Charity Nelms promises she’s the real deal — despite what Eva Erickson says.
The 34-year-old flight attendant and latest person to be voted off of “Survivor 48” exclusively told The Post how she felt seeing Erickson, 24, call her “fake” behind her back on the show.
“One thing I have never been called in my entire [life] — I’ve been called a lot of things and it has never been fake because truthfully I need to reel back the realness sometimes, because it can get me into trouble,” Nelms said. “I am incredibly genuine and authentic, sometimes to a fault.”
“And so watching that back, I was shocked. Truly shocked,” Nelms admitted, “because I had nothing but kindness towards Eva. I had nothing but genuineness.”
Calling Erickson’s emotional moment from last week’s episode “incredibly powerful,” Nelms pointed out that she “was the first to run over” to Erickson, who has autism, during her “breakdown” at the challenge.
“I work with women as a fitness coach and so to see a woman go through something like this as a young girl… I felt very protective of her,” Nelms explained. “This is a younger girl. She’s going through this breakdown in front of all these people. I wanted to protect her and I was so proud to see her push through that really hard moment. So when I saw her say that I was definitely hurt.”
But Nelms clarified that she and Erickson are on good terms today.
“Obviously in real life we’re totally fine. She’s incredible. I support her. Love her,” she said. “But on the show, we are not required to call people names and you don’t see a clip of me doing that. And so I was just a little like, ‘Wow, that sucks.’ Cause I was very real with her.”
“But I also understand where she’s coming from because that’s what she’s being told by David [Kinne],” Nelms said, referring to her former Civa tribemate who led the charge to vote her out. “And that’s who she wanted to work with. She didn’t wanna work with me. So it makes sense. So I can’t fault her for all of it. It’s all David’s fault.”
Nelms also told The Post that she isn’t holding grudges against the castaways that talked bad about her in Fiji.
“The thing is, my peace does not depend on other people. I went out of the game as you saw last night, my final word was, I’m sad, but I’m not bitter,’” she said. “The overwhelming gratefulness that I feel outweighs any of the things people say. It’s ‘Survivor.’ It’s a game. Whatever. I was so grateful to be there. It’s probably why I looked kind of like a ding-dong, just having fun doing whatever, showing you my toes on TV, because I was just having the best freaking time and I was like, ‘I’m doing this, it’s so cool.’”
One person that Nelms has no qualms with is her closest ally, Mitch Guerra.
“I love Mitch on such a real level,” she said about the 34-year-old P.E. coach. “Obviously there are 18 of us in the cast and some of us are closer than others, but I met a life friend when I met Mitch and I knew it instantly. Some people you just meet in life that you go, ‘Whoa this is my person. I can feel. It’s deep. It’s for real.’ One of mine just happened to be on ‘Survivor’ and I am incredibly grateful for that.”
Nelms also praised Guerra for opening up about his speech impediment on the show.
“We see him, I don’t want to say struggle because he doesn’t really struggle with his speech impediment, but you see him have to work through that every time he opens his mouth,” she explained. “That takes a lot of resilience, a lot a strength. And outside of that, he has so much joy when that would be the excuse to be like, ‘I’m kind of jaded,’ he just isn’t.”
“And I was so attracted to that in every way. And I’m like, you’re mine forever,” Nelms added. “Like you don’t have a choice. And luckily we had so much fun together.”
“Survivor” airs Wednesdays at 8 pm ET on CBS.
