As the former NBC hit series The Biggest Loser is set to make its big TV return for a new season on USA later this year, one of its former contestants has passed away. Daniel Wright, a two-time hopeful who competed in both Season 7 and Season 8, died over the weekend at just 30 years old.
Daniel Wright reportedly passed away on the morning of Sunday, May 26, 2019. Wright had been battling leukemia for the past two years, and sadly succumbed to the disease in the hospital after facing serious health setbacks in the last week, according to People.
Back in October 2017, Daniel Wright first went to the hospital showing signs of fatigue and severe headaches, and he was unable to walk normally. He was soon diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, otherwise known as ALL. Wright first went through around six months of chemotherapy, blood transfusions and other treatments, and all seemed well enough when the treatments were finished.
Unfortunately, Daniel Wright and his wife Rebecca – who was also a contestant on The Biggest Loser Season 8 – discovered in December 2018 that his leukemia had relapsed. The couple had managed to find a semblance of normalcy in their lives again, but the updated diagnosis put them back in the hospital over the months that followed. The process was made all the more complicated by Wright reportedly facing dangerous side effects from one of the treatments.
Rebecca Wright (neé Meyers) posted on Facebook on Friday that her husband was starting to suffer more serious physical problems, and called for prayers to keep his health intact. She has not posted any further updates at the time of this writing.
Daniel Wright was remembered fondly on social media by friends, family, and former Biggest Loser contestants. Danny Cahill, the big winner for Season 8, shared a particularly lengthy post honoring his friend.
Back in 2009, Daniel Wright was just 19 years old when he first joined the Biggest Loser lineup for Season 7, dubbed Couples 2. He weighed 454 pounds at the time, and lost a pretty astonishing 30 pounds just in the first week. However, Wright was inevitably eliminated in Week 4 alongside his Orange Team partner David Lee.
The next season, called The Biggest Loser: Second Chances, saw Daniel Wright return to the competition to continue down the path to weight loss. This is where he met his future wife, and though he did have more success in his second go-around, Wright and his teammate "Shay" Sorrells were eventually eliminated in Week 9.
The aforementioned winner of Season 8, Danny Cahill, has since become one of the biggest critics of The Biggest Loser in terms of how well the show's weight-loss tactics actually help the contestants, who very often gain much of their weight right back after the show is done. In the years since those two seasons, Daniel Wright had also spoken publicly about struggles with gaining back the weight he'd lost.
Wright's fellow Season 7 contestant Damien Gurganious also died in the years after the season aired, though via unrelated circumstances. Gurganious died in 2014 of the rare autoimmune disorder known as idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.
It was announced earlier in May that The Biggest Loser will be getting a rebooted project set to air on the USA network. While the new host and trainers have yet to be announced, it was made clear from the start that the new iteration will focus just as much on contestants' well-being and lifestyle as it will on losing weight.
We here at CinemaBlend send our thoughts and condolences to the family and friends of Daniel Wright in their time of mourning.
