“When He’s a Jerk, He Just Switches It Full On” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Anthony

Anthony proclaimed himself a nerd to Rocky’s bully. Since I’ve been a proud nerd all my life, I knew this would be a good interview – and Anthony didn’t disappoint.

RealityNewsOnline: Hi, Anthony. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us here at RealityNewsOnline.

Anthony: My pleasure.

RNO: OK, can you start by telling us what you really think of Rocky?

Anthony: (laughs) I will say that to me on the show, Rocky was a bit of a jerk. That being said, I can’t harsh on him too much, like you can’t harsh on a snake for being a snake – that’s who he is. He has his good points. He can be a really nice guy at times. But when he’s a jerk, he just switches it full on. During Tribal Council I thought I was going to be the first Survivor to throw a punch. I’m glad I didn’t, but man it would have felt good.

RNO: Do you believe he was giving you what he really thought was good advice, or just taking shots at you?

Anthony: A little of column A and a little of column B. He lives on planet Rocky. In his world, he equates being an aggressive jerky loud in-your-face person with being a man. In my world, it’s just not. I live on a different planet than he does. There are some big men in the world who are quiet, calm, collected, and prefer to deal with people in a rational, civilized way. I realize it’s Survivor, but you can play more than one kind of game. I was playing a different game. Had the tribal mix-up happened differently, it would have played out a lot different.

I’m by no means a wuss. Just because I don’t like to be confrontational does not make me less of a man. I grew up with my grandfather, my grandmother, and mom. That was the example I had – my grandfather, before he died. Slow to get angry, but when you do, you let loose – which I finally did [Thursday] night. Even then, you get angry at what the person does but not at the person. There’s no reason to take it to that level. That’s the difference.

I’ve grown up with Christian values – turn the other cheek. It’s a brutal game and sometimes you have to be brutal. Sometimes you have to stab people in the back, and I did. But you have to play the game as you are as a person. And I’m not mean. I can do some mean things but I’m not a mean person. I went out there to play a good clean game – it can be done, Ethan proved that. It’s not an impossible game to play. I think I was playing it relatively well until everybody started jumping down my craw.

RNO: As a fellow nerd, it seemed to me like the tough guy from shop class telling the honor student how to live life, when the rockhead doesn’t have the foggiest idea about the way life really is. It’s got to be frustrating to deal with somebody like that.

Anthony: (laughs) You have no idea – well you probably do! Here’s the thing about Survivor – it’s a big chess game of egos. The problem with players like Rocky is that people look at him and who he is and how he treats the world and you feel like a pawn staring at a queen—

RNO: He’s not going to be happy you called him a queen.

Anthony: (laughs, then continues) Staring at him, I’m thinking, what am I going to do? It’s really weird. If you look at the way Survivor works, things that in the real world work well don’t work on the island. Look at Sylvia, she’s assertive and used to delegating. That clearly doesn’t work out there. Leadership is usually equated with bad. Some classic players went the way of the dodo because they were seen as a threat.

Being a nice guy in the world, being intelligent in the real world, being able to politely treat people well doesn’t work well out there. Survivor strips away every bit of those things in the real world that you would normally have. Getting up in somebody’s face and yelling at them, you don’t do that in the real world. If we met in the real world, he wouldn’t act that way because then the fight’s on. Playing a game where in the real world those things that would allow you to outwit, outplay, and outlast get taken away from you, you have to scramble really quick. Unfortunately, I didn’t scramble fast enough.

RNO: It seemed to me like you were fighting back with sarcasm during Tribal Council, and it was just sliding right off him – do you think he even understands what sarcasm is?

Anthony: No. I say that without hesitation. If he understood, the stuff that he was taking for whining, was me being sarcastic, because I am. Some say it’s the last refuge, others say it’s the state of highest wit.

I said things and others got them. It hit Rocky and slid off. If you go back and rewind and watch the fight where he laid into me, that started off with me being sarcastic. I did stand up for myself and what happened was what you saw – it was a little silly thing over the fire.

Caveman James [Rocky] decided it was his fire and I backed off. I said something like, “Dude, whatever,” and he got in my face and we had a few choice words at which point, Earl being the mediator that he is, stepped in and said, “Let’s get it all on the table.” I didn’t fight back at that point because it was useless.

There is a point where standing up and yelling just leads to more fighting. You saw it with Dreamz – that fight went on for like an hour. I don’t know what James respects – physical strength and people who are basically straightforward and can give him something. If he had come at me the way Mookie did, questioning my game playing ability, I probably would have reacted a lot differently, rather than coming down to personal things that have no bearing on the game. For a guy who knows absolutely nothing about me, he has a lot of opinions about me.

RNO: How did it feel to not only have to live through that, but watch it again on TV?

Anthony: It’s harder the second time around (laughing). Living through it is one thing – you have moments of high and adrenaline pumping. Watching it again on TV is painful. It’s like picking at old scabs.

It’s funny, because I was watching it and going like wow, I know the game I was playing at the time, but watching it you don’t get the full game of what I was doing. It’s kind of weird – it’s like looking at an echo of a dream of something that happened and you’re not really sure it happened. Watching it is hard. You watch those moments and say, “Oh yeah, this is that part where I broke down and had a moment of crisis.” I think the toughest parts were just watching how hard I had it on some of those challenges. I don’t think I came across wussy – but as a guy who was struggling his butt off.

It’s just really weird to watch yourself on television.