If you could blame one person the most for your boot, who would it be? Is it Gabler for throwing you under the bus? Sami for being the one to really turn him on you? Jeanine for not playing her idol on you? Yourself?Oh, I’m choosing me. Honestly, I can’t blame Gabler for wanting me out at all. I wanted him out. And I did things that made him very much want me out of the game. And I think if roles were reversed, I would have done the exact same thing. Of course, in the moment, I’m like, “Why would you ever do that?” But I knew in my heart, I’m like, “Of course he would do that.” And Jeanine not playing the idol, I think, was the right thing for her. And honestly, maybe even the right thing for me. I think if I had had to go back to Tribal the next day, honestly, I would have probably had the same fate. So I can’t hate on that. I don’t quite understand the move for Sami wanting to disclose information. We had a really tight bond out there. So that was surprising to me, especially at the moment finding out that he was the one that disclosed information was pretty shocking. But I also still can’t blame him for that. I think maybe the one thing that I wish was different was where blame was due in terms of the bag search and what really happened. I really wasn’t the person who went through the bag. I walked into camp while it was all going down. I was definitely part of the plan. But that was hard for me because I really felt in the moment, I’m like, “Please believe that I wasn’t the person that did this.“You knew that your name had been out there going into Tribal Council. Did you ever debate playing your Shot in the Dark? Or did you feel that your plan would succeed that you didn’t need to do that?I did think my vote was needed. I thought that Sami was still aligned with me. He’s very convincing. I don’t know if he’s getting enough credit for his social game. So I really felt like, even after knowing that he had betrayed my trust that one time, I can still trust him. So I thought that Gabler might still vote for me, but I thought my vote was needed. Also, to be quite honest, it’s so overwhelming, I fully forgot about the Shot in the Dark. So it wasn’t even a question in my mind of should I play it or should I not. It was not strategic that I didn’t play it. I did think my vote was needed. But I wasn’t even thinking about Shot in the Dark.I feel like we could do an entirely separate interview of what went down in that afternoon alone. But we see a lot of you talking with the other Bakas, including that confrontation with Gabler. Were you also trying to put out fires with the Coco and Vesi members as well?Yes, I talked to everybody and I tried to briefly plead my case. I could tell it’s one of those senses when you walk up to a group, you’re walking into a conversation that you don’t belong in. So it was uncomfortable. I would just say, “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to interrupt. I know that you need to be having this conversation. I just want to let you know this one piece that is not how it went down. And I hope that you believe me.” But we had literally all just met. They had no reason to trust me at that point or to trust me over Gabler at that point. It’s a “he said, she said” kind of situation. And there were other things obviously with me saying, “Let’s vote out this person and that person” that would have already put people on high alert. Like, “Okay she’s kind of sketchy. I don’t know what’s going on with her.“Yeah, let’s talk about that. As soon as the tribes come together, you make this plan to have a Baka and Vesi supermajority to take out James. Was that something that had been brewing since they helped you in a challenge a couple of episodes back?I think that it had been brewing when Coco had been on a roll. And so it’s kind of a very early thing that we all seemed to have in our minds. We were underdogs. Even though Baka didn’t end up losing after the first Immunity Challenge, for some reason, the bias against Coco being these steamrollers, that they’re just going to keep winning forever, seemed to stick. So even after they lost the two leading up to the merge, it did feel to an extent like we were trying to band together so that we could form that relationship going into the merge in case Coco still had the majority. I think that Baka going in with the numbers actually probably made Sami, Owen, and me more of a target. There were three Baka that available for a vote out, and that would have weakened Baka as numbers, even if we didn’t have the drama and were trying to stay together.Did you have any intentions of sticking with this supermajority in the short-term? Or going to the end with Bakas? What was the endgame you had in mind when you were voted out?I honestly didn’t. It really got so messy. It’s sad, because I am such a huge fan. And so pregame I would be like, “Yeah, this is how I’m going to do it.” Once you’re out there and you’re fumbling through it and you see how many oddities there are and how many uncontrollables there are, it is really hard to be confident in anything. I know I had plenty of confessionals where it seems like I’m very, very confident. I don’t know why I come off that way, but I wasn’t. I was questioning everything all the time. So no, I think that I would have wanted to adapt and kind of see where to go from there. I would have been open. I had a conversation with Ryan at some point of like, “It seems like you’re kind of on the outs maybe. Maybe we could work together in the future. I seemed like you wanted to work with Baca.” So I would have been fine taking out some of the power players from Coco. But I mean, who knows? I think it’s hard really to think much past the very next day or the very next minute, to be honest.Well let’s get into some of those “oddities and uncontrollables” in the form of the premerge. You seemed to hold all the cards in Baka’s only Tribal Council. And we saw you form a women’s alliance with Jeanine and Morriah, only to vote Morriah out. What was your reasoning behind it?So I’ll be honest. I don’t know that it would have been different. I did feel emotionally close to Morriah and Jeanine. I felt a very strong spiritual bond with Morriah, honestly. We have a lot of commonalities. And I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I’m meant to meet this person out here.” She’s the one actually who brought up the idea of a women’s alliance. So when that happens, you don’t say, “I don’t know.” So I was really excited about the possibility. But pretty quickly, she seemed like she was aligning in the game most strongly with Sami. Sami, at that point, didn’t seem to have a lot of connections with other people. I felt closer with Gabler, Owen, and Jeanine at that point, and she seemed like she was pretty coupled with Sami. So for me, it was more of a relationship thing. It seemed like we talked about tribe strength. I think that it was more like if Sami or Morriah are going to be the person to be voted out because they’re the people that I’m less close with. Morriah is not the strongest compared to Sami. So that was what went down. And so Sami then wanting me out, as we saw in the next episode, if Morriah was his number one, I’m not certain that she would have stayed aligned with me. I don’t know if things would really be different. But I loved getting to play with Morriah when I had.When it comes to Sami, we get that confessional of you comparing him and Owen to two children. And at that time, it seems like Owen is the one who is more dishonest and requires more monitoring, while Sami is more reliable and stable. The irony, though, is that the second son stays loyal to you in the end, while the first son was the one to stab you in the back. How do you look back on your relationships with them, and how they were actually feeling behind the scenes?Yeah, it doesn’t align with the relationships that we had outside of confessionals. So it is very different to see. I think that the way that my social game was going in the first few days seemed to draw attention from the guys. Jeanine didn’t seem to have a problem with it. We were pals and it was fine. Owen would say some stuff to me, like, “Oh, it seems like you’re getting in really good with so and so.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay. I’m gonna have to tailor a little bit about how I’m acting at camp to placate that.” Versus Sami, who was really independent. We could kind of hang out and not have to be as reassuring. So that confessional was simply about literally that day. I had to show Owen more attention so that he wouldn’t be suspicious of me and know that, “I’m working with you. You don’t have to worry about me being all over the place,” which obviously, he did have to worry about that. And Sami just seemed more independent. I didn’t have to reassure him as much. I get now that’s because he didn’t want to work with me. But at the time, I just thought he seemed like a sturdier ally, than Owen. But it was really just that day. Because it was pretty much daily that I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to work more with Owen or Sami.” So there was a lot of back and forth between that.A lot of your behavior premerge seemed to be buoyed by this plan of voting Gabler out by convincing him that his idol had expired, despite the fact that it hadn’t. Now, I could understand how you feel you would be able to do that for a couple of days. But what made you think you’d be able to still pull that off as the days went on and the chances of Gabler actually double checking his idol increased?That’s a great question, Mike. It’s hard to watch back. First of all, was we were all confused. My initial plan was that I had a good relationship with Gabler at that point. I’m like, “I could just ask him if his idol still works.” And the reaction to the four people that were in on that plan was, “No, that’ll sketch them out. We need to be way more covert than that.” And so Jeanine ends up looking through his bag, and we find out that it’s still good. And then I’m like, “Okay, so I’ll just have a conversation with Gabler and ask him if his idol works.” And the reaction to that plan was, “No, because what if that then spurs him to go look at the note?” So we’re like, “Okay, I guess we’ll ask him this really roundabout way and try to say it in a way that’s going to not make him go want to look at his note.” I mean, it was moronic, obviously. And watching it back was hard. But I think the hope was that if Gabler didn’t know ahead of time that we had looked through his bag, if I had said something like, “Oh, now that your idol doesn’t work anymore,” that he would have just said, “Oh, no, it still works.” So the hope was really more to find out what he knew about the idol. I get, from an outside perspective looking in, when you’re not inundated in the game, that it’s obvious he would know what his clue says. I think that we were just kind of really in it at the time.In addition to all the strategizing we were seeing from you, we also got a lot of insight into you personally. You got to talk about losing your sister to addiction, as well as your struggles growing up with ADHD and dyslexia, and how you were able to triumph during a puzzle in spite of that. What’s your reaction to getting to tell those stories on the show?I feel really grateful for Survivor for the way that that was handled. I actually first applied for Survivor in 2019, and my sister was still alive. And during my interviews and that whole casting process, I briefly touched on family relationships and that they were strained. And then, when I came back for interviews for season 43, everything had changed because she had passed away. So I was able to share that with them. And they handled it so delicately and were supportive of me throughout the whole process. I feel like it was liberating, to be honest. I think that addiction can be really stigmatized. And death from addiction, I think, is even more stigmatized, and it can come with shame for people. But I’ve never felt ashamed of my sister. We had a very special relationship, and I think I have very protected relationship over her. So I was nervous that talking about this could bring up feelings of shame or anything like that. But then I kind of realized talking about it actually diminishes that. And it helps to show that I’m proud of the person that she was. And I think that she would be proud of me, even with the messy game. (Laughs.) She probably wouldn’t be surprised. But I feel lucky to share that.The conversation about ADHD and dyslexia I never would have expected that they would air that. I’m an open book. And that’s another thing that I talk openly aboutIt’s impacted me since I was young and has been a big part of my learning curve. And so coming on Survivor and being able to prove to myself that, even with my struggles, I can go out there and compete. I was most nervous about that, being in a puzzle position and messing it up, as you saw last night. (Laughs.) I was crying. I was like, “Oh, I knew I wasn’t smart.” But honestly, I think Survivor helped me get over some of those hurdles in a way that even getting a doctorate hasn’t been able to do for me.Your openness is the biggest thing I take away from your time on the show. Not even from a personal perspective, which is very much valued, but also how transparent you were about wanting to try things. Unfortunately, it didn’t lead to a million-dollar check. But from your final words, it seemed like you intended to play with nothing left on the table at the end, and you succeeded.That’s absolutely true. I had the time of my life. I played every single day and I had fun every single day. And I think that if I hadn’t played the way that I did, I would have had less fun. At the end of the day, that’s why I was there. I was there to do something for myself. And I had such a good time.Next, read our interview with Geo Bustamante, who was voted out in Survivor 43 Episode 5.
