“The biggest lesson I think I learned is to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” he told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “These experiences were so amazing, especially with seven dope people, and everybody was so different. So it’s like you’re just jumping off a cliff, hoping to land on your feet. The biggest thing is knowing that it’s OK to talk your problems through. If there was a problem usually, I’m a man, so, where I come from, I’m wired to be tough all the time and deal with my problems on my own; I don’t want to talk about it with nobody. And, that’s not really healthy. Me being on this show and experiencing different things like doing breath work for the first time ever in my life, that was crazy, but it was dope. I felt a lot of weight lift off my shoulders, and I just felt fresh; I felt clean.”

For his roommate, the legendary Macy Gray, stepping into the house alongside other castmates for The Surreal Life was an adjustment. Even though her experience with the breath work exercise was out of the ordinary, it was still a huge learning experience.

“I’ve just never been able to, even that day, I couldn’t really… everybody was so into it, O.T. was crying so bad, but I don’t know; that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why, but it was a really emotional time for everybody else,” she recalled.

It also taught her that she can share living quarters with another person, which she said she hasn’t done for a long time.

“I haven’t done that in ages; I’m talking decades,” Gray said. “So that was honestly my biggest cringe when they pitched the show to me. That was my first question: Would I have to share a bathroom? It’s just one of those things; we all have our little thing, so that was cool. We all surprised ourselves; I adapted, and it was cool. Me and O.T. had to get used to how we were going to navigate getting dressed, going to the bathroom, in front of each other. I think I learned a lot about myself, I don’t know, consciously, but I know that I evolved and did things I didn’t think I could do before.”

O.T. Genasis said the most surreal moment for him was being in Colombia and experiencing a place he’d never been alongside people with much more in common than they first realized.

“Everybody’s different,” he said. “There’s so many different personalities in the room, but everybody was getting along; everybody wanted to get to know each other in order to be comfortable, so that part was pretty easy for me. I always wanted to be on a show like this, but it does make you kind of nervous because, you know, your reputation, but at the same time, I feel that a lot of people, some people, know my personality. So, if I say I’mma be real, I gotta be 100% real and show people because all that other stuff is just really about nothing, so first I need to show people the true me.”

He added, “So you get the true O.T. I’ve dropped songs, but I’ve never dropped an album ever in my life. I’ve dropped hit record after hit record; I’ve never told my story, and since I haven’t told it on an album or anywhere else, I felt that I could show it here.”

Along with Macy Gray and O.T. Genasis, this season’s The Surreal Life cast includes Chet Hanks, one of iconic actor Tom Hanks’ sons, Fifth Harmony group member Ally Brooke, former The Real Housewives of Atlanta personality Kim Zolciak, retired figure skater and two-time Olympian Johnny Weir, daughter of baseball legend José Canseco, Josie Canseco, and actor Tyler Posey.

New episodes of The Surreal Life: Villa of Secrets air Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on MTV.