“I Was Viewed As Too Big of a Threat”: An Interview with Survivor’s Rob Cesternino

Rob Cesternino came close to winning in his first try at Survivor, but this time his tribemates were too worried to let him play his game. RealityNewsOnline had a chance to ask him some questions about his game play and his thoughts on others in his tribe.

RealityNewsOnline: Hello again, Rob! Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions here at RealityNewsOnline – I'm just sorry to be talking to you so soon. In watching the show and the added footage from Survivor Insider, it seems pretty obvious that you were voted off because everybody else on your tribe was afraid of letting you go further. Is this also your assessment of why you lost, and on reflection what do you think you could have done differently to make it further?

Rob: Well David, I think that's what happened. I got targeted like one of the winners without ever having won the game. I had hoped if I could just stay out of everybody's way and not try to be seen as someone who was scheming I didn't think that the other players would target me. I really feel like I was well liked by my tribemates and I was very surprised to not only go, but to go in an unanimous vote.

Even looking back, I don't really think there was much I could have done differently. The only other possible direction I could have took was to have pushed really hard to get Sue voted out, but I thought of Sue as an ally because I think that she was very annoyed with Rob & Amber, at times. I thought that getting rid of Alicia would have put me in a position to either be able to get rid of Sue next or to have the option to vote off Rob or Amber by voting with Sue or Tom.

I was thinking long term because I was trying to figure which strategy would get me further in the game. I could not risk targeting either Rob or Amber at the time because I knew everybody was already waiting to jump on me for scheming and I would have been seen as trying to start trouble from the start and would have been eliminated just as quick.

RNO: Both times we've seen Rob Mariano play, he has seemed to convince people to go along with him – what do you think it is about him that makes people want to listen to him?

Rob: I've seen Boston Rob convince Sarah and Amber to go along with him a couple of places, lol. But seriously, Boston Rob can be very persuasive. This time around I don't think it took a lot of persuasion to convince the tribe to get rid of me, especially in the case of Alicia and Sue who were probably just happy to hear it wasn't going to be them and I don't think that Tom wanted to rock the boat too much either. In my own case, Rob came to me with the idea of an alliance and I thought it was in my best interests to hook up with the other schemer on the tribe. I thought that if Rob was playing the same game he played last time, and Amber was the new Sarah, I could be the new Sean (who ended up doing much better than both Rob and Sarah).

RNO: How did your strategy going into All-Stars differ from your strategy going into Amazon?

Rob: My strategy going to the All-Stars was different from the Amazon because I didn't exactly know what kind of people were going to be in the Amazon, as opposed to the All-Stars where I could guess who most of the other players would be. Before the Amazon I could not have guessed I would be on a tribe with all men, where as in the All-Star (where the three tribes were a surprise) I had an idea of what I would be up against.

Actually, my strategies were quite similar, even though on the surface they appeared to be different. I was on my best behavior early on in the Amazon, just as I was on the All-Star. Nobody suspected in the early days of Survivor: The Amazon that I was a schemer, since everybody thought I was with them. The only problem here was that the other players on the All-Star knew my tendencies to switch alliances after the merge, so even though I maintained I was loyal to the tribe, I was viewed as too big of a threat to defect. The ironic thing however is that if we would have gone to the first or second tribal council I think that Sue would have probably got voted out, but as we approached the 1/3 mark in the game, many of us thought that I would soon have an opportunity to defect.