Filip Car: 'Training starts tomorrow, I must be Elitan'

Filip Car put up a shirtless photo on Instagram and told his followers the gym starts tomorrow, days after his contract for Elita 10 was confirmed. The bathroom shot shows the tattoos viewers know him by from earlier seasons, a pistol across his stomach and lettering over his chest.

The caption did the rest of the work.

“I have lost a bit of weight. I am still built like a tree stump! Training starts tomorrow. I have to be Elitan!”

So the preparation began before the season did. It is the tenth run of the show, the anniversary one, and by his own account his last.

The call he was not expecting

Car says he had written the format off. In his head the reality career was finished, and then Zeljko Mitrovic rang him personally.

“The call itself surprised me, I did not even expect Zeljko Mitrovic to phone me. Somewhere in my head I thought my reality career was over, but here we are, this is the anniversary season I will retire with.”

The word retire is the load-bearing part of that sentence. Car has walked in and out of the format before, but this is the first time he has said in advance that there will be no next season. Asked how a person prepares for something like this, he answered that there is no preparation, because you cannot study for a reality show the way you study for an exam, it is more like getting ready for life. He is expecting changes to the format and, in his words, some exciting moments.

He was born in Crikvenica, and he arrived on the Serbian scene through reality television rather than music or presenting. That detail explains the stakes here. The house is not a side project for him, it is the only stage the audience knows him from.

Why did he want Maja Marinkovic kept out?

Because he knows how that story usually ends. Before signing, Car asked for a guarantee that his ex-girlfriend Maja Marinkovic would not enter the White House, as the set is called. His reasoning was practical rather than sentimental. He is afraid of clashes that end in disqualification, which means leaving early and leaving without the fee.

The request was refused. The answer he got was short, no such conditions exist, because nobody gets to decide in advance who walks through the door.

The consequence is easy to name. Car goes in with no protection on that front, and the cast list keeps being filled in right up to the start. If Marinkovic appears on it, the exact thing he tried to write out of his contract becomes the main storyline of his farewell season. Their relationship was one of the most watched threads in the house across earlier runs, which makes it unlikely that the production would close that door on its own.

The family reacted badly

The decision did not go down well at home either. Car says his family reacted badly and does not want to see him back inside. Their worry is about possible incidents, all the more so because the way he has been living in recent months differs from the version of him that used to be on screen.

That fear has a basis in his own record on the channel. In previous seasons Car was among the most frequently named contestants, and most of his best known moments had nothing to do with the game and everything to do with arguments.

What is settled and what is not

We covered the signing itself when it was confirmed, under the line that the old man is coming back. This is the first time Car has described in his own words how the invitation came, how it landed with his family and on what condition he wanted to go in.

One unknown is left, and it is the biggest one, the final list of names. Until that is published, the only commitment Car has made is the one he set himself on Instagram, training from tomorrow.