“I Am Proud of all the Decisions I Made” – An Interview with Survivor: China’s Erik

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Erik, and thanks for taking the time to talk to RealityNewsOnline! Starting at the beginning, what was your strategy coming into the game?

Erik: Coming in, I had not watched a lot of Survivor, so I tried to familiarize myself with the show by watching some seasons. There was a bazillion different strategies to take, so I went in to be myself. I wanted to go in and assess the personalities on my tribe. I felt fairly confident that my normal personality – just me going in – would at least last through the first round or two. And then I could figure out where I could align myself or not. I did have to adjust as the game went on but my original strategy, which was to stay low on the radar and assess, did work for a while.

RNO: So how did your strategy change once you got into the game?

Erik: It didn’t change a whole lot, but I don’t know if it was sort of a judgment call on my part where I felt there were points near the end of where I was voted out where I could have been a little more aggressive or snaky. But I chose to keep my original strategy. I did try to at least break up the Fei Long tribe that had been rock solid. They did start breaking up. Although it didn’t look like I tried at the end, I felt like I did give it a fair shot. I gave Denise a great opportunity to join Peih-Gee and me. She didn’t take that chance but she admitted it was probably a big mistake on her part. We’ll see. As for me, I guess I didn’t really change my strategy all that much because I was convinced I was in a good spot ‘til the very end.

RNO: If you had pulled Denise over, there would have been a tie. Did you or Todd practice fire-building?

Erik: I had to start a few fires over at Zhan Hu. I started pretty amateur at it, but I’m pretty sure I had more experience fire-building than Todd did. I felt pretty good I had a chance at beating him if it came down to it. So I knew if Denise had come over I’d be sitting pretty.

RNO: In your final words, you said you could look back and say that you could have done something different. You’ve had some time to think about it – what could you have done differently?

Erik: I felt pretty good about trying to get Denise over – that seemed like an obvious move. I could have worked a little harder on Courtney or Amanda, but at least with Amanda, she was a good a player and had me convinced that she might turn on Todd at that point in the game. So I kind of believed her because since the beginning of the game, people had been clear that they didn’t trust Todd – they saw him as a sneaky player, a strategic player. That was bait for me to say, “Let’s get rid of this guy.”

Maybe I could have worked harder on really trying to convince Amanda. But unfortunately I think she convinced me that she was going to turn on Todd and she didn’t. Maybe I could have been a little more aggressive, but it didn’t seem right being overly aggressive when I established myself as being a certain way. I thought it could hurt me because it could scare people. In the game you never really know who has a strong alliance and who has a weak alliance and you kind of go with your gut.

RNO: Given that people didn’t seem to trust Todd, why do you think they didn’t want to break with him at this Tribal Council?

Erik: I think I didn’t take into account that at this stage of the game, people are definitely thinking of who they want to get to the end of the show. I think pretty much it came down to anybody that recognized Todd as a backstabber or a snake in the game saw that as a good opportunity to go against him in the final vote, which I understand. I guess I was still thinking that although it was near the end of the game, there were still six of us left and he had the potential to turn on anybody. But I guess the former Fei Long tribe had established they were going to stick together. I think they got a little scared that they were starting to break up a little bit, so they had to stay strong and keep control of the game.

RNO: If you had made it past this vote, what would your endgame strategy have been?

Erik: I think I would have really really really tried to win immunity (laughs). Not that I didn’t really really try on this last one, where I didn’t do well. I really would have had to go guerilla warfare and start looking at the relationships that I’d sort of established. I think I was friends with Courtney and Amanda on the show, at least to the point that they’d have listened to me. There was a reasonable chance that they’d listen to me.

It’s hard to say what my strategy would have been because I’d established myself as the nice guy. I could have become a snake at the end and turned everybody on everybody, which would have scared people and might not have helped me with jury votes. It was a really tough call – making all the decisions in the game have consequences. So I really don’t know.