Dee Valladares reveals there is major Survivor 50 post-game cast drama — fans are in shock!

Was there ever any point heading into Tribal or during it when you thought you may have turned the tide and had a shot to stay?

DEE VALLADARES: I wish I could say yes, but the real answer is no. My name had been floating around for a while, and I knew it. People either come up to you and tell you, or people just ignore having conversations with you, and so I felt it. But I am delusional enough to think: All right, well, let me just try, right? Because you never know on Survivor. So I did try, but obviously I knew I was going home.

Let’s get into why you went home. You took out Charlie. Did you realize that by doing that you were essentially declaring war on the entire honor and integrity alliance?

Well, here’s the thing. I’m gonna go back to OG Kalo, because there are a lot of things that weren’t seen. I was never aligned with that group to begin with, right? We were never aligned. I know in the edit you see us having some strategy talk. Obviously, it was just me agreeing to it. Me taking out Charlie was not the reason why I left, because Jonathan, Chrissy, and Coach were coming for me from the beginning, and I knew that. And I’m very open with my gameplay. Everybody knew where I was. So it was just a matter of who got who first, right?

With the Charlie vote, the war had already begun. It’s just that I got Jonathan first in that moment. But the war had already begun since OG Kalo. I mean, we see it in episode 1 — Jonathan’s like, “We gotta get rid of Dee.” And Chrissy also was gunning for me, and Coach did everything Chrissy said, so they were coming for me anyway.

There was no way that I would allow myself to look back at my experience on season 50 and look back and think: Oh, yeah, I just played their game and not my own. Because that’s really what happened at the tribe split where it was either Rizo or Charlie. It was just the way that it was approached to me. It’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna do Rizo.” There was never a conversation of, like, “Hey, what’s good for all our games? Dee, what’s good for your game?  Who else, if not Rizo?” It was just like, “We’re gonna do Rizo.” And I’m not okay with that. And especially, like, “Oh, now you want to solidify OG Kalo,” but we were never solidified to begin with.

You were in trouble before the game even started with your reputation going into the game, so had Kalo gone to Tribal, would you have been in trouble?

No. if OG Kalo would’ve gone to Tribal, it would’ve been Chrissy. Anything can happen, don’t get me wrong.  I was obviously trying to avoid Tribal because it could be me too, right? When it’s an easy vote, everything can switch in a heartbeat. However, it was Chrissy, Coach and Jonathan on one hand, and then me, Tiff, and Kamilla on the other hand, and then that left the people with the most power, which is Charlie and Mike. And at the time, and even post-game, they even said they were gonna come with the girls rather than the other side. You even see Coach saying in the episode that it would’ve been Chrissy going home. I’m, like, 80% sure it would’ve been Chrissy. 

Have you heard from Charlie since you called him the dumbest player out there?

You know what’s funny? When I watched the show, I’ve actually never talked to one person about my vote out or anything. I don’t fish for “Why did you do this?” because it’s the game and it ends. With Charlie, I reached out to him, but I reached out to him in December. We finished in July, but when I landed after July, I had just finished filming The Challenge. So The Challenge was about to air. I’m getting bombarded with promo. Now I’m dealing with 30 other people, even worse drama than what this is.

But I reached out to him a few times. He never responded back. And at one point, I’m like: Let me just crack jokes. And I’m like, “All right, if you hate me, just say that.” Like, I was just cracking jokes. And it finally got to the point where I’m like, “All right, what the heck is happening? What’s going on? Like, just let’s talk about it. ” And, you know, he told me he was hurt and blah, blah, blah, and we talked about it and we’ve had a few text exchanges, but it doesn’t seem like anything’s gonna come from it.

I’m sorry.

Which is okay with me. I’m sure it’s okay with him too.

Why is it okay with you? Just because you can let that go?

I love to play the game with people who, when you get out of the game, you can laugh. Not just at what people are saying, but at yourself too. And this is a season where a lot of people are not…. It doesn’t seem like they’re enjoying the experience. But I think, for me, I mean, I’m enjoying it. I’m okay with it with any person because I come from a place of privilege. I won my season. I did it. I got everything. So I kind of went into 50 without having to prove anything, without having to worry about tainting my reputation. I knew no matter what I did on 50, nothing can take away what I did on 45. But I don’t think that’s the case for a lot of people, so …

Well, I’ve written about this before and I’ve seen a lot of returning player seasons, and they do seem just a lot more raw and emotional. And I don’t know if that’s because of friendships when you get on the island, or just expectations you come back with, but it seems like feelings get a lot more bruised on returning player seasons as opposed to newbie ones.

I mean, I think as they should. We all care deeply about this game. So I think it comes from a place of passion, at least for me. I can only speak about myself, but yeah, I don’t know. People talk about all these pregame alliances. Oh, baby, wait until you hear about post-game. [Laughs] Post-game is even worse! [Laughs] It’s truly worse. So I stay away from it as much as I can. I got my people and I’m happy with them. But I think the live reunion’s gonna be great. I’m really looking forward to it.

Is it like alliances forming off-island, kind of like on-island in terms of people being out there and you’ve got to pick your side?

Oh, 100%. There’s text messages flying out to each other. I mean, it’s a lot. It’ll happen in the live reunion. We’ll all talk about it then.

We talked about pregaming before the season. Now I’ll ask you about it again. How big of a factor was it out there?

For me, it wasn’t too big of a factor. I had a couple conversations with a couple people. I didn’t wanna do it too much. People reached out to me as well. Dalton, everybody talks. We all know this. It’s not a secret. But I only gave my word to two people and one of them being Emily. [Laughs] But I feel like I owed her something.

Dee Valladares on ‘Survivor 50’.

Things got a little heated there with you and Jonathan. Was there more friction and fighting going on that we didn’t see, because we’ve heard there was more to the fights between Rick and Joe or Aubry and Geneveive that didn’t make it to air?

I’ll take you back to something that wasn’t shown on OG Kalo. Episode 2, we won a tarp, and I decided to do a little fashion show, and I made everyone wear the opposite sex clothing. And since then, all of the men thought I had an advantage. Same thing that happened on season 42, I believe, with Maryanne.

So they all were scared. Then I heard about it, and obviously, it wasn’t from Charlie, so I’m here thinking Charlie’s an ally, and that’s when immediately I was like: You’re not an all,y because how are you not telling me about the fact that everyone’s thinking that I have an advantage? And I understand maybe you’re playing defense, but you’re not playing offense with me. You’re just keeping your cards to your chest until it’s time to make a big move when it’s beneficial to your game.

And at the time, Jonathan was freaking out, “Dee has an advantage!” And so basically, you see Jonathan in that moment come out and say, “Dee, all the lies that you’re doing.” I didn’t! What did I lie about? Just the Charlie vote. That’s all I lied about. But it was built up tension for sure because I really wanted to work with Jonathan coming in, and I think we needed each other as a shield. But it was very obvious in our OG tribe that he had Coach and Chrissy, and that was who he was gonna ride with and we never kept solidifying our alliance.

And I knew that he was coming for me because you just feel that at camp, you know what I mean? You feel it. And there were times where, for example, even Coach sat me down and told me, “Dee, I’m afraid of you, Kamilla, and Tiff.” And I’m like, “Well, Coach, what about you, Jonathan, and Charlie? So you could play Survivor, but I can’t?” I had been talking back since OG Kalo. It obviously wasn’t shown and didn’t make the storyline, but there was a lot of built up tension because I always would also see Charlie, Jonathan and Coach, and I’d go up to them at the beach and they changed conversations.

I mean, if you change a conversation, something’s going on, and it’s about me or one of my allies, right? So there was definitely built up tension from the beginning. So when we made the split, I think it was just to their benefit to align together because they wanted Rizo out, but it wasn’t to my benefit in my game.