Nurys Mateo Spills on That Feud, the Big Hookup, and More (Exclusive)

Nurys Mateo was the latest eliminee on The Challenge, after Team Grey finished second in the water-centric daily, and she was sent in to face Anna Leigh Wilson in the “I Got You Pegged” battle. Though Nurys put up a good fight, she had an uphill battle and fell short of the win.

Nurys came into the season with a bit of baggage, as she was getting over a breakup with her long-term boyfriend (and fellow The Challenge alum), Horacio Gutierrez.

Throughout her time on Season 42, Nurys found herself ensnared in quite a few other battles, though: one with Sydney Segal, who she loudly classified as “fake,” and the other with Adrienne Naylor and Josh Goldstein, whose showmance she was dragged into after a moment of jealousy seeped through.

According to Nurys, there’s a lot about both situations that fans at home didn’t get to see. To fill in the details, TV Insider caught up with Nurys Mateo.

Hi Nurys. How are you?

Nurys Mateo: Good. Could be better, but good.

When I talked to you last time, you were with Nelson [Thomas] and Cory [Wharton. You guys seemed like you were close. So I just wondered, when you came into the season, and you were going through a breakup, did you feel emotionally supported by any of your costars this season?

Yeah, by all of them, actually. They were all amazing, and it was hard because I think I went in there, and even for the people that are not my friends that I was just meeting, it was like the first question that everyone asked, like, “Oh my god, so what happened in your breakup?” And I told everyone the same thing that I told the world, like, “Oh, respectfully, it’s not something that I really want to talk about.” But my friends, everybody that was there, was super supportive. There was times on the bus where I was crying because I was trying to [get through it, and] a song will come on, and it triggers your emotions, and I was crying on the bus. And both Nelson and Cory just happened to turn around at the same exact time, and they were sitting in front of me, and they both turned around, they saw me cry, and instantly came to be right there. Nelson sat right next to me, Cory was in front of me, both making sure I was good, even being like, “You want to talk about it? I’m here to talk. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’m here to just sit next to you.” And it was — they were honestly all so amazing. So grateful for them.

It seemed like the conversation with Josh and Adrienne in the last episode got a little out of control. Can you lift the veil on what you actually talked with him about?

OK, so I’ll be completely honest because that man is the biggest man liar I’ve ever met in my entire life. I’ve had two total in the entire house, three conversations. The third conversation was the one that you guys have seen, where they showed me sitting with him in the chair by the pool. My first conversation with him on the bus was honestly a get-to-know-you conversation. Never met him before. Don’t know anything about him. We’re talking. We had mutual friends, and it was literally nothing more than just, hey, getting to know each other. The bus ride lasted maybe 25 minutes, second-ever bus ride.

I had realized that he was interested in me because of what he was telling other people in the house. So in that moment, I actually straight up told him like, “Hey, I just want to be honest and let you know I’m still in love with my ex, and being in love with him means I’m not to wanting to move forward with anyone, even get to know anybody. That’s not where I’m at.” And I straight up told him, “If you’re looking for someone that you want to get to know like that…” I pointed to Adrienne. I was like, “That’s the person that you’re gonna go for, not me.” Straight up told him that. Was very honest. We had a great conversation about it. I thought he understood, which is why now, moving forward, the third conversation, when we sit down with him… He said, “Why does everyone keep calling her my girl after we kissed?” And I said, “Well, because this isn’t Love Island.” I was like, “This is The Challenge. This is more like the real world. You’re not just gonna be making out with everyone and think that someone’s not gonna say, ‘You guys are together.’” I was like, “You kind of made your bed; lay in it,” and I left. And that was the rest of the conversation. Never ever spoke to him past the argument.

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He actually stated on social media that he apologized to me. He actually never, ever apologized to me. We all argued there for a lot longer than what was shown, and then me and Adrienne walked away. She told me everything that he was lying about, and then after that, me and her were amazing, and I never spoke to him again — ever again, unless we happened to be in a big group setting, and even then, it was like him talking to other people.

With the water challenge, you had a little bit of trouble with the diving, and you vowed you were going to start practicing. Have you been practicing diving since then?

Well, no, have not. I think that it’s wild because I don’t think people realize that it takes a lot more than just swimming lessons. I’ve been learning. I went into The Challenge my first season ever, not being a good swimmer, period… Now I can swim. Now I can be out there without a life jacket. I can do well, you know. I just never learned how to physically dive and have to go down feet of water and have to hold my breath in a little bubble. This is not realistic for me. I just don’t like the water. It’s not something that’s fun to me, and I just can’t see myself on my off time spending so much time doing something that I absolutely despise. But I need to do it because I’m letting you guys down. It’s a swim college, and everyone’s like, “Come on!!

You weren’t alone there. I wanted to talk about Sydney a bit. When you were in the elimination, it sounded like she slipped and said, “I’m rooting against you,” and then she corrected herself. Do you still stand by your words about her being fake and how you really felt?

I think it’s funny because I think there’s times where I go into this environment in The Challenge, and things happen, and you don’t get along with everyone, but you kind of leave the house of being like, “You know what? I didn’t like them in the game, but I like them as a person in the real world.” That’s absolutely not what I feel like about Sydney at all. I think I’ve seen her true colors. I tried. I watched her last season. Didn’t like anything about her from the first episode, and I, from there was like, “You know what? I don’t want to judge someone off of what I see on TV.”

I went in there wholeheartedly, like dropped everything that I felt about her, and was like, “Let me give her a fair chance,” and I did. I tried very hard to like be cool. We were roommates, so I tried to be nice to her and try to get to know her. She had told people in the house that I over-explained myself, and that’s a reason why she didn’t like me. These were weird, random little things that she told people that she didn’t like me for, and that’s what I didn’t like is, I’m like, “Now you’re making it personal,” and it’s just weird situations. She’s like, “Oh, she overexplains.” Bi**h, I don’t know you from a hole in the wall. If you’re asking me a question about my personal life, or even anything about me, I kind of have to explain myself because you don’t know me. You don’t know my thought process. You’ve never really watched a Challenge. You know nothing of my history, so it’s like, I’m not overexplaining myself. I’m simply explaining, but whatever.

What they don’t show is — I don’t know if they will show maybe in a deleted scene or something, but — the reason I was actually really pissed was because Cassidy had told me that every time I walked into the room, Sydney was laughing about me, talking sh*t about me, and.. Like I said, I can befeisty, and I never want to start it. I never want to be a mean girl and talk about people, but if you want to take it there, we can take it there. And that’s what I didn’t like because I was like, “That’s such extra mean girlness. I walk into the room?” And whenever I saw her and Cassidy, I would say, “Hey guys, blah blah,” like talk to them to know that I was walking into a room where you were laughing at me. If I would have ever found that out in real life, earlier on, it wouldn’t have even been a conversation. It would have been so different, and so I just felt so icky because I’m like, “Dang! I’ve been laughing and sleeping next to someone that’s been doing all these weird things behind my back, and I’ve been nothing but nice.” And I think that’s why I snapped because it’s one thing to know that someone doesn’t like you, but another to find out that they’ve just been so mean behind your back, and not even talking game, but talking personal.

Moving on to the elimination, out of Cara, Lete, and Anna Leigh, was there someone else that you preferred to go against in the elimination, if you’d had the choice?

If I had the choice? No. Honestly, I feel like everything happens for a reason. To be honest, I think I think I always knew that ended up being Anna Leigh — because Izzy and Will both told me like, “Hey, we want to help you out,” because they liked me as well, so they felt bad for the situation, like, and they were like, “Listen, we’ll be honest, if it’s a puzzle, we’ll give you Lete because you’re you’re gonna smash it compared to to Anna Leigh…. but if it’s something physical, we won’t give you Lete. We want to help you out as much as we can.” Which was really nice from them because they could have been like, “You know what? We’re gonna give you Lete.” Lete would have demolished me in two seconds in that elimination. So I was really grateful for them. But aside from that, I could always say I could take the easier route and say maybe a Deb or a Michelle or somebody like that, or even Cassidy. But to be honest, I’m like, everything happens for a reason, and I’m glad I went up to Anna Leigh. I went against Anna Leigh, and like I had told her — they don’t show in that moment, I had told her, “The best woman won tonight, and it was her, and that’s OK.”

Lastly, what do you make of the Anna Leigh and Leo stuff?

Well, I was one of the people to watch it firsthand. I feel bad speaking on it now, only because I’ve seen she had put out a statement on The Challenge page, and I don’t want to be the person to like add fuel to the fire, but it’s just, I watched it go down. A lot more than just that conversation that was shown when they were sitting down, and it was something that was going on throughout the entire time. It just happened that that was the first time that they talked about it in the house so openly because they didn’t think that [they were recorded]. The big camera men [weren’t] coming over, so they assumed that it wasn’t being recorded, and that’s what happens when you’re kind of new to this TV world: They don’t realize there’s cameras everywhere. There’s microphones hidden in places that you don’t even know.

And I don’t know if you realize, but in that scene, if you watch her back, she actually took her microphone off, and you can see the microphone hanging up beside her the entire time… Like I said, I don’t mean to throw anybody under the bus, but it’s like, if you purposely took your microphone off and put it beside you, you very much knew what you were doing… It was orchestrated that way because you took off the mic. You knew. “I don’t want people to catch what I’m saying,” and you can get that in the edit. You can go when I see the microphone is right next to her. And when I’d seen that, I said, “Ooh, OK, yeah.”

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