Mike Holloway may have been named sole survivor on the season 30 finale of Survivor: Worlds Apart, but on the May 20 reunion show, it was Holloway's Blue Collar tribe mate Dan Foley who took center stage. Taken to task by CBS host Jeff Probst for a series of off-putting comments he made during the season both to other cast members and in the media, Foley was forced to apologize to costars Shirin Oskooi (whom he begged to "slap and shut her up already") and Rodney Lavoie, whose mother Foley shockingly called a whore.
Voted off the show in episode 13 (May 13), Foley accused Probst of "throwing [him] under the bus" on the reunion show when the host aired previously unaired footage that clearly caught Foley in a lie. In his exit interviews with media outlets including Entertainment Weekly, Foley said that he referred to Lavoie's mom in such way that was taken out of context when it aired. "We were talking about [how] when you know your friends, you make 'Yo Mama' jokes [with them]. We had just been talking about those jokes and all that was taken out," Foley said on the reunion show.
Probst, who also serves as an executive producer, then aired the actual (rather mundane) footage in which Foley called out his costar's mom. As Probst described, the never-seen raw footage only showed the cast discussing an upcoming reward challenge. In the scene, Foley is seen lazing around and his tribe mates were chastising him for always sleeping. "Just 'cause you don’t like the facts doesn't change the facts," Foley said, angering Lavoie. When Lavoie fired back, Foley's response was unnerving and out of place: "Yeah, your mother's a whore too."
"Whoa. You just took it to a new level. You never mention my mother, brother," Lavoie responded.
Foley later said he misremembered the events that transpired. "I do not have a prejudice against women. I don't have a prejudice against anybody. If I dislike you, you earned that from me," said the postman-turned-reality star, who boldly wore a T-shirt bearing the words "mail escort."
"Rodney . . . I will stand up and die for you if you're my friend. I certainly didn’t mean to be hurtful. I met Rodney's mom, his sister. The first thing she did was come up to me, gave me a hug and said 'I knew you were kidding.' In this PC age, it's so easy to say something and have it misconstrued," he continued. "That was not misconstrued. I only meant it to be funny. I'm a guy who speaks his mind and I don't always get it right, and I'm sorry."
Tell Us: Do you believe Dan Foley's apologies on the Survivor: Worlds Apart reunion were genuine?
