In his online “Survivor: San Juan Del Sur” bio, Drew Christy says of his Personal Claim To Fame: ” I seem to pull off the unthinkable with ease. People will ask me… How did you do that?”
On Wednesday night's “Survivor,” Drew absolutely pulled off the unthinkable. In 44 minutes of television, Drew went from a position of power in a tribe that couldn't lose, a tribe on which the women were on a minority and couldn't create any sort of meaningful alliance to having his torch snuffed. Along the way, he decided to throw a challenge, but didn't tell anybody, led a campaign to vote out Kelley, but couldn't get a single person to join him, and managed to mobilize the tribe's women so that, amidst the chaos Drew created, they were able to vote him out in an impressive blindside.
Drew pulled off the unthinkable and I was, indeed, eager to ask the 25-year-old traveling sales rep how he did it.
Unfortunately, I was out of town this week and had to conduct my “Survivor” exit interview with Drew via email through the show's team. The email option is one I'm tremendously grateful to have when, every season or two, I just can't do my normal phone interview. But doing interviews in this way makes it impossible to ask follow-up questions or to reask questions when queries come up that the subject would prefer not to answer.
In the case of my Drew interview, I probably would have wanted follow-ups to nearly every question and I would have wanted second shots at the five or six questions that didn't get answered at all. It's too bad, because Drew says in one of the responses that he didn't think the edit was a good representation of his time out there, but several questions that would have let him go into depth on his own interpretations went unanswered.
Don't expect illumination here…
HitFix: John Rocker told me last week about watching his elimination with a few of you and mentioned that some trash-talking about him was involved. Did you hear any corresponding trash talk from your fellow castaways as things played out last night?
Drew Christy: I think most of the cast members are very opinionated and characters in their own right. Of course there was some trash talking involved but it was all in good fun of the game and most of us are good friends now.
HitFix: Let's look at some things chronologically. You were on Exile and got the Idol clue. We didn't see, but did you search at all? Would that have made any difference, do you think?
Drew Christy: The Idol clue was for an Idol back at my camp. I am pretty sure Keith or Jeremy had already found it at that point. If I had an idol after that tribal and throwing the challenge I would have played it. I felt very threatened after all of the drama.
HitFix: The throwing of the Immunity Challenge. Why was that so urgent for you and, more importantly, why did it have to be something you did alone?
Drew Christy: Throwing the Immunity Challenge was an awful call. I regret it every day. I wish I did more survivor homework before I did that. I was growing impatient and I wanted to get some of the people off my tribe. The snakes to me were Reed and Kelley.
HitFix: You sounded convinced that there were snakes at camp that you needed to get rid of, but then you got back to camp and nobody seemed to be able to agree who the snakes were. Did that concern you?
Drew Christy: Hell yeah it concerned me. Something my alliance and I had talked out for days fell apart in seconds. Everyone wanted to do their own thing.. None of the guys could agree.
HitFix: The big question: Why was Kelley the person you needed to target? We've seen her do literally nothing this season, so what have we been missing?
Drew Christy: Kelley was threatening to me because she was targeting Jon, my closest ally and myself. There was something about her that rubbed me wrong. I saw her being a big threat to me and my alliance later in the game. She had something evil about her. She was the chick to get out. No one wanted to vote for Reed anymore… he seemed to lay low after the 3rd or 4th day.
HitFix: Were there lessons about leadership that you learned from this experience?
Drew Christy: Yeah, I learned lots of things from this experience. One is if you have to say you”re a badass you probably are not. Regardless I did some pretty badass stuff out there that they of course decided not to show. I wish the edit came out differently for me but it's reality tv you know. There”s gotta be a bad guy.
HitFix: The edit was pretty harsh on you from the “laziness” of last episode to all of the things that went wrong this episode. Did that seem unrepresentative or was that close to how things went down out there?
Drew Christy: I think that it definitely wasn't a good representation of what actually happened out there. I built the shelter, led the team in challenges and opened coconuts for the girls with blistered hands. I was nice to everyone out there and tried to make sure everyone was comfortable as possible.
HitFix: My last question has been the same for all Blood vs Water contestants. We saw how competitive you and Alec are with each other. At what point was it going to be OK for you to write his name down?
Drew Christy: I would have never written down my brother”s name…Regardless of what I said in interviews.
Other “Survivor: San Juan Del Sur” exit interviews:
John Rocker
Val Collins
Nadiya Anderson