“I’m Really Really Really Surprised These People Kept Me Around” – An Interview with Survivor: China’s Winner, Todd

As you can tell by the title of this interview article, Todd was himself a bit surprised at how well he did. But other things surprised him as well when he was watching on TV. For example, he thought Amanda was completely loyal to him and honest with him. What else does Todd have to say about his time on the show? Read on to find out!

RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Todd, and congratulations! Starting at the beginning, you’ve made it quite clear you had a strategy. Before the game even began, what was your plan?

Todd: My plan was to find people that I could align myself with that would work to my advantage. I knew I needed someone smaller than me, someone I could trust, and someone stronger. So I found Courtney, Amanda, and Aaron originally but it turned into James. I had to use them to my advantage to get as far as I could in the game.

RNO: So you planned ahead of time to try to find those types of people?

Todd: I figured if I had someone smaller before the merge, I would be the second target; and if they were with me after the merge, I’d have someone to pull along beside me. I needed someone bigger than me who could help in challenges. And someone I was honest to in the entire game, Amanda, who was also honest to me the entire game. I figured I would probably hurt people throughout the game, but one person, I needed to be true to.

RNO: Why did you need one person to be true to?

Todd: Because it’s always nice to feel like you can trust at least one person, especially in a situation where you think everybody’s lying. I 100% thought Amanda was on my side at all times until I watched TV.

RNO: Some of the other players have suggested that at times it seemed you changed targets just for fun, to see if you could. Was that ever the case?

Todd: You know, there was one time when we did vote off Jean-Robert when I saw Amanda was trying to have a lot of power and I wanted to make sure the game was in my hands. It may have been a sporadic move, but I knew as long as people could see that what I want happens, I had an upper hand in the game.

RNO: Did you ever ask James for one of the idols back?

Todd: Yeah, we had actually made a deal that we would share the idols together if we ever needed them. So I wasn’t worried until we made it to where we did and still he hadn’t given one to me. So blindsiding him was a great idea.

RNO: OK, that partially answers the question I was going to ask of why you didn’t vote out James sooner – but why did it take Amanda suggesting it to vote him out when you did?

Todd: I was trying to build more jury votes by proving my loyalty to him. When it came up that we wanted to vote him out and we voted out Jean-Robert instead, I made it look like I saved his butt. So I was hoping when we did vote him out, he would look at me as his buddy.

RNO: Were you shocked the others didn’t get rid of you in going to the final three?

Todd: I was shocked they didn’t get rid of me at seven or eight! They knew I was a diehard Survivor geek and I was being very manipulative. I’m really really really surprised these people kept me around.

RNO: Why do you think they kept you?

Todd: I can be very persuasive at times. So my guess is I manipulated my way into their trust.

RNO: If you had been voted out at that point, who would have received your jury vote?

Todd: Courtney.

RNO: Why?

Todd: I feel like that is one girl who came and battled those elements like none other. She was completely out of her element, she jumped into a game and she did a great job. She bitched and moaned but she came in second place, which is pretty fantastic.