Tawanda “Tee” Hanible, a Gunnery Sergeant with the U.S. Marines, is another part of the cadre of team leaders in FOX’s new military-based athletic competition series American Grit. Hanible is known by her peers as a humanitarian with a willingness to lend a hand to her fellow Marines and to those in need.
In addition to her Marine background, Hanible has an organization called Operation Heroes Connect which connects at-risk youth with service members and veterans as full-time mentors.
We spoke with Hanible at the Washington State-based filming location for American Grit for some details about what she brings to the show and her team that will be competing with three others in this John Cena-hosted series. For starters, she credits her Marine Corps background with inspiring the kind of leader she will be to her group.
“Your job in the Marine Corps is to lead and to guide Marines,” Hanible explained. “So, for me, it’s more a mentorship role, that I guess I’m able to naturally bring to the table, where I could tell them ‘okay. These are things that I went through. These are the paths that I’ve taken. Maybe you need to re-engage in a different way, if this is not working for you’.” Her own experience as a mother also comes into play and is incorporated. “I bring out that mom thing. It kind of comes naturally, especially when you’ve been dealing with Marines for almost twenty years, and then I have a 17 year old, so the things that they’re doing now, I’m like ‘Okay. Are you sure this is what you really want to put out there? Are you sure you don’t want to come back together as a team? Let’s try to figure out how to do this as a team.’ So my role and what I bring to the table is definitely different.”
“It’s never about an individual,” she explained about the kind of teamwork you will get from a Marine. “Everything you do in the Marine Corps is your team. Your unit is doing it, or your section is doing it. This is the unit’s responsibility. It’s not me, it’s the unit. So whether we’re taking kudos for something, or whether we’re getting chewed out for something, it’s still as a unit. There’s no room for individuality.”
That teamwork will ideally help her team get ahead. “It’s human nature to want the people on your team to all succeed. This show is unique in the sense that it’s not just one winner; it could be the whole team winning this big amount of money. I would want them to reap the rewards just as much as I do, so that gives a unique spin on it as well. That’s different from other reality shows,” she explained. “For me, personally, everything I do is about teamwork or helping others, so that, for me, was instrumental. How are you helping others? What are you doing that’s going to ensure that a team effort is going to be put forward? If you see someone struggling, are you going to stop what you’re doing and help them? Or are you going to just say ‘to heck with them?’ That’s just my mentality; it’s not just as a Marine, but as a human being. Everything I do, I look for ways that I can benefit others.”
Hanible also has great things to say about the American Grit host, John Cena. “He brings a level of realness to the show,” she said. “It’s not your everyday cookie-cutter reality show. He brings that realness into the show, and I think that’s what a lot of these reality shows need. You kind of feel like the host is driving it, but that host doesn’t make it real for you to really want to watch it and engage it… he brings that to this show.”
“I think with this show, Americans will maybe get a greater appreciation of our service members and veterans, and seeing that this is the kind of training that they have to put through their bodies through. It may be more of an eye-opener for what we really do,” she said.
American Grit premieres this Thursday, April 14 on FOX. You can see another of FOX’s promotional trailers below.
