“Deal or No Deal Island”'s Storm Wilson gives showmance update with M.G.

Instead of a storm coming on this week's episode of Deal or No Deal Island, there was a Storm going. That's because Dickson Wong shocked everybody after beating the Banker by not sending home the consensus pick of Courtney "CK" Kim, but eliminating Storm Wilson instead. That surprising move not only dashed Storm's dreams of winning millions of dollars, but also cut short his budding showmance with Maria-Grace Cook.

What does Storm make of Dickson's betrayal? Did his showmance get him kicked off the show? And what's the status of Storm and M.G. now? We asked the project manager all that and more.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, we obviously have a lot of showmance questions to get to, but let’s start with Dickson's decision to send you out of the game. How stunned were you by that?

STORM WILSON: I think me, Joe, the cast, the producers, the Australians with the cameras — I think every single person there did not see that coming. Before that, I felt like I was sort of puppet-mastering pretty well. I came up with this game plan to convince Dickson that CK wanted to get him out. Told Dickson it. He said, "I think I'm going to get CK out." Told me to my face, "I don't think you have anything to worry about. Everybody loves you." And even the producers came up to me afterwards and were like, "What the hell was that? The cameras weren't even on you. They were on CK!" Nobody saw it coming, including me

Clearly, you were shocked. Were you pissed at him as well?

I mean, yeah, obviously there was a degree where I was pissed. I did a lot for Dickson that I didn't have to do. In the sand castle challenge, I didn't have to let him be my partner. He had a low case and it wasn't going to help me, but I let him be my partner. He came up to me early in the season and was like, "Hey, we should work together. I don't think anybody would see it coming." I was like, "Sure, whatever, let's do it." I was his biggest fan in Temple, which I was thinking at first looks stupid, but now I'm like, "Whatever, it doesn't really matter." It was a crazy game. So yeah, I was pissed, but I wouldn't change it, if that makes sense.

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You were cheering so hard for him too! And for him to know, "I'm going to send this guy out if I win," that's pretty cold-blooded.

So I have some theory on that, and so do some of the other castmates. I don't actually think he was planning on sending me home when he went into that Temple. I think he was going to maybe send CK home, and then he just had such an electric game and he's feeling so good that he was like, "F--- it, I'm going to do something like crazy." Even in his last statement he was like, "I came to play, so I'll make a big move. Storm, it's time to go home." And I was shocked.

I remember talking to him down there and he's a guy that would be the first one to tell you that he's a huge reality TV fan and definitely wanted to make his mark on TV doing big things. Do you think that maybe that played into it a little bit in that he really wanted that shock value?

Yeah, I definitely think that that played into it. Dickson kind of played the nerdier guy that maybe didn't know exactly what was going on, maybe didn't try to compete the same way everybody else was competing, but he did prove — especially during the competition when he was just listing case model names that he's memorized over the past — that he is enriched in the reality TV world.

And so I definitely underestimated his ability to do something like that. I did not think he was going to take me out, aside from the reasons that I said earlier. I just didn't think, to be honest, he had the balls. But he did and he stood right by it and said, "This is my game. I came here to win." I definitely underestimated his abilities.

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Okay, when did the sparks start flying between you and Maria-Grace?

The producers have been milking that in the trailer all season. They sat us next to each other on the boat, and whenever we were sitting in Temple, they sat us next to each other. During the challenges, we were usually pretty close to each other. So they'd been kind of playing Cupid the whole entire time, and we were sort of having flirty banter back and forth.

And then one night, we were just talking under the palm trees and the night producer just snuck in there real quick and caught us chatting. And off camera, MG was like, "I really hang out with you. We should hang out a little bit closer." I was like, "That's a great idea. We should totally do that. We can kind of work with each other."

It didn't exactly show it, but she was working with the family and I was with my high-five group and so we were like, "We could probably be secret alliance members." We were tossing up a lot of ideas. It didn't really come to fruition because we only had 24 hours till I was gone, but most of it was in the episode. That was the first little morning date we had. That massage was real.  She came up to me and she started massaging my shoulders, said, "You got this," and I had the best axe throw I'd had the entire game. Just drilled her right in the face. So it was really perfect.

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How concerned were you that folks were going to target you all for being in a showmance?

I wasn't really that worried about the showmance, because I was trying to ride the middle line and not rock too many boats. You had Will, you had Parvati, the Golden God, and then you had CK and you had Lete. They were all just kind of louder and were taking a lot of the noise away from me and I was going to try to slip in for a while, eventually start winning with my team, and then just solo win a lot of things. So I was doing what I planned on doing the whole time, but Dickson just got me.

Did you realize when you all started making out while you were doing your final interview that it was all on camera?

That was a 10-minute confessional that we did, and I was in shock. I was sitting there just kind of in disbelief, and then they snuck MG in behind me and I didn't see it coming. I was glad that she was there, though. And then I got to kiss her before I left the island. But it surprised me. I didn't even think people were allowed to come in confessionals like that, because after you leave the island, that's it. Zero communication with everybody else. We really don't get to talk to anybody else to influence anything. So it was cool that they let her sneak in there and do that.

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It's been about five or six months since filming, so what is your status with MG now?

We have hung out a couple times. I don't know if you follow us on our social medias — Instagram, TikTok, stuff like that. I've been to L.A. a couple of times. She might be coming to Austin a couple of times. She moved to L.A. too, so she lives there now. She doesn't live at home anymore, but I cannot confirm or deny. You might have to ask her, but there may be other trips planned to go to L.A. We'll see.

I know you got really close to being on Big Brother instead of Deal of No Deal Island. How do you think that experience would have gone for you had you landed on that show instead?

I definitely think it would not have been quite the same experience. When I look at all these reality TV shows, DONDI seems like pound for pound the best one. It's he shortest amount of time, you can win easily the most amount of money on it, and you're treated luxuriously. On Survivor, you have to survive, right? The Challenge is physically very, very hard. Big Brother is a mental game. You're in a house with no connection to the outside world for 90 days. It's a real test of some of these things. And DONDI, you're just treated like royalty, and you throw a couple axes at a canvas, you jump on a couple floating logs. It's possible and really easy to do that without any sort of fatigue or mental pain or challenge overcoming any of that stuff.

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