First off, I want to ask how you’re doing. I can imagine it’s gotta be a little rough watching your own blindside back, especially considering everything that led up to it.That was hard. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t feel like it was a blindside. But I was angry. I kind of felt like I was being gaslighted that day. When I left the game, I was very angry with my tribe. And I felt very bitter. Looking back, I feel a little bit better. But at the time, yes, I was definitely angry with them. That’s interesting. So if you had a sense it would be you, did you give any thought to playing your Shot in the Dark?I’m glad you brought that up. In a game where we only have six people in our tribe, your vote is so important. And there was pretty much close to nothing that I was willing to do to risk my vote at any point. I knew that if my tribe was being honest with me and saying, “Lindsay, we’re sticking with you,” the last thing I needed to do was get a one-in-six chance of playing my shot in the dark and it not working, and that showing my tribe that I didn’t trust them. I also didn’t want to lose my vote, I was really worried about who had the idol at that time. And so I wanted to make sure that if my tribe did write down Geo’s name that my vote was one of the ones that sent him home. It was really important to me part of my strategy in the game was to make sure that I was on the right side of the vote for every single vote. And I wanted to start there. We haven’t seen the Shot in the Dark work So while I know that it could possibly work, it was kind of risk versus reward decision for me, and I just didn’t feel like it was worth it. I think an intriguing question to always ask Survivor players and fans is if they’d rather be voted out because of something they did, or just due to circumstances that were out of their hands. It’s clear from the edit, at least, that this was a case of the former. Talk with me about whether that was the case, and where that paranoia came from.I’ll be the first person to admit that my paranoia got me sent home that night. I think what’s frustrating for me is that people weren’t able to see where my paranoia came from. And so I’m really excited to be able to speak with you guys today and let you know where that downward spiral came from. For nine days, we were sitting pretty. The four of us, James, Karla, and Cassidy, had always said Geo was the vote from Day 1. On Day 1, I got together with Karla and Cassidy. I knew I wanted an all-girls alliance, and that was luck. I’m not the type of person that’s going to say, “It doesn’t matter who it is. I want an all-girls alliance.” But I really bonded with Karla and Cassidy on that island. I think they’re fantastic players, and I really wanted to work with them. I was also really excited to work with James. We had a great rapport out there. We had a great friendship. I’m so sad you guys didn’t get to see some of the really special moments that James and I had out there.So it was always Geo. And then that day on the beach, Geo came up to me. And just to preface this, Geo and I had never really spoken gameplay before I knew that Geo was the vote always. And I am a terrible liar. I did not want to put myself in a situation where I would have to lie about strategy. So I just avoided strategy with him altogether, which was easy to do on our beach because we were very kumbaya. We meditated and did breathing exercises together. And whenever I would somewhat try to bring up strategy with Ryan or in passing with Geo, everyone would say, “We’re not there yet. We don’t need to start talking strategy because we’re strong and we’re not going to start talking until we need to.” Which was fine because I was like, “Alright, well then, now I don’t have to lie to Ryan and Geo.” But the strange thing was that Gio had come up to me on the beach that day and said, “Lindsay, I just want to give you a heads up. It’s you going home tonight. You’re the vote.” And I was like, “Well, where did that come from?” And he said, “Ryan told me,” and I said, “Well, what’s Ryan’s reason for wanting to vote me out?” And Geo said, “Because you’re a threat.” And that’s where you see in my interview me talking about threat. Production had said to me, “Well, why do you think that it’s your name going home tonight?” And I said, “It’s because they said it was a threat.” There were also a lot of red flags. I was really concerned with James after he went on his journey, while he told us that he didn’t risk his vote. When Cody came to raid our beach, we had a conversation with Cody about that journey, and James shut it down quickly. And all of us thought that was really strange. If James didn’t risk his vote, then why is he acting so strange when we brought it up? So that was a huge red flag to me. I’m also from Philly. I’m not from Philly, but I lived in Philly for a long time. I know Philly boys. And I knew that James wasn’t playing this laid-back game like he said he was. There were a lot of times where we would talk about going to look for idols. And James would always say, “I’m not looking. You girls can go look, I’ll protect you all. If someone asks where you’re going, I’ll have your back.” But he always made sure that he said to us he wasn’t looking. And I just thought that was very strange. Everybody was looking on that beach. On that day, we all started scrambling, and everybody was having conversations. I kind of chilled out and I let everybody have their conversations. And then when Karla and James and I are sitting on the beach, I went up to Karla and I was like, “Hey, alright, it’s our turn to talk.” And Karla was like, “I’m not talking. I’m done talking. I’ve had enough talks.” And for me, Karla, and I had a really great relationship out there. She had never shut me down like that before. So again, another red flag. And then she snapped your head at me and she said, “Are you playing your Shot in the Dark tonight,” in a very aggressive way. Again, these aren’t behaviors that norm that that that would normally happen on the island. So all of these things started to add up, which is where you see this downward spiral happen. And it all happens in a matter of an hour and a half.Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. I want to go back to the Geo of it all. You said he was being shored up as the target from the first day. We heard this past episode that he was getting votes because of his ego. Can you illuminate on that reasoning?From my point of view, I had two reasons why I wanted Geo to go home. One I can’t talk about right now. It’s not my story to tell. I want him to be able to tell that story. But when we were doing the marooning challenge, Geo was very adamant about him doing the running portion of it. He said that he was really great at running. And when that didn’t pan out, I was concerned that Geo maybe wasn’t aware of what his skill level was. So he immediately became a target for me. I wasn’t willing to get rid of Ryan. Ryan was our challenge beast; he was way too strong. And then I had Karla and Cassidy and James on my side. So honestly, that left Geo as my target by default.So you mentioned there were several moments from your dynamic with James that you wish were shown. Can you illuminate that dynamic for us?I’m glad you brought this up. James deserves a lot of credit for his social game. Karla, Cassidy, and I all believed the entire time that James was our number one. And I think that speaks volumes for his social play out there. Same thing with Ryan. You saw in the episode that Ryan said that James was in his top two, which was super surprising to me because I didn’t even realize they were that close. My biggest concern with James was that he didn’t want to be at the bottom of a girl’s alliance. But I also knew that he wasn’t vibing with the other two guys. He was spending a lot of time with us. But James was playing a good social game out there.In last week’s episode, we saw Karla have a madcap day of trying to barter various items to get beads from you to make an idol. Did you have an suspicion of what she was trying to do?No. So another thing you guys didn’t see was we were were convinced that Gio had the idol. We knew that Geo was coming after Cassidy. Obviously you can see that their personalities weren’t meshing. And so, in a way to protect my alliance, I went through Geo’s bag, and I found a map. And I thought it was a map to an immunity idol, not realizing it was the map to when they had to do Sweat or Savvy, they were given a map or where to dig. But we didn’t realize that. So I went through Geo’s bag, and I found a map. And I thought it was a map to where a hidden immunity idol was hidden. I couldn’t decipher what the map was trying to say. So the girls ended up going through his bag a second time. And looking at the map, Karla knew that she already had the idol. And so she played down with us, trying to help us decipher this map. And then all of a sudden, we saw a light switch flip on and Geo started having really strong gameplay. So I took it as he’s confident he’s got something. I didn’t understand why, when we were talking about the Geo vote, nobody was willing to come up with a Plan B. If we all think that Gio has an idol, why don’t we have a backup plan? We didn’t have a backup plan. Karla didn’t need a backup plan. She knew where that idol was. So I always joke at that moment I was playing checkers, and Karla’s playing chess out there.There was a lot of cross-tribal interaction this episode, between Cody visiting Coco and Vesi and Baka seemingly colluding to defeat you in the challenge. Were you surprised to see the other groups so anti-Coco?We knew they would do it. Another thing you guys didn’t see was, when they chose Noelle to go on the journey, Dwight asked Baka to pick Noelle. And so Dwight and Noelle helping with that challenge was their way of thanking Baka for helping them out. So they actually helped them out in two different ways. And I’m not surprised. I mean, we were a force to be reckoned with. We were a really strong tribe out there. Another thing you guys didn’t see was during that first Immunity Challenge, when we were doing the puzzles, the table maze, we finished that probably almost an hour before the other tribes did. I mean, we were out there for so long that the sun was beating down so hard that we had to create a wall within our tribe to protect each other from getting sunburnt out there. It was so hot. But it took a really long time. And I think that was the other tribes’ first glimpse at what they would be seeing from us further down the road.In your final words, you said the experience was everything you wanted it to be. And you’ve spoken about how your love for Survivor predates both your marriage and your children. So despite things not going the way you wanted to ultimately, how do you look back on capitalizing on a 20+ year dream?I’m so excited that our tribe was so successful. I wanted to stay tribe strong. I really wanted to be a team player in the first portion of the game until I got to the merge. And then I was going to kind of go out and do my own thing. I would still stick with my tribe on loyalty. But I really wanted to stay strong with our tribe. And I think we did a great job doing that. There just wasn’t enough time for the strategy aspect of it because there was no strategy to have if we’re not going to TribalCcouncil. But I’m sad. I didn’t have enough time out there. There’s never enough time when you love Survivor as much as I do. I would play all day every day. But I’m just disappointed with how I went out. I definitely shot myself in the foot.Next, read our interview with Nneka Ejere, who was voted out in Survivor 43 Episode 3.
