Interview: "Expedition Impossible"'s Dave Salmoni is Just a Big Pussycat.

Dave Salmoni

If you didn't know much about Dave Salmoni, the host of ABC's new adventure reality show Expedition Impossible, beyond the fact that he's a wild animal trainer who once actually faced down a charging lion on the African savanna, it would be understandable if one expected him to be a brash, cocky, intimidating kind of guy.

In fact, he's quite the opposite. Salmoni not only has a sense of humor about himself, but during a phone conversation, he comes across as self-effacing, soft spoken and easy-going. He also cares passionately both about the animals he works with and the natural world, all of which makes him the perfect person to host Expedition Impossible, which Salmoni states quite unequivocally is not another The Amazing Race.

While Expedition Impossible does involve teams racing against each other in exotic locales, all of the action  takes place in the Kingdom of Morocco, and the challenges the competitors must face involve tasks more closely related to actually navigating through the wilderness. Additionally, the races in ABC's show live in tents for the duration of their journey. This stands in stark contrast to The Amazing Race which has competitors jetting around the world, staying in hotels and doing challenges that often involve doing tasks and solving puzzles based on local traditions and themes.

AfterElton.com recently caught up with Salmoni, who hails from Canada, to discuss his gay fanbase, Expedition Impossible's gay teammates and much more.

AfterElton: You've trained lions, so you're used to tremendous pressure. You've now got 60 seconds convince us to watch Expedition Impossible and tell us how it’s different from The Amazing Race. Go!
Dave Salmoni: Expedition Impossible, in my opinion, is probably the biggest most epic adventure you’ve ever seen on TV. The Amazing Race is great. It’s a fantastic fun scavenger hunt but this is an expedition. This is 13 teams of three ordinary Americans doing the extraordinary. And what I mean by that is we’re literally pushing these guys to their physical and mental limits. They get pushed over on sand dunes, they get to the top of mountains, they cross the desert. They take camels and mules and everything else, trying not to be eliminated so they can eventually finish their expedition.

AE: You’re obviously a very handsome fellow. At what point in your career did you realize you were attractive to both men and women and start to play on that a little?
DS: I certainly didn’t grow up in a place where I thought I was attractive to anybody. In my circle of friends, I’m certainly not considered the good looking one. It was only when I started doing photo shoots when someone said, “Hey, I’d like to you take your shirt off” and I’d say, “Why the hell do you want that?” Or some magazine says, “Hey, I’d like you to be one of our bachelors!”

That’s when I recognized that I had that kind of fan base and people were interested in me instead of just as a conduit to the adventures I go on. It’s super flattering. I don’t know how else to deal with it than be extremely flattered by it.

Here is one example!

AE: At what point did you realize you had a growing and vocal fan base among gay men?
DS: Luckily, the gay fan base, or my gay fan base, seems to be very vocal. I knew immediately when they started to recognize me because they were the first ones to compliment me. They are very open about it. In the last few years, I started to see it online and with some of our viewers and we welcome that. We know there are gay websites and gay magazines and a whole culture and social networking out there of people that like to watch television and we reached out to them and said, “Hey, we embrace that.”

Hmm, why do many gay men find him appealing?

AE What made you want to do this show? And how did you come to be involved with it?
DS: I felt like this show was tailor made for someone like me. I’ve been doing adventures like this for 15 to 20 years. The adventurous stuff and being out in the middle of nowhere is sort of what I’ve always been drawn to. So you have that, and add the physical element and the competitive element of this being a race and that’s the other side of my life, which is fitness.

So when I heard that Mark Burnett was doing something like this for ABC, I kicked the door down and said, I’m the guy for you. Luckily, Lisa Hennessey and Mark both wanted someone that was believably a guy who could go out there and do what these guys were doing. And have me act as a little bit of a teacher, a little bit of a guide for their journey.