“I Was Frustrated By My Performance”: An Interview with Survivor’s Willard

Willard was the first person from Koror to be sent packing, and it wasn’t much of a surprise. How would Willard have done things differently if he had it to do over again? Why was he frustrated by his own performance? How did he even end up on Survivor? Willard provides all these answers and more, right here!

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Willard, and thanks for taking the time to answer these questions from RealityNewsOnline! Knowing that you were going to be one of the older participants, what was your initial plan going into Survivor?

Willard: I didn't have any particular plan based on my age. I had – some might say I still have – fairly limited knowledge of Survivor. I haven't seen all the seasons, and only a few episodes of the seasons that I did watch. It's not that I don't like Survivor, I just don't watch much entertainment television. I first heard about Survivor during the initial season. A friend, who was my secretary at the time, watched the first season. She was fascinated by the show and finally convinced me to watch it.

More as a joke than anything else I sent in an audition tape for season two. At the time I was sliding into a sedentary and modestly portly middle age. All the standard consequences of too much career fixation and too little attention to self. No response from SEG. Then the joke got out a little out of hand. I told my secretary and my wife (don't ask how she got involved) that all I needed to do was get in shape and make another audition tape. They bet me I couldn't do it. I wasn't in the best of health, so I used the bet as the focus of a program to change to a more healthy lifestyle, primarily involving exercise and nutrition.

It worked. I took off forty pounds, reduced my body fat percentage by two thirds, and cut my cholesterol almost in half. To complete the character I had my ears pierced, grew that ratty beard, buzzed off my hair, and sent in a new audition tape. After the first callback interview I was confident that I would be picked and started porking up so that I had gained fifteen pounds by the time I got to Palau. I anticipated being able to be in the middle, physically speaking, get to the merge as part of a non-star alliance, and vote off the physically strong players.

RNO: Were you surprised to be picked instead of Jonathan as the last man to be added to a tribe?

Willard: The schoolyard picking of teams didn't worry me too much after Coby was picked. That meant that either Caryn or Angie would get a pick with Coby not being in jeopardy, and I was confident that either of them would pick me, as I would have picked either of them. Like most young men, Jonathan enjoys sex. I like women. Smart women, like Caryn and Angie, can tell the difference.

RNO: You said you were not able to compete as strongly as you thought. Why not?

Willard: My physical problems started almost immediately. I decided not to drink unboiled water. On the way back from the first challenge I was dehydrated and got heat exhaustion. There are several hours on day three that I don't remember. I felt like I was in the classic nightmare where you try to run fast but everything is in slow motion.

I also had a lot of problems with my feet, sores, etc., to the point that I couldn't wear shoes for any period of time. That had consequences both for challenges (obviously) and ocean food gathering, because the ocean floor within our lagoon was sharp coral. My problems weren't the result of the environment, which I found relatively benign. There was no insect problem and it wasn't that hot. The problem was that I simply didn't adjust.

RNO: From what we saw, you saw the writing on the wall for Koror’s first Tribal Council and pretty much just gave up. Did you make any attempt to pull together an alliance that could keep you around?

Willard: I think what you got from Coby in episode five accurately described the dynamic at that point, and I don't have any insight to add to it. I've been around too long to think that anything is possible. Frankly, I think that the players on Koror made the best decision from their point of view at the point in the game that they made it. The fire thing was a little overplayed, but there has to be a story line. The initial fire-starting, after we finally found the flint, was difficult because there was very little dry tinder. When we won the shelter, however, it came with a lantern and a kilo of kerosene, so the fire fetish was no longer necessary.