“I Was Pretty Much on My Own Out There” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Boo

Boo was an interesting person to watch on Survivor, because we didn’t see all that much out of him until the end. What does he have to say about his time on the game? How is his knee? Does he believe Dreamz? Read on to find out.

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

Boo: I started swimming and tried to hold my breath and get to where I could hold it as long as possible. I got up to two minutes and we never had any swimming challenges. I trained, I’m a martial artist, so I do a lot of training, so I wasn’t doing too much different. And I only had like three weeks to start preparing.

RNO: What was your strategy going into the game?

Boo: Going in I wanted to keep an open mind and see what was going on, but I was just going to try not to get on people’s nerves. I tend to have a good first impression but I tend to wear on certain people. That’s what happened with Stacy, I think it’s because socially she didn’t like me and she left me hanging. She just severed that tie and didn’t have to deal with me. That strategy worked a little bit with some people but I never got to get a solid person on my side. Cassandra was the closest one to me and I was like her third or fourth choice. I was pretty much on my own out there.

RNO: Why did you decide to side with Earl, Yau-Man, and company after the merge, rather than rejoining Alex and Edgardo?

Boo: I figured out really quickly that they didn’t want me to rejoin me with them. They were avoiding conversations with me and very interested in conversations with other people, so I knew something was going on. After the challenge after the merge, I knew they had decided to replace me with Mookie and they left me out. It was an umbrella I had to get under to save myself, and they needed a swing vote at that point. It wasn’t a decision I made, it was a decision the game forced me to make. I would have rather been in charge of the game at that point.

RNO: Did you ever get to use the hideout you created for yourself?

Boo: No. I made that so late that I knew it wasn’t going to benefit me. But we were just bored at that point, so I just wanted to go do something and kill some time. I had a little project to keep me busy a couple days.

RNO: If you had convinced Yau-Man and Earl to vote off Dreamz instead of you, what was your plan from there?

Boo: If I had convinced them, I would have won the challenge. I’m pretty confident because of the training I do. I do a lot of pulling in my training, so I would have definitely won that challenge. I think at that point, it would have been easy to vote out Yau-Man – they voted him out anyway. I would have been in the top three.

I think I had a shot against Earl. I didn’t have any enemies like Dreamz and wasn’t just complacent like Cassandra, even though it was kind of edited like I was. Last night you could see, I made two compelling arguments to two different people. That’s what I was doing the whole time, but they didn’t show those things because they were irrelevant.

But my point would have been I outlasted equally with Earl, and outwitted – he did a little bit but it was him controlling Dreamz and getting that swing over, and it was Yau-Man who did a lot of the outwitting. I had to save myself and do some fancy dancing because my tribe left me. I would have tried to focus on “outplay.” Earl had to stab a couple people in the back and that’s the big reason he was there, and I hadn’t stabbed anyone in the back – I won some challenges. The only one who was close in challenges was Yau-Man. Earl hadn’t won one challenge.

So, that being said, I hoped the jury would say I did outplay and Earl did stab a couple people in the back. I hoped I could convince at least a couple people. I don’t know if it would have been a unanimous decision.

RNO: Do you believe Dreamz’ claim that he was playing Yau-Man all along, or do you think he intended to keep his word and then changed his mind?

Boo: It’s not even a question. In his own interviews, he said, “I’m giving him immunity.” He was basically talking to himself. That’s his private moment to say what he’s really going to do. You don’t tell yourself that in a private moment and then change your mind.

It’s a given that he wasn’t playing the game when he accepted the truck. He accepted the truck, fully expecting to give Yau-Man immunity. And shoot, he cried at the final Tribal Council. They didn’t show all of it, but he broke down and cried. He was having an inner conflict with himself, his moral values he preached all the time, “I’m a good Christian, I’m a man of my word.” Some of that stuff was part of the game, but that particular move wasn’t a game play, it was, “I want this truck and I want to give you what you want for it.”

If he’d have shown up at Tribal Council and not cried and said, “Yau-Man, I’m sorry but I was playing you from the beginning,” I would have respected that and he probably would have gotten my vote. Other things, when he backstabbed, it was part of the game and that’s what we’re here for. I definitely respect that. I wish I could have stabbed people in the back – I might have made the final three.

RNO: What kind of reaction did the jurors have after Dreamz failed to honor the deal?

Boo: They knew – they said he would. We were split on that. I had no doubt he was going to give Yau-Man the immunity necklace. I was wrong. That made for a great episode and helped the season tremendously. A lot of the other guys, Mookie and Edgardo and Alex that he did that to, they said, “Are you kidding? He’s definitely not going to give it to him.” They were right. It seemed like either one extreme or the other – definitely keeping it or definitely giving it away.

RNO: That probably explains why Mookie was smiling and nodding in the jury box when Dreamz kept immunity – not because he approved of it, but because he knew he was right.

Boo: That’s what I thought [when I watched it].