“The Way He Treated Us Was Abusive” – RealityNewsOnline’s Exclusive Interview with Survivor: Samoa’s Marisa

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Marisa, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us here at RealityNewsOnline! Let me start by saying that I looked at your background and actually picked you to be in the final two!

Marisa: A lot of people said that, I’m sorry to let you down.

RNO: Why do you think your experience didn’t come more into play on Survivor?

Marisa: It did come into play. There was a lot of stuff I did around camp that was directly linked from my growing up on a farm and having built stuff before. I worked on an amazing shelter for those people – they had an amazing place to sleep. You just didn’t see it as the viewer.

RNO: Did you have a particular strategy coming into the game?

Marisa: I guess it was to my disadvantage not to have a really evil strategy. I thought it would be foolish to have an ironclad something to do because I didn’t know who I was going to be with.

I guess if you’re going on the show to sabotage people and take pleasure in their suffering, then that’s a strategy you can maintain no matter who you’re with, but that’s not who I am.

RNO: So do you think it’s fair to have somebody like that on the show?

Marisa: I think it’s fair because you sign up for whatever you throw in your direction. Even though it was really bad, maybe one of the worst guys ever, I still agreed to it. I can’t say it wasn’t fair, because it was. I signed up to get lied to, basically. I didn’t know I was going to be bullied. And really the way he treated us was abusive. To torment our minds like that was abusive. It’s getting really cutthroat.

RNO: You obviously picked up on Russell’s shadiness. But why come out and tell him instead of talking to the others on your tribe?

Marisa: I did try to talk to the others on my tribe. But they didn’t listen to me and they didn’t want to hear me because they all thought they had a secret alliance with him. He was using a key word, “secret.” It was a secret alliance and he said not to tell anyone. So nobody got together and cross-pollinated information. It was just me saying to watch Russell because he was talking to everybody. I had somebody tell me he’s just Southern, he likes to talk a lot.

RNO: Did you have any inking into just how nasty Russell H. truly was?

Marisa: I didn’t know all of that horrible stuff that was going on behind the scenes until I watched the show. He was like upset because I threatened him. That was his own projection, because I never threatened him. He was projecting that.

RNO: Well, in a way you did threaten him by finding out what he was doing.

Marisa: I threatened him like I was a threat, but I never verbally threatened the man.

RNO: Did you have any idea you were being targeted before you got to Tribal Council?

Marisa: I had an idea that there was some negativity around me because of my issue with Ben, who I can assure you, he wasn’t highlighted this much this episode, but everybody will see he’s awful too. After that incident with him in the morning, I knew I had opened my big mouth and stood up to him, I knew that had caused a problem. But I didn’t think I was going home.

RNO: What happened to put you and Ben so at odds?

Marisa: There is so much stuff that guy did to be a weaselly scumbucket that you didn’t see. He was bossy, he was demeaning, he was rude, he used racial slurs, he used gender slurs, he was horrible. I don’t do bullies at all. He called one of the girls, right to her face, a dumb blondes. When he started bossing me around, I wasn’t really feeling it. Everything he said made no damn sense and I wanted him to know he wasn’t going to push me around. It was a mistake as far as the game goes but that’s what I would do – I didn’t compromise myself, I had to let it out.

RNO: I suspect I know the answer, but what was the most eye-opening thing you saw on TV that you didn’t know about while you were there?

Marisa: Russell burning the socks was really eye-opening because my socks were by the fire one night and then I woke up and they weren’t there. It was very eye-opening for me to see that. It was also very eye-opening for me to see just how threatened he was by me. I didn’t know I got to him that bad.

RNO: What did people think about the empty canteens and missing socks and the like?

Marisa: It was like, it’s such a surreal exp anyway, that it’s a shock to your senses. I was like, “Has anybody seen my socks?” Immediately I blame myself. And the canteens, at that point nobody was assigning canteens. We made sure all the canteens were filled, and it took two pots of water to fill all the canteens, so there were always people who didn’t have water and we wanted to make sure everybody stayed hydrated. I figured everybody had just drank all of them and we had to get another pot of water. It never came on my radar that somebody would pour out our water, especially from our own tribe.

RNO: Do you have anything else you’d like to tell us about your time on Survivor?

Marisa: I can definitely say that the production of Survivor was something I loved to see. The behind-the-scenes, what was going on, the people doing what they’re doing are amazing and I’ve never seen something so flawlessly executed. There is no stone left unturned. You have to really stop and think about what goes into something like that. it was a beautiful experience, it really was.

RNO: Thanks again, Marisa!

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