscle. A lot of science behind it. When I do physique competition, it's dropping 30 pounds in four months. That's just about basically starving, but concentrated starving so you're not really. Good nutrition.
Justice: Genetics. No, actually, I've been training all my life. I started lifting weights when I was 12 years old. Also Tae Kwon Do when I was eight years old. Got my third degree black belt at 17, played professional basketball in Switzerland. Also a professional kickboxer.
CraveOnline: Don't you have to be careful you don't kill someone with those moves?
Justice: No, I only use them in the ring, bro. When it comes to putting people on their back, I do that very well. I take them down.
Toa: I've been an athlete all my life, genetically gifted. My mom was Norwegian, my dad's Samoan so I already had good size. Now the hard thing is just to keep lean. Polynesians have a tendency to be overweight if we eat too many cheeseburgers, so I try to stay away from all that and eat right and do a lot of cardio.
CraveOnline: Did you have any mental preparation for intimidating the contestants?
Hellga: I think a lot of us bring intimidation naturally which is probably why we're sitting here. They've definitely been very supportive throughout this and helped us achieve our character. This is new for some of us, to be doing our athletics on TV. Some of the events are new too. So they've really been great with us.
Justice: I think that yeah, we all have an intimidation factor. You can be the contestant and I can be just sitting here smiling right now and cheering you on, hoping you do well. But I turn it up like this when it's time to get down. You know what I mean? Understand that?
Toa: I turn my intimidation on. My character, before the game, I'll call down my ancestors and I'll do this dance called the Haka, a traditional Maori dance. Bringing down your ancestral beings into your heart to put yourself in balance. It's a pretty intimidating dance and at the end you stare your opponent in the eyes and that'll set the scene. The eyes look at me and just turn to puppy dog eyes.
CraveOnline: What are your favorite events?
American Gladiator: Hellga
Hellga: I love everything I've done so far but I think the Gauntlet is the most fun for me because it's a lot of physical contact.
Justice: Yes, I like the Gauntlet as well. My favorite event though is the Pyramid. The reason why is it's like the king of the hill. You're not throwing bricks down at them but you're throwing your body at them, so it's very interesting. And speed don't necessarily make it to the top.
Toa: I love any event where I can physically hit somebody in the body. Powerball, the pyramid, the gauntlet. All those things where I can show my speed and quickness and power.
CraveOnline: What events do you fear?
Toa: I don't fear any competition. The contestants might have an advantage on The Wall because they get a 10 second head start and they're usually about half our weight, so to catch them we need to be twice as fast. But we've caught a lot of them. That proves that we're quick too.
CraveOnline: Are any of them harder than you imagined?
Hellga: No. Just to go back on the thing on fear, I originally wasn't too sure about what happened after Assault, but it is fun. It is so much fun. And also, I think a lot of us have realized that we have a violent streak we didn't know.
Justice: Yes sir, I think The Wall was very hard for me because I'm damn near 300 pounds and getting up that wall in a minute and 30 seconds when the fastest guy got up that wall like 18. And your question, my favorite event is the Assault as well but my least favorite thing about that is if someone hits your target, you get shot up to the roof in the rafters and you get dropped in this water. I did fear that and it hurt real bad but I'd do it again.
CraveOnline: How did you hurt your knee, Hellga?
Hellga: Oh, I'm not hurt. I took someone out in the Gauntlet. You need to see her face.
CraveOnline: Are you ever tempted to hold back when you see fear in their eyes?
Toa: No, no, no. These guys are going for $100,000. That's more than we all make together on this show probably. No, I have no remorse for them. They're walking away rich, so I'm going to try to make them earn that $100,000 and that car.
American Gladiator: Justice
Justice: Yeah, when I see a contestant and I see he has the fear of God in his eyes, I wouldn't hold back but I'd definitely stop him. I wouldn't go as hard as I would if someone was talking noise, saying, "Yeah, these gladiators suck and I'm going to come in here and run the house." If he did that than oh, we would kill him. But the guy that has the fear of God in his eyes, we might just stomp him hard and fast, but we're not going to rip his teeth out.
CraveOnline: What celebrity would you like to compete with if they get to the point of a celebrity version?
Justice: I want to see Shaquille O'Neal because he's a big boy and we get kind of stereotyped as taking out the little guys. We want to show them we can really take out the big guys too, that there's no fear.
Hellga: Let's bring Chyna on. Come on, girl.
Toa: I want to see The Rock, Dwayne Johnson and Mike Tyson as a contestant.
CraveOnline: Could you take Dwayne?
Toa: We're family. I think on these events, I've got him. Definitely, I'm not even going to say [maybe].
CraveOnline: If you'd come on without training on the events, how would you do?
Toa: Training did help, to get someone to fine tune, like the rings and stuff, fine tune your grips and how to use yourself, but all of us are natural athletes. I think I'd have a pretty good chance as a contestant. I mean, the training definitely helped. Contestants got the training as well and it showed in the performance.
Hellga: We would have all won. Are you kidding me? We might not have been happy about climbing a rope with wet hands but we would have beat it.
Justice: Yeah, as a contestant, I don't know. This course is brutal. It's really brutal and after seeing what they went through yesterday, they definitely kicked some bodies out.
CraveOnline: How involved are you with the hosts?
Hellga: Hopefully they're going to come to the wrap party, but we've been working such long hours, we haven't really had a chance to hang out. They're both fantastic. I think they're both good role models for all of us and it's really fun having them here. Seeing Hulk doing his thing is incredible.
Justice: With the hosts, it's pretty amazing to have somebody that we actually grew up watching as the host which is Hulk. To know that he's on the show, to me it was like surreal because this guy, I taped all his wrestling matches. Hogan Knows Best, I've got it all on Tivo. It's like an honor. Leila is like wow, I didn't know she looked that beautiful. I speak to her every day and I speak to Hulk as well. It's just amazing being in that type of arena with the daughter of Muhammad Ali who's the greatest and Hulk who's the greatest in his field. It's just a tremendous honor.
