Johnny Bananas and Cara Maria Sorbello haven’t always been the best of friends, but they grew close throughout the last few seasons of The Challenge, and he hates to see what she’s going through with Paulie Calafiore. “Cara Maria found herself in an unfortunate position with a very sociopathic, narcissistic human being, and I feel bad for her,” Johnny told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “I just hope one of these days she comes to her senses and realizes that everything this guy is doing is self-centered and trying to capitalize off her notoriety and her fame. The guy’s obsessed with being a reality TV personality and he’ll do anything he can — even if it’s destroying the minds and lives of girls — in order to do that.”
At the end of 2018, Paulie was exposed for two-timing Cara and his ex, Danielle Maltby, for more than six months. He first hooked up with Cara during filming of The Challenge: Final Reckoning, while he was still dating Danielle. After that, he publicly claimed to have ended things with Danielle, and started seeing Cara in an “open relationship.” However, unbeknownst to Cara, he was still professing his love to and hooking up with Danielle behind her back. This wasn’t exposed until December, though, when Paulie and Cara returned from filming The Challenge: War of the Worlds as a couple and Danielle came clean about what had been going on.
At first, it seemed like Cara was done with the Big Brother star. However, when he took a previously-planned trip to visit her in Montana in January, fans feared that the worst had happened and the two had gotten back together, which Johnny basically confirmed in our interview. “What happened was disgusting and I thought Cara was kind of moving onto greener pastures and saw the error in her ways and what happened there,” he explained. “But unfortunately she’s back in deep. I just hope that she gets out before it’s too late. His motives are totally just…bad.”
Meanwhile, Paulie and Johnny recently had a pretty wild back-and-forth on Twitter, with Paulie taunting Johnny about his “crown slipping” on The Challenge. “I’ll be there to catch it, don’t worry,” Paulie tweeted at the longtime show veteran, to which Johnny responded, “I’ll make it easy for you. How about instead I leave it on your kitchen table. Along with a phone book so you can reach it.” BURN!
Cara, Paulie and Johny will all appear on the new season of The Challenge: War of the Worlds, which premieres Feb. 6 at 9:00 p.m. on MTV.