In case you couldn’t tell throughout the two-hour premiere, Zach Wurtenberger loves Survivor. Though he’s only as old as the show proper, the student was ready to participate in everything the game has to offer, from commenting on the confessional foliage to saying Jeff Probst’s opening Tribal Council mantra for him. In retrospect, it’s good Zach was able to milk as much out of his experience as he did, considering it was cut abruptly short after only three days, making him the first person voted off season 42. After starting the game off with some attempted Probst mat chat banter, Zach arrived on the beach, hoping his Ika tribe would underestimate him as an excitable kid who’s just happy to be there. And he did make a couple of bonds early on, particularly with Tori Meehan and Romeo Escobar, the latter of whom bonded over their slim body types. Unfortunately for Zach, all eyes were on him after he was part of the duo who struggled with the puzzle in the first Immunity Challenge. Knowing he was in danger, he tried to direct the killing spells of the other tribe members onto Tori, pointing out their suspicions of her idol hunting. At Tribal Council, the speech and debate champion hammered home his closing argument, but it fell on deaf ears. He took advantage of one of the new twists, playing his “Shot in the Dark” for a chance at safety. Unfortunately, the shot missed, leaving Zach to get every vote at Tribal Council without even casting a vote himself. Now out of the game, Zach talks with Parade.com about how in danger he truly felt, his take on all of his tribe members, and whether his dream came true after only three days in the game. Zach! So excited I get to talk with you. Thank you. This is very, very surreal. I feel like I’m looking at myself right now. (Laughs.) Well, let’s have some mirror chat! First off, you had a large part to play in last night’s premiere. How did you enjoy getting to watch yourself on Survivor back, considering how cut short the experience was for you? Honestly, in terms of watching the episode, I absolutely loved it. Because you sit here for ten months thinking, “How’s it gonna be edited?” The biggest fear for me was watching the show and watching all these confessionals of people being like, “Zach doesn’t fit in. Zach lacks self-awareness.” But that’s literally just how I am! That’s just me. It’s not how I’m being portrayed. I just literally am like that. So I was very happy with my edit and how I was portrayed. Let’s start at the end. After playing your Shot in the Dark, you made this speech about how you should always take it because of the percent chance of safety it adds. You were voted out unanimously. So how much were you clued into the fact that, if you didn’t play it and became safe, you’d be gone? So I thought that it was a clear choice for me to do the Shot in the Dark. I knew that we were not in a split vote situation here. So even though I wasn’t 100% sure it would be me, I was probably like 70 or 80%. And I knew that my vote was never going to change anything. If the Shot in the Dark didn’t exist, I knew it was either going to be a 5-1 on Tori or 5-1 on me. So at that point, I’m like, “Alright, well, I can increase my odds here. Just play the Shot in the Dark, and hopefully, that works, and I don’t have to deal with any of this stuff. And even if it doesn’t work, then I still have whatever small chance it is that the votes will be on Tori.” Who were you most surprised voted against you? It’s two people. The most surprising part of the episode for me was seeing Swati so quickly throw my name out there because we were working very closely. We bonded very close. I definitely had her back in a way that I don’t think that she had mine out there. I also think that Tori and I did get along very well. I see now that she didn’t literally throw my name out. But had she instantly not isolated herself with Drea, who she had been targeting for a long time, The second we got back from camp, I think we would have been able to work a lot closer together. Thinking about that scene, Tori takes Drea off for like a 20-minute conversation, which just leaves me Romeo, Rocksroy, and Swati. So at that point, we don’t have that many options of who the four of us can talk about targeting right there. So it had to be one of those two. And even then, I was trying to protect Tori some. So I would say Swati and Tori. And Romeo’s just…I don’t know. Well, let’s talk about Romeo. How much was that “skinny guys” alliance a real thing? Did you have a lot of trust in him? I felt like Romeo was my closest ally for about two and a half days. But then it became very quick and very clear to me that Romeo was working closer with–as Tori described them–the “big kids.” And specifically, he was going to be inseparable from Drea, which was difficult because Drea was probably the person I had the least relationship with on the entire tribe. So there was a real conflict of interest. Even though he was still fighting for me clearly and still didn’t want me to go, he was never going to go against what Drea wanted. But even when Drea was throwing out Rocksroy’s name, he was like, “No, we can’t let the big people out.” So he was fighting for me, but he was fighting for me conditionally. It’s interesting you said that you had the least connection with Drea. So when you tell Tori that Drea had been targeting her, was that done to look out for Tori or possibly spurn Drea? It’s both! But it’s specifically throwing a target onto Drea. At this time, my close allies were Tori, Swati, and Romeo. So I’m thinking to myself, “If I can work closely with Tori, and at the same time, get more suspicion onto Drea, who’s someone that I just do not work with, this is overall a good thing.” And again, it fell apart because Romeo was never going to vote for Drea. It seemed like you were targeted due to your weakness on the puzzle in the Immunity Challenge. But do you believe that was the reason you ended up getting voted out? Do you know what it is? If we can bring it back to other first boots in Survivor history, it was Reem putting the clothes onto the beach. It’s like, is that really a reason to vote someone out? No. Is that a reason to say you should vote someone out? Absolutely. People didn’t really care that I screwed up the puzzle. We were 15 minutes behind when we even got there. It’s still such an easy thing to say. We also saw this a little bit with Sara [Wilson] last season. Where you’re able to say, “Well, they were on the puzzle, so it’s going to be one of them.” And especially for the older people, because it was Swati and me, it was really easy for them just to revert to like, “Well, challenge strength. They screwed up the puzzle.” Let’s talk about Swati. You were one of the youngest contestants on the season, and you told me you wanted to play up that youth in the preseason. Then you end up on a tribe with someone even younger than you! Did that help you find a kindred spirit, or make that strategy more difficult? First of all, Swati lied about her age. She said that she was 20 versus 19, which, you know, is a world of difference there. (Laughs.) But with Swati, when I saw her, I thought two things. One, this is someone that I’m immediately going to relate to and be friends with. Just because we are very similar, and we just get along great. And two, this is going to be a huge target on both of us because we so obviously are similar. We’re a very clear pair. Honestly, I might have worked too closely with her in the beginning, to the point where I was confirming that connection. If I had maybe kept some distance from her and talked in private, then I let people think, “Oh, Zack and Swati aren’t really friendly.” Then maybe we could have taken that target of us being the two young, smart people and shrunk it some. You had said that Rocksroy was one of the biggest leaders in Survivor history, which is big coming from someone with a comprehensive knowledge of the show. Was there a particular incident or behavior he was doing to earn that distinction? The smoking gun was the smoking fire pit that couldn’t even slightly falter if not to receive the wrath of Rocksroy. It was funny. I’m talking to Jackson at Ponderosa after the game, and I’m just like, “Wait, you guys weren’t collecting firewood 24/7?! You guys didn’t have a massive pile of firewood that just stood in the corner so that you could survive in the wilderness for the next six months?!” That was just an ego thing. I think another great example of that was when Rocksroy when to go do a confessional. And it’s the first time we get to experience Survivor without Rocksroy. And every single person on the tribe is like, “Alright, let’s go into the water.” And everyone ran into the water and was having fun swimming around. But we were looking around the corner constantly, being like, “When is Rocksroy coming back?” I wish I could tweet that to him. Yeah, he’s off doing an extended confessional by being off social media! I want to talk about your fandom. Coming into the game, you said you wanted to play up how wide-eyed and grateful you were about everything. And we certainly saw you talk about how much you enjoyed being there and playing a game you loved. Was that purposely being played up for your perception, or were you truly geeking out? That wasn’t strategy. I probably should have hidden my super fandom more. But it was like impossible! And I knew in modern Survivor that the majority of people out there are super fans. Not really on my tribe, but overall. For instance, Tori is a great example of someone who, at the moment, I did not realize was as big of a superfan as she was. And to her credit, she was very much able to hide that fact. Now I also think that someone like Tori can hide being a superfan a little bit better than someone like me. But yeah, I definitely feel like letting my fandom show a little too much was another place where people were able to be like, “Oh, he knows this game, blah, blah, blah.” This morning, you posted a letter you had written to yourself if you were the first boot (one of a series of letters you wrote for each possible position you could finish in). In it, you talked about how, despite how disappointing it may be, you had been cast on the show and able to make your dream come true. Are you able to look back on that now and say the same thing, despite being the first person voted out? Well, technically, Mike, let’s be very clear. Jeff literally said, “The second person voted out of Survivor.” Now, if you do a first boot season, I didn’t say this. But according to Jeff, I am the 17th placer. You check the Survivor Wiki. (Laughs.) If you outline this whole thing for me and you tell me, “Alright, this is going to be the experience are you signing up for. Will you sign up for it?” I will always say yes to it. I mean, it really was a dream come true. Not the dream that I necessarily expected. But I really had such an amazing time and made such amazing friends. I took away so much about myself from the show that I’m going to be able to bring into the rest of my life. I’m just so overwhelmingly thankful for the opportunity and the experience. And I’m so happy that Tori got to survive. Good for her; that’s awesome. Everything just turned out great. Next, check out our interview with Jackson Fox, who was also eliminated in the Survivor 42 premiere.
