Olivia Kaiser Speaks Out About Feud With Nurys Mateo in ‘The Challenge 40’

For The Challenge‘s big 4-0, the show has gathered alums from all different eras of the show and put them together for one big generational showdown. The trouble is, there’s some unfinished business between some of the challengers who are being mashed together into these mega-teams.

While Tori Deal and Amanda Garcia won’t be making nice any time soon despite being on the same team for Era 3, the outlook is probably a bit brighter for Era 4’s Olivia Kaiser and Nurys Mateo, whose dustup is far more recent and less ingrained.

Kaiser and Mateo came into the season at odds with one another thanks to what happened in Season 39, Battle for a New Champion, when Kaiser did not choose to protect Mateo, then her close friend, and instead played the house’s game. (Kaiser was not only friends with Mateo before that, but she was formerly a Ride or Dies partner with Mateo’s boyfriend Horacio Gutierrez, Jr.) Speaking to TV Insider, Kaiser hinted that fans might see some positive momentum between them this season.

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“I’m not perfect by any means. I never am claiming that what I did was also right.  I guess you guys will have to see, but we are on the same team and we are sleeping right next to each other. So I think that at some point me and her will have to have a conversation,” she explained. “But yeah, it sucks. It just sucks, and I really cannot say anything other than that — it is what it is. But hopefully, I can take notes from people that have burned bridges in the past… I’m just like listening to other people and their situations of maybe some betrayals or even getting betrayed or whatever and just kind of navigating that based on advice I’m getting. And at the end of the day, the only thing that can make us good is if Nurys has it in her heart to forgive me, and we can move on.”

Kaiser also admitted that the fact that they’re both still so new to the game means she and Mateo haven’t quite gotten acclimated to a game in which contestants have to regularly put aside their friendships and realize game moves aren’t always personal.

“The show started with kind of chaos, right? Back in the day, they’ve had their beef, they’ve gotten over it, and they’re at a place now, I think, where they’re like clocked in, they have families, they’re ready to compete, and they’re all badass. We’re still figuring everything out,” she explained.

Johnny “Bananas” Devananzo, who knows a thing or two about that particular issue (most notably, deciding to take all of the money in his Rivals III win and denying partner Sarah Rice her half), chimed in with a word of support for her, saying, “Olivia, as Marilyn Monroe once said, ‘Well-behaved women seldom make history.'” (Perhaps coincidentally, the person Kaiser chose to save over Mateo was Bananas’ ex, Moriah Jade.)

Mateo herself, who appeared alongside Kaiser and Bananas at a Challenge fan event in Los Angeles on Friday (August 9), told People that being on a team with Kaiser did help repair their relationship: “I was like, ‘Well, now we actually have to ride together, because we’re in the same era and it’s us against them,'” she explained, adding that they’re now “in a great place.”

The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras, Wednesdays, 8/7c, MTV