While most of The Challenge: USA cast members appear to be getting along in the episodes, that wasn’t the case.
Following Episode 4, Survivor star Shantel Smith is speaking out about her castmate, Angela Rummans, who originally appeared on Big Brother, and she didn’t have many nice things to say.
In her interview comments, Smith said it was tough to get to know Angela on a personal level, even though she made an effort.
Both competitors came into the show with other cast members from their respective shows, giving them some potential allies in the game.
Angela also became an early ally for Survivor star Tyson Apostol, as they showed themselves to be stronger competitors on the CBS spinoff.
This report will contain spoilers for The Challenge: USA up through Episode 4, including the names of elimination teams.
Angela played part in Episode 4 elimination talk
During The Challenge: USA, Episode 4, viewers saw an all-Big Brother team featuring Kyland Young and Alyssa Lopez win the daily challenge featuring trivia. With that, they received the power to send a team into elimination against the losing squad, David Alexander and Justin Ndiba.
Their top pick immediately became their former Big Brother castmate, Xavier Prather, who had done them both dirty on their season. His teammate was Shantel Smith, and Angela gave Alyssa and Kyland advice about sending them into elimination.
“They can get blood on their hands, and the rest of the house is gonna see them as wildcards, and that takes pressure off of me,” Angela said in a confessional during the episode.
“You can throw it all on Shan,” she told Kyland and Alyssa during a scene. “Make her freak out, and then X just feels like he was partnered with a bad apple. I think we blame everything on Shan.”
That talk helped Kyland and Alyssa ultimately decide to send Shan and Xavier into the elimination at The Arena. It ended up working in their favor as David and Justine defeated them in a close matchup of Smash In Puzzle Out.
Shan blasts Angela following The Challenge: USA episode
Once the episode had aired, it allowed cast members to see and hear things they weren’t aware of while filming the show. That included Shan catching Angela’s comments about her during the scene with Kyland and Alyssa.
Following the episode, Shan appeared on the Reali-Tea Podcast (audio clip below) and threw some major shade at Angela, suggesting she was difficult to get to know and that only a few other women in the cast were able to befriend her.
“You really can’t tell what Angela’s thinking or saying sometimes. I think it must be the fillers and Botox. I don’t know. Her face, it just doesn’t move,” she said.
“I think with Angela, like Cely [Vazquez] and like every other girl on the show- I think like I tried. I made an attempt at trying to get to know her. But her trying to gaslight me right before going into the show just demonstrated that she was the coldhearted, you know, kind of, little woman. I don’t even know if I can call her a woman,” Shan said, adding, “I feel so irritated with her that she would even try and gaslight another woman like that.”
Upon Shan’s elimination in Episode 4, her confessional interview included her making comments about Kyland and Alyssa, whom she felt used her as a “scapegoat” so they could get revenge on Xavier for their Big Brother season.
“Like Alyssa might be Megamind, but she’s not the sharpest pencil in the box. I just don’t know what she was thinking,” Shan said in a post-elimination confessional interview.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said ahead of her exit.
Following Tiffany Mitchell’s elimination in Episode 2, Shan had other things to say about Alyssa and her using The Cookout alliance members.
With Shan officially eliminated from The Challenge: USA now, it should be interesting to see if she has more to say about castmates as the episodes arrive or if she’ll move on to other things.
The Challenge: USA airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on CBS.