The Survivor 50 Cast Is Already Taking Shots At Each Other Outside The Game

It’s only been one episode, and it’s already obvious there are a lot of hurt feelings and unresolved issues coming out of Fiji. The Survivor 50 cast is, of course, on really strict NDAs that bar them from talking about spoilers or things we haven’t seen, but once something airs, all bets are off. We got a good reminder of that this week when Jenna Lewis-Dougherty took a big shot at Rick Devens in one of her exit interviews, and he fired back in an aggressive way on social media.

Let’s back up real quick and create a little context for these quotes before we get into the specifics. Jenna, of course, was the first cast member voted out of Survivor 50. We saw a clip of her throwing out Cirie’s name. Word got back to Cirie, and the rest of the tribe decided to band together and unanimously vote her out during the first Tribal Council. The edit presented it as a pretty straightforward case of Jenna playing too hard too fast, but not so fast according to her.

The castaway who appeared on the first season of Survivor and also made a deep run in All-Stars spoke to Entertainment Weekly after she was voted off, and she was quite vociferous in saying she wasn’t playing harder than other people. She claimed Christian was actually the first person who threw Cirie’s name out and she merely got blamed for it. Check out a portion of her quote and the ricochet show Rick Devens gets…

Not surprisingly, Rick Devens was not a happy camper about being called a “little beyotch.” He also apparently did not agree with Jenna’s assessment that she was playing the same amount of hard as everyone else. He took a screenshot of Jenna calling him out, posted it on social media and gave his own impression of what happened. He said everyone was playing hard but more in forming relationships and trying to bond with other castaways. He said what Jenna was doing was very different…

Devens also further clarified in a follow-up tweet that he’s sure everyone agreed with Jenna when she threw out Cirie’s name during individual conversations and probably said Cirie themselves right back to her. His implication is clearly that they all talked about Cirie, but she was viewed as the most aggressive and the ringleader when she brought it up, which made everyone perceive her as playing too hard.

Ultimately, the line between playing hard and playing too hard is very subjective. How people perceive comments is often directly related to the other aspects of your relationship. We all know we have friends we can say certain things to and other friends who we need to be much more careful with our words around. So, what might look like healthy strategizing coming from one person might look like trying to boss everyone around and dictate the game to another.

CinemaBlend’s Laura Hurley talked to Jeff Probst prior to Survivor 50’s premiere at SCAD TVFest, and he referred to Jenna’s strategy as “hitting the ground running.” I think that’s a great way to put it because it’s something that can be interpreted in different ways. There’s another world in which the other players saw Jenna’s approach as a bold chance to make a move against arguably the most dangerous player in the game making what's likely her last appearance. But because we live in the world where they saw that same approach as overly aggressive, we’re getting a war of words in the media between two players.

I highly doubt this’ll be the last war of words between an eliminated player and someone left in the game. There are a lot of big personalities in as part of this epic Survivor 50 cast, and I can’t wait to hear their unedited thoughts after they’re allowed to speak frankly.

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