Derek North has long harbored unfinished business on the television screen.
Now, he’s seeing those aspirations through — one nationally aired episode at a time.
North, a Naperville resident and detective with the Downers Grove Police Department, is a contestant on “The Snake,” a new FOX-TV reality competition show. Hosted by comedian Jim Jefferies, the series is a test of social survival, the network says.
“Man, it was wild,” North said in an interview. “It was wild.”
The cornerstone of the series is that instead of eliminating contestants like your typical competition show, who stays and who goes is determined through something called a “saving ceremony,” where contestants save one another until one person is left unpicked and goes home. The idea is contestants need to work to win each other’s favor to stay in the game.
The catch? The cast is composed of contestants who work in various persuasive professions.
Contestants include an ex-con, a pastor, a lawyer, a poker player and Naperville’s own, North. “The Snake” premiered last week with 15 contestants. North successfully made it through the first saving ceremony and was poised to return screens this week. New episodes air at 8 p.m. Tuesdays and are available to stream on Hulu.
North, who spoke last week while sitting down for coffee in downtown Naperville, couldn’t say how he fared in the competition overall but called the experience “incredible.” It’s also been a long time coming, he said.
North, 39, grew up about 45 minutes south of Naperville in Manhattan. He went to high school in New Lenox and college in Indiana, where he majored in media arts production and minored in theater. After graduating, he moved home before setting out to California to shoot a movie called “1313: Giant Killer Bees!” From there, he stuck around the Golden State to pursue acting, he said.
While he auditioned for different roles, North landed a job at Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood. He’d meet celebrities there, he said. His most memorable interaction was with Keanu Reeves, of “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” he said.
But then his father suffered a spinal stroke, North said. Needing a gig to help support his family back home, he turned to reality TV. The pursuit, however, was a difficult one. He’d audition and have projects “almost take off” but not quite go all the way, he said.
Eventually, he moved back to Illinois to be closer to family. When he did, he left the reality TV world behind, he said. He changed careers, trained to become a police officer, married and started a family.
“I found the love of my life, I found my wife,” North said. They have a 1-year-old daughter.
Then, out of nowhere, North was contacted by a producer from one of the reality shows he previously auditioned for that hadn’t moved forward, he said.
“They were like, ‘Hey, we’re making this new show. We’re wondering if you’d be interested in trying out for it,’” North said. “I asked them to send me the details because I’m having a great life here (in Naperville).”
When he looked at what the show was about, North knew the opportunity was the one he had been waiting for. He recalled thinking to himself, “I can win that.”
“(Reality TV) was totally off my radar,” he said. “I left that, you know? But I’m competitive. And I had unfinished business. I always had that in me.”
North went through more than a dozen auditions and interviews before getting cast on “The Snake,” he said. Once he knew he’d be a contestant, North said he prepared by watching episodes of reality shows that he thought “The Snake” might be similar to, including “Survivor,” “The Traitors” and “Fear Factor.”
Since the show premiered on June 10, “it’s been really cool,” North said. Looking ahead, he teased that the rest of the season is “going to be a lot of fun,” he said.
Apart from official results, North said competing on “The Snake” showed him that “if things don’t work at one point in your life, that’s not the end of it.”
“For this to come so much later in my life after I was working so hard for so long, sometimes you just got to trust the ride,” he said. “That’s just life.”
