A couple years before Riley Green became a country music superstar, he was a contestant on the CMT reality show Redneck Island.
He was even a winner.
Green and his partner Becky Andrews won Season 5 of the show in 2016, splitting a $100,000 cash grand prize after they duked it out with competitors in a series of Survivor-style challenges in a remote area.
Looking back on it now, Green acknowledges that he’s not typically the “reality TV” type.
“I struggle to think about that too,” he said with a laugh on an episode of the Zach Sang Show, after host Zach Sang said he had trouble picturing Green on a reality show.
At the time, Green hadn’t gained much headway in the mainstream country music scene, but he was developing a stout grassroots following playing shows in and around his home state of Alabama.
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He was scouted for the show at one of those shows, and at first, he was hesitant to sign on.
“But I thought, ‘Well, if they mention that I play music, it could help my career,'” he remembers, admitting that he didn’t wind up seeing much of a jump in his fanbase after the show aired.
The first time he went on the show was for Season 4, and he was eliminated in the “first or second episode,” Green explains. But they called him back for Season 5, and he wound up going all the way to the finale.
When he and Andrews won, they split the money. Green wasn’t yet savvy about the financial side of the entertainment business, and he figured $50,000 would be enough for him to live comfortably for a while — or even retire.
“I thought I was just gonna retire after that. I thought $50,000 was all I’ll ever need,” he admits.
Green adds that the experience quickly turned into a lesson in how to handle his finances.
“I found out what taxes are pretty quick. And the IRS found out I was a person,” he jokes, “because I think I was probably playing shows, you know, for cash at the Mexican restaurant in town.”
His Redneck Island money put Green on the grid. It also taught him some important lessons about working in entertainment.
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“I remember we would do exit interviews, we called them — y’all know what that is,” he continues.
“You’re sitting in front of a screen and you’re talking about what’s happening in the show, and you gotta say it in the moment,” Green says.
At first, when behind-the-scenes crew members prompted him to say what he thought about certain plot points in the episode, he’d just say, “Nothing.”
“But they had this storyline,” he relates. “You know, they would show me staring off into space blankly, and it would look like I’m mad, and they would show somebody else and they said something. And I might not have even been in the room.”
But he learned that it was to his advantage to drum up the drama.
“I realized if I said what they wanted, I could get out of those interviews faster,” Green says. “So I started getting good at interviews, you know: What are we trying to paint here? What picture?”
PICTURES: See Inside Riley Green’s Luxurious Nashville Home
Riley Green is selling his stunningly well-appointed home in Nashville, and pictures show a luxurious property chock-full of the highest-end amenities.
Gallery Credit: Sterling Whitaker
