‘The Challenge’s Alexis Lete Reveals Whether She Really Tried to Throw the Final

After having a heckuva rookie season on The Challenge, Alexis Lete came into the final with fury … only, it was for her own team.

As Wednesday’s (October 21) episode of Season 42 showed, the Deal or No Deal Island alum was outright raging at her captain, Adrienne Naylor, for sending her into elimination in the very last arena before the final. Even though she won against Justin Hinsley, Lete was incensed over being put on the block at all, and she even threatened to throw the final to ensure a Team Gray defeat.

However, according to Lete, there was much more to the story than fans got to see. TV Insider caught up with Lete to talk about the highs and lows of her season, whether she really tried to sabotage her team, and what her status with showmance partner Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio.

Congrats on a hell of a rookie season… You had a lot of confidence coming into this show, even though it was your first season. What brought you to feel so confident about your performance?

Alexis Lete: First and foremost, just my belief in God. Honestly, who He says I am is who I live by day to day, and I’m a very confident person in real life because I understand the life that I’ve been through, the trials and errors that I’ve gone through, and I stay ready so I don’t have to get ready. So this has equipped me to just honestly attack everything in my life very confidently. So thanks for asking that. I’ve never actually gotten to share where my confidence truly comes from, but that is the ultimate reason.

I remember you said you weren’t sure if The Challenge was the right thing, but people just kept telling you it was. Now that you’ve been through it, do you feel like The Challenge is your home?

It feels like a family. I just went to L.A. this past weekend, and I met Kaycee [Clark], Justine [Ndiba], and Jordan [Wiseley]. Jordan kind of seems really intense and a little scary on seasons, but in person, he’s just such a goofball lover, and everyone just really welcomes me. They’re like, “Oh, we have a Challenge-r. What’s up?” I mean, like even Rachel [Robinson]. I remember her coming in and going against Adrienne, and I’m a fan of hers ever since Season 40. I mean, I’m still kind of new to The Challenge, but since Season 40, seeing her be a badass, I was like, “She’s so cool,” and she followed me on Instagram, and then I, of course, followed her back. But I was like, people are just following me and not having ego about me following them first. And it’s really cool to be in an environment where people are like, “Welcome to the family, let’s go. I might cuss you out next season.”

The time before last that I talked to you was after Deal or No Deal, and you’d said you were maybe interested in The Amazing Race. Is that still the case?

Yes, yes, I would love to do The Amazing Race. I would love to do The Amazing Race with, honestly, Johnny. [He] and I’d slay at The Amazing Race. I think it’d be funny, or if I start dating someone, maybe that, too.

OK, so what you’re saying is you and Johnny are not dating?  

Yeah, we tried it outside of the house, and he’s like, “I want to focus on my stuff I have going on”…

Jonne Roriz / Paramount+

But you guys are still friends, though? Because you guys do the social media videos and things.

I love Johnny. Yeah, I love him as a person. And honestly, honestly, we talk a lot more consistently now that we’re in a loving friendship. I’d say like there’s no like, “Oh, you’re not gonna text me back? Then, I won’t text you back.” It’s just like you appreciate each other, and I really appreciate our time we had on the show together. Like, truly had a great time.

Getting into this week’s “Part 1,” you started the episode continuing to be furious about having been sent into the elimination. How did you feel seeing that play out again, especially your reaction? And are you and Adrienne OK now?

So Adrienne, actually, I love her outside of the game. She’s super funny. Her just telling her dating stories, I can sit there for hours and just listen to her, especially her accent and her slang she uses. They didn’t put a ton of her slang, but I’m just like, “What is coming out of your mouth right now?” I actually visited her while I was over in Belgium for a race. I decided to go to the U.K. and go to London. We met up. So I do like her as a person. Sometimes I do posting stuff on the internet, and I’m like, “OK, just so you know, I’m about to post this.” She’s like, “You’re all good. Go ahead.” But no, I like her as a person… [but] that did piss me off. I was like, “Just admit that you’re a coward. It’s really not that hard, and if you’re not a coward, it shouldn’t matter.”

Then, Cassidy [Clark] honestly got more mad than Adrienne. So you guys thought it was Lete versus Adrienne. It became Lete versus Cassidy. They didn’t show [it]. “The Last Supper” is what I’m calling it, but I had the elimination, then we had a day to chill, and then we had a super luxurious dinner. And at this dinner is where Cassidy popped off on me before the final. I was like, “You really told me to pack my bags.” Cassidy started yelling at me. She’s like, “We want you to pack your bags. We don’t want you to run the final with us. We don’t want you here. And how can we get the producers to take you home? What if we all do that? We don’t want you here?” And I’m like, “That’s not how it works. You can’t just vote me off of the show. You’re gonna have to deal with me in the final.”

But the games people also, before every elimination, before every challenge, they have rules. They came to us, and they’re like, “We had to rewrite the rules last night.” And I’m like, “Oh great. I know it’s because of something I said.” And Johnny also pulled me aside. He’s like, “Hey, you can’t say you’re going to throw the final. That doesn’t sit well with them.” So they come, they read the rules, and they’re like, “No one can intentionally throw the final. If you show that you’re not putting forth effort, we will disqualify you, and you will leave the final.” So I’m like, “OK, my plan of sitting on the start line… isn’t going to work.” And now it’s like, essentially, them in my head being like, “Lete, are you going to do this? If not, we’re going to raise our hand and tell them that you’re quitting.”

So, for instance, on the balance thing, there’s like six times we go before…  Did you guys see that I fall? And subconsciously, I’m like, “How crazy would it be if we get so close to doing it, and I just fall. Are they gonna need me now? They would need me now.” But then, when it’s like the last minute left, I’m like, “Yeah, let’s not do that anymore because this is challenging. I don’t know if I can do this again.” But I fall. It’s like, “10, 9, 8… 5, 4, 3, fall.” And I’m like, “I did that to myself. I totally, in my head, planted that seed,” and then I was like, “Also, I don’t want to give it away that I accidentally did that to myself so that they’ll send me home.” So I’m like, “I’m just gonna act really upset” — which I was upset with myself. So it was just like a war going on with like, “Is she trying? Is she not trying? I don’t know.” It was just the weirdest thing ever, especially when we got there in the first puzzle they choose. They’re like, “We want to do this puzzle to see if she’s gonna try or not. So are you gonna try, Lete? Lete, you just did this last night. If you don’t know how to do this, that’s an obvious reason that you’re not trying to help us.”

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So I would have preferred the option, one, of me sitting down and then being like, “Lete, we need you. Yes, that was cowardly. Can we move the f**k on?” And I would be like, “Great, let’s kill this final.” But that didn’t happen. So then it was just like this weird animosity back and forth. I don’t know.

OK, wow. So are you and Cassidy OK now, or do you still have kind of a grudge with her?

I don’t think she’s someone that I would want to still communicate with outside of the show. So I follow her on social media, but is she someone that I’m gonna hit up with her town? Not necessarily.

You mentioned what wasn’t in there. How did you feel about how they framed it then, where it looked like they were making it seem like Johnny Bananas was trying to talk you into throwing the elimination?

Johnny was trying to talk me [into that]. Let’s be so clear… and he did this all season. The episode where Cara [Maria Sorbello] gets yelled at and belittled for saying, “Yeah, Johnny, I’ll help you out. I won’t help my team for the Temple Run,” Johnny came with the same exact proposal to me. The difference is, Cara was just like, “Yeah, Johnny, whatever, sure.” And I was like, “Yeah, Johnny, eff you. I’m not doing that.” Like, “Ha ha.”

In my relationship with Johnny, there weren’t many times that we could help each other in the game, but there were times where he tried to hurt me in the game. And honestly, when he started being so gung-ho and sticking to my word, I was like, “I’m just giving them what they want.” And I was like, “He’s making it so obvious, and I don’t — I honestly want to try and put my best foot forward with effort.” But when your teammates tell you to “pack your bags, we don’t want you, we don’t need you for the final,” and you know that you are going to be arguably doing slightly more work than everybody, it’s frustrating. You feel undervalued, underappreciated. So yeah, no, he was in my ear, but I was also fully aware of what he was doing.

Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. The way the episode frames it is, though, that Team Gray had really great teamwork in the final. Did you feel like that was a fair assessment, or were you secretly the whole time still having that mindset that you had on the first one?

Oh, it’s frustrating because, like, I give this example: Michael Jordan playing a game with the high school graduate that played basketball. It’s not the same. We’re relying on Michael Jordan to, of course, score more points. So, for me, going in here, I’m trying to play like the high school athlete, but my abilities are not of that. So I was honestly holding back, which I think I might have regretted. But at the same time, there’s so many factors and variables. But I wasn’t going as hard as I could have gone, and I told them I was like, “I’m going to go at your pace.” We see Adrienne setting the pace, and I’m back there pushing Cassidy along. Since the third puzzle, Cassidy needed a little extra help than everybody else, so I think it actually ended up being good because if I wasn’t there to push Cassidy, how would that have gone? But she also would’ve pulled a C.T. [Tamburello] and had to take a break. I don’t know. There’s a lot to consider.

What can you tease to fans about what’s ahead in the finale, Part 2?

I spit on someone.

The Challenge, Wednesdays, Paramount+