‘Survivor 50’ star Charlie Davis claimed that Dee Validares and Rizo Velovic formed a pre-match alliance before arriving in Fiji.
“Dee had a FaceTime with Lizzo before the season,” Davis told Page Six after Davis voted him out on Wednesday’s episode.
“I obviously learned that after the fact,” he added.
After Davis was eliminated, he claimed that second-boot Savannah Louie told him at Ponderosa that his good friend Soph Balerdi from “Survivor 49” connected Velovic and Valaderez before the match.
Balerdi is very close friends with Belovic, who also competed in Season 49, and lives in Miami, where Validares also lives.
“So I think that probably played a role as well, because if I were Dee, I’d be like, ‘Wow. I have a pre-game relationship with Rizzo, but no one else has that relationship, because no one wants to be in touch with him or know that he’s 50 years old,'” Davis explained.
Season 50 saw a strategic clash between Belovicz and Davis, with the latter being voted out by Belbovic, Validares, Cirie Fields and Camila Karteguez in a shocking blindside.
But Davis told Page Six that he pursued Velovich for more reasons than what was shown on TV.
“I saw him as someone who basically, once he became a known entity, the reason to target him almost disappeared,” the “Survivor 46” runner-up explained.
“It was like, ‘Oh, we don’t know how he plays. We’ve never seen him play.'” That was kind of my rationale. ”
Davis added, “And I also thought that because he was so isolated, the ripple effect of removing him would be minimal and everyone would be like, ‘I have to bring in Lizzo.'”
“And all of a sudden he has so many allies,” Davis said, noting that’s “kind of what happened.”
Davis was especially surprised that Validares voted him out since he was defending the winner of “Survivor 45” in his original tribe.
“There was definitely talk of taking Dee out to Caro, including coming from Chrissy (Hofbeck) and things like that, so she wasn’t exactly unscathed,” Davis said.
“But in order for someone from the Karo tribe to get home on that beach, the Karo tribes had to turn against each other,” he said. “And I didn’t want to attack Dee. So I wasn’t surprised she wasn’t targeted there.”
“Survivor 50” airs every Wednesday at 8pm ET on CBS.
