Controversial Texas contestant on 'Naked and Afraid' upset with how she was portrayed on show

McAllen resident Laura Thompson-Nelson recently experienced plenty of discomfort in the Australian Outback as a contestant on the Discovery Channel's Naked and Afraid.

But that was only the beginning of her discomfort.

The May 15 episode, titled Melt Down Under, showed Thompson-Nelson truly melting down. Seven days into the 21-day challenge of surviving the wilderness sans clothes, she is shown getting into a major disagreement with her partner, Nicklas Lautakoski of Sweden.

Thompson-Nelson is seen throwing a tantrum and verbally threatening Lautakoski. Producers for the show intervened and asked Thompson-Nelson to "tap out" or withdraw, which, according to Thompson-Nelson, was a first for the show.

She did tap out. But social media took her to task. Hundreds of Facebook comments and tweets were mostly critical of Thompson-Nelson's behavior, although many sided with her.

Discovery lists the episode in a June 18 (8 p.m.) marathon of Naked and Afraid episodes. A Discovery publicist, who arranged an interview for Thompson-Nelson to comment about her experience on the show, asked that Thompson-Nelson not answer a question about whether she was happy with the show's final edit.

On social media, Thompson-Nelson pointed out her displeasure with the show's final edit. 

"Before my episode came out -- and obviously, I'm not happy with the edit and that's no secret -- I wanted to do it again," Thompson-Nelson said. "I wanted a redemption episode. I wanted to go out there and show that I can do it and have a different try with another partner. I wanted that up until the day my episode aired."

Thompson-Nelson, who tried out for the show and has been a fan from the first episode, said she knows that everything can't be pared down to a show's actual air time.

"Yes, everything happened, but there are obviously things that could change the whole story," she said. "That's like having a sentence and leaving out a comma. That comma could make all the difference in the world in the meaning of the sentence."

In an email, Lautakoski said he believed the edit was fair.

"Of course, it must be very difficult to edit three weeks down to 45 minutes, but I think the episode really showed how it was out there," Lautakoski wrote.

Thompson-Nelson said she wanted to show off skills that she picked up from fellow contestant Henry Lomeli in 2014 during another Discovery Channel challenge show called Tethered.

"Even though I'm definitely not a survival expert, I had a solid foundation going into this," Thompson-Nelson said. "I wanted to be able to go on the show and kind of show what I had learned, and maybe be able to be useful and show somebody else what I had learned."

Thompson-Nelson admitted that the show made for good reality TV.

"It didn't feel really good to me, but I think for the viewing audience, I'm sure it probably was very good TV," she said. "You go on the message boards like the Naked and Afraid Facebook page, my episode has more comments than probably all the other ones combined.

"It's crazy. It's almost like it turned into a Team Laura/Team Nicklas scenario. People are very passionate one way or another."