Dancing With the Stars Season 34 has crowned its Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy winners, and I’m already getting withdrawals. The competition for the show's run on the 2025 TV schedule was pretty tough this season, and the celebrity contestants were no joke. Among the finalists was Dylan Efron, who is no stranger to reality competitions, having previously won The Traitors. However, while he brought his A-game to the ballroom, there were some brutal Survivor-like strategy ideas he got from his friend and Traitors co-star, Boston Rob, that he didn't use.
Rob “Boston Rob” Mariano has appeared in eight seasons of Survivor, and was the runner-up in two of them and the winner of Survivor: Redemption Island, though he did turn down Survivor 50. That being said, Survivor and DWTS are two very different shows, and you don't go about winning them the same way. However, that didn’t stop Mariano from trying to give some advice to Efron after the two formed quite the bromance on The Traitors.
During an episode of E!’s Hot Goss, Mariano and Efron explained just how much strategy truly went into DWTS:
- Boston Rob: You don't realize that there's strategy on Dancing with the Stars.
- Dylan Efron: I was calling him every show day, but we had a lot of strategies. Some we didn't use, some we did.
Of course, Mariano knows a thing or two about strategizing, because that’s one of the key elements to winning Survivor.
Even though there aren’t any crazy mental challenges or totems on Dancing With the Stars, you do have to technically fight to survive, albeit in a different way. Boston Rob immediately showed his support for Efron with the first episode of DWTS, and it’s nice to know that the support never faltered all season. So much so that the longer it went on, Mariano felt the need to give some advice to Efron that certainly mirrored how alliances are formed on Survivor:
I'll just tell you this: when it was coming down to the end, we both kind of had the same idea at the same time. And he called me, he's like, 'I got an idea.' And I was like, 'Listen, bro, here's the thing, you gotta start to befriend the other contestants, the ones that are not as good, because they're going to get voted off. And when they do, you need to recruit them to have their people start turning their votes for you.' So, I was like, 'You know Andy's not making it to the end. He's got a lot of votes coming his way. Buddy up with Andy.'
Considering Efron and Andy Richter, who was partnered with Emma Slater and voted off just before the semis, were both beloved during their time on the show, it only made sense that they became close. And even though the Survivor legend joked that it could have helped his friend advance on the show, Efron made sure to defend himself and say that he didn’t follow Mariano’s lead, which really makes his and Richter’s friendship all the sweeter:
- Dylan Efron: Just to be clear, I did not use this strategy.
- Boston Rob: He didn't! And that's why he ended up in fourth place.
Whatever it was that helped Efron make it to the finals, aside from Daniella Karagach’s always-incredible choreography, Mariano seems to be pretty proud of his friend, which is nice to see. It’s also nice to know that Efron didn’t take the brutal advice from his friend and still ended up not only becoming friends with Richter but also coming in fourth.
This does make me curious about how Dylan Efron would do in an actual Survivor setting. We know that he’s great at strategizing since he was one of the winners of The Traitors Season 3, and he can make friends and compete physically, as evidenced on DWTS. With Mariano by his side, who knows what he could do on Survivor?
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