When many fans imagine what it would be like to compete during a season like Survivor 49, their minds wander to the many possible rewards they could enjoy. Whether it would be getting to hang out with Jeff Probst, winning the $1 million prize, or being respected by viewers, they envision all of the fantastic possible outcomes. The thing that some people who dream of competing on Survivor don't consider, however, is how wrong things could go since there can be many negative consequences for players.
One of the worst things that Survivor players have to cope with is seeing how people talk about them in public. For example, Jerri Manthey recently called Colby Donaldson out, and Erik Reichenbach spoke honestly about Cirie Fields in the past. Now, Annie Davis has publicly reacted to how her tribemates spoke about her during Survivor 49, including the fact that she was labeled a "Karen."
Annie Davis admitted that coping with being insulted and called a Karen was "hard"
During Survivor 49, Annie Davis was voted out second. Despite her early exit, Annie had a large enough personality to have left an impact on the show's viewers. There was another unfortunate reason why Survivor fans will remember Annie, because of the way her tribemates spoke about her.
For example, during one memorable sequence from Survivor 49's 2nd episode, Jeremiah Ing was highly critical of how Annie was treating people and how many coconuts she consumed.
“Annie feels like she's controlling the game 100%. She thinks that she's calling the shots. She's not reading the room properly. She's just dictating. Dictating to me to get more coconuts, and she's not opened one coconut, and she drinks all the coconut juice. It's mind-baffling to me, but my strategy with Annie is just to really feed into her ego. The more that I say ‘Yes’ to her, she's, like, getting more confidence, and, like, when people get confidence, you know, the better the blind side.”
After fans heard Jeremiah's remarks, the show immediately cut to Sophi Balerdi who was also talking about Annie. At that moment, Sophi was shown labeling Annie as a "Karen" and eliciting laughter from Alex Moore based on that remark.
"I feel like in real life she's a Karen," Sophi said.
After that episode ended with Annie being voted out, she was interviewed by the Survivor legend Rob Cesternino for his "Rob Has a Podcast" empire. When that conversation was released as a part of RHAP's "We Know Survivor" podcast feed, fans heard Rob express concern about Annie being hurt by learning how her tribemates had been speaking about her.
While Annie admitted that her tribemates' remarks about her "hurt," she seemed to be taking the comments in relative stride based on her comments.
"It's hard. You can't not watch people talk nasty about you and not have it hurt a little bit. But, I also know that's the game and that was, you know, day three or four of getting to know a bunch of strangers and we lost from go, and so it was knives out from the minute we hit the island. And, so I think everybody is looking at each other with a little bit of a different lens than they would out in the real world. So yeah, it's hard to hear them call me a 'Karen' and 'bossy'and roll their eyes and everything I'm trying to do to help the tribe which is ultimately what I was trying to do. But, it was sort of misperceived. So it was it was hard. But I also know it's just a game and those guys don't feel like that in the real world. You know, we're gonna be fine."
Survivor 49 returns with a new episode on Wednesday, Oct. 8, on CBS and Paramount+.