TVLINE | OK, last Sage question, promise. What was your take on all of her wild facial reactions?
I think Sage’s facial expressions are iconic and hilarious and as a fan, I’m almost so happy to be part of such an interesting dynamic with Sage. I think Sage is just very true to who she is, just like I’m very true to who I am, which is why we kind of created this fun yin-yang dynamic and still do. So I love Sage and I love her faces. It was obviously hard to see because behind the annoyance is a certain [agitation] with me, and so it’s hard to feel that, but we’ve talked so much since then that we’re really good now. The game is really hard and when you’re out there, the pressure and the tension and the anxiety and the cortisol, it’s a lot. So you can take one small emotion and you add the intensity… It can lead to really intense moments and uncomfortable dynamics. So, I love Sage. I love her faces. That’s how I feel about it.
TVLINE | Let’s change gears. You wrote down Jawan’s name. Savannah is seriously irked by the guy. What’s the deal there?
Jawan’s probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life. Jawan’s heart is actually bigger than his physical body. I think strategically, getting his footing was a little difficult early in the game. My vote against Jawan was nothing personal because me and Jawan actually created an alliance on Day 1, minute one. He came up to me with an idea for an alliance and I obviously said yes, but throughout the first beginning days of the game, he was idol hunting. It was hard to feel like I could fully trust him.
Where I was at in the game, I had also just created the Family Alliance, which didn’t get shown as the “Family Alliance.” I wanted to bring in Rizo, Kristina, Steven, Alex and then Blue Sophi. So my mindset was that going into merge, I want to honor this alliance to some degree and have options to work with, while also still holding on to my Uli 4 because it was always my goal to get back to Rizo and Savannah and Nate. And so getting Jawan out, it felt like it would kind of cool down the Uli/Hina war, plus give me and Sage, who I did want to work with — I wanted to work with a lot of people, which obviously got tricky — but it would have given me and Sage more options to work with Hina and reconnect me with Uli. And I knew that I could tell them something that would help them understand why I voted out Jawan because a lot of things happened when Jawan came over that they didn’t show.
TVLINE | Can you elaborate on that a bit?
So Jawan came over and was just highlighting how close Blue Sophi, Rizo and Savannah and Nate were getting. So there’s a small part of me that felt like, “OK, I expected them to get closer, but maybe I’m not as Uli 4 with them, as I originally thought.” So maintaining that opportunity to work with Hina through Steven was really important. And so that’s where my mindset was with that strategy. And then I could tell them, “Well, Jawan came over and said that you guys were getting really close over there.” So I wasn’t nervous about repairing and reconnecting with Uli because we were super tight. Me and Savannah were super, super tight early in the game. So I felt like reconnecting would be relatively easy and then I would still have the opportunity to work with Hina as well, versus if I voted out Steven, then Kristina, Alex, all of them, would have been like, “What?”
TVLINE | Any regrets from your time out there or maybe something you would’ve done differently?
I have no regrets at all. I went out there to emotionally connect with people. There was kind of this concept of like, “Is it sincere or is it strategy?” And my strategy was to be sincere, was to really care about people 1) because I kind of knew I was gonna have to lean more on my social skills than my strategic skills, and so it was really important to me to go out there and care about people. I knew that those relationships would hopefully give me opportunities in the game. But 2) it also just made playing the game so much more fun, where I got to have such beautiful conversations with Rizo or Nate or Savannah or Kristina about their families and their jobs and their dynamics. When you’re out there, you’re only competing in challenges so often, talking strategy so often. So for me, I would never say I wish I connected with these people less. I would never say I wish I asked them less questions about their faith or their family or their jobs. I would never take that away.
When that first tribe swap [happened], it wasn’t gonna work for me to be like, “Oh, Shannon’s just at the bottom, she’s weak, let’s just bring her along.” They weren’t gonna buy that. I think Sage kind of knew I was working with the Uli 4. I wanted to give it my all. I wanted to play super hard and if it worked great. If it didn’t, that’s OK too. I feel like I was true to myself, I was true to my heart, but I also gave it my all strategically as well. I wanted to play hard and I did.
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