The Challenge: USA spinoff featured a strong theme of Survivor from the get-go, with the stars from that CBS reality TV show forming an alliance to get as many of their members to the USA final as possible.
At the core of the alliance were Survivor stars Tyson Apostol, Danny McCray, Sarah Lacina, and Ben Driebergen, who mostly seemed to get along during the season.
Ben went on to suffer an unfortunate injury, costing him his chance to run the final, despite getting there. Meanwhile, Sarah and Danny went on to win the season while the rest of their castmates failed to figure out a Sudoku checkpoint just before the finish line.
All three USA finalists received invitations to appear in The Challenge: World Championship along with Justine Ndiba, where they were among the MVPs teaming up with MTV Legends.
While Danny and Ben seemingly got along during their USA season and even early on during the World Championship episodes, things changed along the way due to the nature of the game.
Ben recently shared why he felt his castmate was being “two-faced” based on what he saw in the episodes presented on Paramount Plus.
The Challenge: World Championship’s Ben calls Danny ‘two-faced’
During an appearance on MTV’s Official Challenge Podcast, Ben spoke about his situation in the World Championship spinoff with former allies Sarah and Danny. He brought up how he views alliances and said at the end of the day, it’s still a game to win some serious prize money.
“I like to align myself with good people, trustworthy people, and people that give you back the same respect. So that’s stuff I look for in an alliance. When that stuff starts falling out, this is a game show,” Ben said, adding he’s there to win money.
When asked which teams were his alliances, Ben said his only real ally was Kaycee Clark, and their goal was just to get to the final.
In a scene shown during World Championship, Danny has a discussion with Ben about trying to make a power move and vote in a Legend like Jordan to face Wes in the elimination. That plan didn’t end up happening, and during the voting, Danny was surprised to see Ben was going in a different direction than they’d initially discussed.
During the podcast, Ben also mentioned that Danny provided commentary during the episodes that didn’t match how he acted toward him while filming.
“You know what’s funny? I think all of us are like that. When we’re in our confessionals or by ourselves, we’re a certain way, but Danny was never that way with us. Danny was always respectful, kind…you know he’s kind of two-faced, I’ll just say it. After seeing that, I wish he would’ve just talked to me,” Ben said on the podcast.
Ben also mentioned how he’d hung out with Danny and his wife Kiki in Houston, Texas, ahead of the season and had a “great time.” He thought that might’ve carried into the spinoff as far as them working together, but it wasn’t the case.
Ben competed in his first elimination on The Challenge
During The Challenge: USA, Ben was able to stay away from going into any eliminations due to his alliance and winning ways. However, World Championship brought a surprise elimination for Ben and Kaycee after that crazy stalemate happened during voting.
Host TJ Lavin said that the daily challenge winners, Darrell Taylor and Kiki Morris, got to choose which team went into elimination since the rest of the cast couldn’t come up with two teams during voting. Surprisingly, Darrell and Kiki sent Ben and Kaycee to face Wes Bergmann and Zara Zoffany.
They competed in an elimination event that involved one teammate solving math equations and the other holding weights up while standing on a platform. As a player got a math problem right, they could add more weight to their opponent’s stack, making it increasingly harder.
Ultimately, Kaycee could endure the weight, while Zara folded because it became too heavy for her to handle. With that, three-time champion Wes and his UK teammate were officially out of the game.
During the podcast episode, Ben shared that Darrell eventually told him that Danny and Sarah “greenlit” the move to send Ben and Kaycee into elimination.
That wasn’t revealed during the footage, and it shows that things were discussed ahead of that moment rather than Darrell and Kiki choosing a team on their own to send into elimination.
“I think Danny’s a great guy. I have no hard feelings,” Ben said on the podcast, adding that Danny might have blocked him on “Instagram or something.”
The Challenge: World Championship episodes arrive Wednesdays on Paramount Plus.
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