Tony, the bow tie-sporting medical student, was the first geek to be eliminated from the Beauty and the Geek mansion. He spoke to BuddyTV today about his experiences in the competition, about how he was actually relieved to go home, and what his plans are for the future.

Below, you will find an audiofile of the interview as well as a transcript.

Hey everybody, this is Debbie at BuddyTV, and I'm talking to Tony from Beauty and the Geek. Hi, Tony.

Hi, Debbie. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Doing good.

So, you were eliminated this week. How did you feel when that happened?

I was actually kind of relieved that I got eliminated.

Relieved? How come?

I got to come back to school on time, and hopefully I'll be able to finish. If I stayed on the show any longer, it was a possibility that they would have to fifth year me leave because the administration here wasn't very supportive of me being on the TV show.

Oh, so, when did the taping occur?

I can't really tell. Only that it was over the summer.

Okay, and you had to miss school for that.

Yes, I did. A week. Add/drop.

So, the challenge that you had to do this week was to write an autobiographical rap and perform it. And how difficult was it to do that?

I thought that it was pretty difficult. Like, I don't listen to rap music because I don't like cursing. I knew, from firsthand, I knew that Will was going to win the rap contest.

How did you know?

I was just trying to plan out just to be in the middle, not to be the worst and not to be the best. That was my goal. Just be absolutely middle.

And do you think that you achieved the goal?

Sadly, no. "My name is Tony, I like to wear bowties, Cheerio."

I don't know, I thought that was cute. But Amanda seemed a little bit frustrated with you because you had trouble overcoming your shyness. Did you guys have an argument, or, you know, what happened there?

I guess, like, I wanted to... I'm not sure I can talk about this. It was off-camera. So, we had a disagreement about... Let me see if I can word it nonspecifically. Well, I guess, I kind of wanted to go home. So. And I kind of felt bad for her that I didn't tell her earlier.

So you wanted to go home? Was it too hard being there? What was the reason?

I honestly didn't like how certain people treated certain people. I was unbelievably shocked about how this group that you respected, that you come to respect, how their behavior was. The show is about teaching people not to judge a book by its cover, and these people were judging books by a cover. I thought that was, I thought that was wrong.

Can you be a little more specific about that?

[pause] I don't know if I can without giving away... It was definitely, the people I'm talking about were definitely not any of the casting or production people or any of the crew. All twenty of the contestants, they were amazingly wonderful people. I would give a kidney for them if they wanted it. They were so amazing. I loved them all. But what happened, I was just like, "How can you do that? Treat people like that?" I mean... oh well.

So it wasn't the casting people, it wasn't the crew...

It wasn't the casting people, it wasn't the crew, it wasn't the contestants. It was just other people that were so narrow-minded.

How did you feel about the twist this season with guy beauty and the girl geek?

Oh, the twist? I was actually really excited for them. I thought I could learn a lot from Sam, and I really, I had a big crush on Nicole. She's really cute.

Cool. And, so you were only in the house for a short time, but what did you learn from your experience there?

A reality TV set is definitely more like a movie set than a regular sitcom set. That was really impressive. I didn't know that at all. I thought it was gonna be a really small production kind of thing, but it was sweet, and I was like, wow. And all the contestants, amazingly wonderful people.

Uh huh. But has it taught you to open up more to people? Or...

The reason I didn't open up was to tell Amanda that I kind of wanted to go home. And I think that's the thing that I didn't open up about. But yeah, I definitely need to learn how to open up to more girls.

So what are you plans for right now and for in the future?

Well, right now, I have an exam tomorrow, neuroscience, so hopefully passing that. And then, finish med school, and hopefully after that, do underserved medicine, and start a company up, forming devices for underprivileged people in different countries. My goal is to make walkers that are affordable.

Why are you getting a degree in medicine if you're gonna do that?

I'm doing it at ATSU-KCOM. It's osteopathic medicine. I think it's really amazing. I'm Asian, so the way we approach medicine as a holistic
I think that's really cool. And they prepare neuroscientists, neurologists, cardiologists. It's really amazing.


-Interview conducted by Debbie Chang