Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for ‘The Challenge: Cutthroat.’
Izzy Fairthorne’s run on ‘The Challenge: Cutthroat’ may have ended this week, but the former ‘Too Hot to Handle’ star has revealed that her interactions with co-star Cory Wharton didn’t officially end until later.
As fans know, Izzy was sent home during Wednesday’s episode after losing in an elimination. A week earlier, viewers watched as Cory made his own exit from the ‘The Challenge’ house after finding out that his youngest daughter Maya had suffered a health scare back in the United States.
In a new interview with Allan Aguirre, Izzy revealed where things stand between her and her sorta-showmance, Cory, today and whether or not they’ve spoken recently.
In the episodes leading up to Cory and Izzy’s respective exits, viewers watched the two engage in some heavy flirtation in ‘The Challenge’ house, despite Cory being in a relationship (and cohabitating) with Taylor Selfridge, the mother of his two youngest daughters. The interactions between Izzy and Cory came to a head on a recent episode when Cory tried to have sex with Izzy– something Taylor has since responded to and Cory has publicly addressed.
While discussing her Season 42 experience this week, Izzy revealed that, despite Cory’s complicated relationship status and the backlash she received from his BFF Nelson Thomas during filming, she reached out to Cory after they both left Thailand.
“ … I messaged him afterwards to make sure his daughter was okay, obviously,” she shared in a new interview with Allan Aguirre. “That was such a sad situation.”
Izzy also took the opportunity to clarify why she cried when producers announced Cory’s departure from the show.
“I wanna clear [this] up that when I was crying [during the episode], it was obviously for [Cory’s] situation, not because he was leaving,” she said. “You know, there was a lot of people crying and upset and you can’t even imagine to put yourself in that situation, so it’s really sad.”
Izzy said that while she “obviously reached out to see how everything was going” with the ‘Teen Mom’ dad after the show, the two have not remained in contact with each other.
“ … after that, we never spoke again,” she claimed, without disclosing whether or not Cory ever responded to her message.
As fans of ‘The Challenge’ may remember, Izzy made another (somewhat) complicated love connection on last year’s ‘Vets & New Threats.’ During the season– which was Izzy’s first– she had a fling with Rogan O’Connor, though it was later revealed that Rogan may have still been in a relationship at the time.
The two went on to appear as exes on Season 4 of ‘Celebrity Ex on the Beach UK,’ where Rogan maintained that he and his ex had called things off before he competed on ‘Vets & New Threats.’
As she reflected on her first two ‘Challenge’ experiences this week, Izzy revealed that she went into the ‘Cutthroat’ season with the intention of focusing on herself and having “no distractions.” While she acknowledged that there were, in fact, “a few distractions” last season, she insisted that her situation with Cory had little impact on her ‘Cutthroat’ performance.
“Yeah, I mean, [I] could’ve handled it a bit differently, to be honest,” she said. “ … I don’t know how much it distracted me. I think at the end of the day, the reason I left was because I was gonna always go into elimination, because Tori [Deal] was never gonna send Michele [Fitzgerald] in. I was working hard in all of my challenges and within the team. So in terms of that, I think I was working hard.”
While she doesn’t believe that her connection with Cory is what ultimately prevented her from bringing home a ‘Challenge’ win this season, Izzy does have a message for her future male co-stars: “Stay away from me.”
“Basically, if I go back [on ‘The Challenge’], that’s gonna be what I’m gonna do,” she said. “’Cause even if it wasn’t necessarily affecting my game, like mentally … it probably was [affecting me], to be honest. You know, physically it wasn’t, but mentally, probably I wasn’t as locked in.”
New episodes of ‘The Challenge: Cutthroat’ are released every Wednesday on Paramount+.
Watch a clip from Izzy’s interview below.
@theallanaguirre Full Challenge Cutthroat Exit Interview with Izzy Fairthorne #TheChallenge #thechallenge #RealityTV #toohottohandle #perfectmatch
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