“Their Best Chance Was to Stay With Me” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Alex

I picked Alex to win before this season of Survivor began, and for a while it looked like it might happen. But then everything got turned upside down for him. Why does he think his plans didn’t work? Was he expecting too much of people? Alex has a lot of good insight into the way people play – and the way they should play. Read on!

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Alex, and thanks for talking to RealityNewsOnline today. How are you doing?

Alex: I’m great.

RNO: What did you do to prepare for being on Survivor?

Alex: Right before Survivor, I’d trained to climb Mount Whitney, so that came in handy. I took it from there in terms of building up endurance and added core training, cardio, swimming, areas I felt I needed to improve in addition to what I’d done before.

RNO: What was your strategy going into the game?

Alex: Going into the game, I wanted to sort of lay low at the beginning. I felt I was going to be perceived as a threat if I showed myself too early on. Let others take the limelight and do as much manuevering in the background, waiting until an opportune moment and then maybe play a harder game.

RNO: Do you think you succeeded in that?

Alex: I do. I think it worked out very well. I feel like I revealed I was playing a hard game when I got Michelle voted off. I would have preferred to wait to use the right moment to exercise that influence, but I didn’t really have much choice.

RNO: Before the show, I picked you to win, and for a while it was looking good. So what happened?

Alex: It was a series of things, I think. One, I didn’t take into account that people I was dealing with were not playing one step ahead. I always tried to form alliances whose mutual interests were aligned with mine, to get to the end. With Stacy and Dreamz, I saved them, but not even relying on that, their best chance was to stay with me.

Stacy was just upset that nobody liked her at the reward challenge, but I didn’t think she would stab me in the back. At that point, any time you stab anybody in the back, you’re not going to get any of those votes and you’re going to be outside an alliance. Not seeing that angle [that others wouldn’t consider the future] was probably what did me under in the end.

RNO: We saw Stacy trying to make nice to you this week. And you kind of reacted like I would have.

Alex: Yeah, like alright, sure, whatever. It was a strange situation. I think she felt very alienated by the others. That reward challenge probably screwed it up for me. She was freaking out that nobody liked her. I was like, “So what’s the big deal?” They’re just six random people, but I think that really affected her. Maybe I should have been more sympathetic about it, but it was completely out of the blue. You just expect people to think along certain lines, but that’s not the case. It’s a good life lesson.

RNO: It seems that you and Edgardo both thought Dreamz was a potential liability – and you were obviously right. Why did you stick with him rather than replacing him with somebody else in your alliance right at the merge?

Alex: Simply because, at that point, it was me, Mookie, and Edgardo. At the merge, it was Stacy and Boo and us. We had been aligned with them before. As you saw before, there were problems with the Liliana vote. Stacy, as soon as she had any power, [wanted to get pushy]. With Dreamz we hoped would get Cassandra and with Mookie [we hoped we could get somebody]. But before any of these can be solidified, Mookie tells Dreamz about the idol and it’s sealed in blood. You can’t remove him at that point because he has information that is crucial to your alliance.

RNO: Last week, you voted against Mookie and it turned out to be the deciding vote. On last night’s show, you said you went with your gut – did you really have no idea the vote was being split?

Alex: I wasn’t sure if it was being split. I didn’t think it was being split for the reason they were splitting it. But I did notice that there was a lot of talking and arguing, and it wasn’t about politics. If it was not unanimous, there is some dissension, there is a chance there is a split vote. The only way my vote would count is if I vote for Mookie. I did not think they were all in unison. If they had been, I wouldn’t notice the tension and stress. You can read expressions and body language [even though we couldn’t hear what they were saying].

RNO: Why didn’t you try the ninja approach last week instead of stirring things up with the immunity idol and everything?

Alex: The immunity idol thing was Mookie’s idea. He went for that approach and ticked a lot of people off. I unfortunately got roped into it. By that point, there was nothing to be done. You can be a ninja by yourself, you can’t be a ninja with Mookie. It was more a question of circumstance. When I was by myself, they had no animosity for me personally.