Calling all Niki and Gabi DeMartino fans — get ready because YouTube famous twins just revealed what viewers can expect to see in their upcoming reality show Niki & Gabi Take Bahamas, and from the sound of it, there’s about to be a whole lot of “explosive drama.” That’s right, the show’s stars chatted exclusively to J-14 about filming outside the United States, introduced the two new cast members and even dished about getting their phones taken away for the entirely of filming. As expected, no phones means a whole lot of juicy content from the cast! Make sure to watch the video above.
So mark your calendars and set your alarms because along with Niki and Gabi, Collin Vogt, Nate West, Alex DeMartino, Dennis Wot, Rachel Weiss, Jesse Marie, Alex Byrd and Kyle Werner are about to turn up the heat and spill all the tea during Season 5 of this AwesomenessTV series. For those who don’t know, Niki and Gabi Take Bahamas premieres this Saturday, April 18, at 8:15 A.M. EST/5:15 A.M. PST on AwesomenessTV’s YouTube channel.
J-14: Tell us a little bit about Niki & Gabi Take Bahamas — what can fans expect to see this season?
Niki DeMartino: There’s a lot because this season, I mean there’s drama every season, but this season specifically, we don’t have our phones. And I know that sounds stupid. Like how could that create more drama? But it’s weird once you take it out of the equation, you don’t realize how much like going on your phone is a way people escape drama. And now that we don’t have them, everybody has an opinion. Everybody’s vocal. Everybody’s outspoken.
Gabi DeMartino: Not to mention, we’re international!
J-14: What was the decision behind taking away the cast’s cell phones this season?
Niki: It was the producers. Okay, we arrived, and they collected our phones. We didn’t know. Catfished. We were catfished! The producers were like ‘You want a good show? We’ll give you a good show, but you got to give us your phones.’
Gabi: It wasn’t our decision!
J-14: What would you say was the most dramatic moment of the season?
Niki: I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I am allowed to say that you’ll see through the season something happened with one of the three of us that’s a negative situation, between one of the friends in the house and you’ll see how family blood is thicker than anything, than water. And, believe it or not, there are people out there that are going to try to like bring one or all three of us down or play games with us or side with us. And it’s like on us to be a force, you know? The drama is still going because we didn’t know things were happening. It’s like we all have our own story and Gabi and I knew our narratives and we thought that was it and we didn’t know there was a whole other thing going on.
Gabi: One friend could show a different face to Niki and I or Alex or me or just, like, different faces and we’re just not getting all of them. we’re actually currently dealing with that right now. Like we always have our fights on the show and then there’s a wave of aftermath when the trailer comes out and when you start seeing the show and we start seeing things for what we didn’t think they were at the time.
J-14: There are two new cast members this season. Can you introduce them?
Gabi: One of my best friends, Alex, she’s on my show, Blood Queens, she came to The Bahamas with us and I was really excited about it because I’ve never had like a best friend on the show with me since season three, which was so far away, past seasons ago.
Niki: The other newcomer is my boyfriend’s best friend named Kyle and he has the long hair. A lot of people in the comments are already saying he looks like Jesus. His line in the trailer that everyone’s repeating is that he’s ‘the only straight single dude in the house.’ He’s Nate’s best friend and I swear Nate’s dating both of us. He has a bromance and then he has me. So, I think that that definitely was a challenge. Cause here Gabi, my sister, has the most romantic paradise vacation with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, me and Kyle are sharing Nate. It was a very interesting dynamic.
J-14: Will your relationships with your significant others be portrayed throughout the season?
Niki: A lot, oh yeah!
Gabi: Oh, yeah!
J-14: Did you guys fight at all during the show?
Gabi: I will say there’s things we addressed on that on this season that we’ve never like publicly fought about. We’ve never talked about like in front of anyone who watches us. So, it’s going to be a whole different view. It’s a more relatable view that the audience can watch us at. I feel like it’s definitely a more relatable argument or arguments with Niki and we’re going to grab a bunch of different like age groups with this season. The arguments are going to apply to everyone. In real life we just fight like the stupid sister stuff. Our online feuds are always like, so not relatable because it’s like, ‘you didn’t edit the photo on Instagram,’ but then these fights on the show, they will grab the attention of sisters. There’s a lot of like soul-searching identity problems. There’s just a lot of navigating your 20s, just so much stuff that will really draw in a broader audience than our show ever had.
Niki: I feel like it’s pretty expected. I mean every season there is definitely at least one Niki and Gabi blow or fight. But this season we pretty much like are okay until like, you’ll see. Out relationship as sisters, and we didn’t know this, is always being tested whether we’re on the show or off the show. I think a lot of people hate to see when we’re getting along, which sucks. But I think we’re a force when we’re good, we’re good. Like we’re a force and we’re kind of unstoppable. So, a lot of jealous or like negative people will really try to like crush that force. And I think this season you really see like people constantly trying to get between our sisterhood and it’s like wow, a lot of our fights start there and we didn’t know that.
J-14: What’s the hardest part about filming a reality show? Is it difficult to have cameras on you at all times?
Niki: I’ll be honest, this season, normally we get a break. We can see when the cameras are there, when they’re not. And when the cameras are off, we can be relaxed. Breathe. This season they put GoPros in our bedroom. So, my embarrassing moments, like a lot of embarrassing moments. I don’t know why bad things happen to me, but ask Gabi, every, every time I thought me and Nate were getting away from the cameras to discuss something, we forgot that little GoPro was in the bedroom. My anxiety is on display. So that’s great. The cameras reflect and mirror things you don’t want to see about yourself. So, I do worry about once these episodes come out, how these friends are going to react. There’s really embarrassing things about me that they’re there. So, we’re all in this together and it’s like, you feel exposed, but a good thing. It’s a good thing. We learned a lot.
Gabi: The hardest part for this reality show for me is it involves people in my personal life. I already have a public life. I have, a lot of friends that are in the public light and those relationships are very unique because they understand the unique situation of having people watch every move you make. These are our friends that we’ve made genuinely on our own through our past experiences like high school, college, middle school even. And a lot of the times the show does, just like, interferes with all of them. And it’s hard. It’s really hard because these are people that we just don’t want to ruin relationships with, and especially this season we see something while watching it back that we didn’t see there and we haven’t seen for all the years we were friends with this person and we feel blindsided. If it weren’t for this show and if it weren’t for this season, we wouldn’t have opened our eyes to a very, very major problem. There’s the wave of fighting on the show. Then there’s the wave of fighting when we get to see the season, but they can’t see it. And then there’s the wave of fighting in our friend group when the show does come out and they’re like, ‘How could you let them use this footage of me?’ Niki and I don’t have any say of that. We have no say.
J-14: How do you deal with all the online hate and backlash?
Gabi: I feel like this season I see clearly when I’m wrong while watching it back and I know that there’s going to be opinions on certain things I say or do and arguments and I know people are going to tell me how it is because I need that. I need to be told how it is. Sometimes I need to see myself from a different perspective and be like, okay, that’s a problem and whatever backlash I get it’s deserved. So, I’m not scared.
Niki: People are definitely going to call me dramatic. My boyfriend’s mad patient and I had a lot of freak out, so excited for that. Like there’s people that come out of the woodwork like out of nowhere that are like, we’re either relationship experts, sister experts or lifestyle experts that like to be like, ‘they’re doing this wrong and they’re horrible at this. And like they should be living like this.’ And it’s like, okay, go get your life filmrf. Let’s see how expert you are on your life.
J-14: You’ve done a few seasons of the show in different locations, has this been your favorite?
Gabi: Definitely, 24/7 access to the beach, wow. It was amazing.
Niki: Our backyard was the beach.
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