Andrew Savage, veteran of the spectacular Survivor: Pearl Islands and leader of the ill-fated Morgan tribe, reclines on a bed in my cabana, in Cambodia, with an oscillating fan blowing against his sweat-covered brow. This is a thing that is happening.
When I ask Savage how he’s feeling, he responds with one word: “Anxious.” He’s not alone. I’m sitting across from a Survivor legend, someone that my college-aged self would never believe in a million years he would ever meet, and someone that my present self never believed would play Survivor again. And yet, here we are, on the eve of Second Chance. Anxiety indeed.
It’s almost twelve years exactly since Savage first set sail on Survivor, according to the man himself. He tells me that certain aspects of the experience remain just the same now as they were back then. (“The weather,” he says. “It smells like Survivor.”) But much has changed, too.
“This is different,” he tells me. “It’s a different vibe. Different people. This is really serious.”
Savage and the other players are on lockdown and cannot speak with one another until the game begins, but when he looks at the cast, on body language alone, he hears two words loud and clear: “Game on.”
“These 19 folks are serious, serious contestants,” he says. “We all love Survivor, and it’s not often in your life that your dream materializes before you, when it’s a real long shot. I think everyone realizes that and seizes that notion, and they’re going to deliver.”
Savage speaks a lot about the game as it is now versus the game as it was then, in 2003, when he competed against Rupert the pirate and Johnny Fairplay the piss-ant in the hot heat of Panama. “Back then, you hit the beach, you make a shelter, you find a water source, and you let the game come to you,” he recalls. “You talk to some folks. You see if you have some commonalities there. You see if I like someone or don’t like someone. That’s not the deal anymore.”
What’s the new deal, then? For Savage, it’s about “figuring out how to be a few steps ahead of everyone, being vigilant about whether things are going your way or not, where the blindside is coming from, and having a poker face. I am hyper aware of that. I realize that the first hour to two hours on that beach could lay the foundation for how far you go in this game.”
“You have to grab the game,” he says. “You have to lasso it, wrestle it down, almost beat it into submission, and see where the cards fall.”
He talks a passionate game, for a man twelve years removed from Survivor. It’s captivating, listening to his perspective on how the play style has evolved. And yet, as I look at Savage, sitting on the bed, his back against the wall, legs stretched out (seriously, at 51 years young, the man is still “very fit, mentally and physically,” by his own diagnosis and obviously mine), I see ghosts in his eyes. Somewhere in his gaze, I can see the Pearl Islands.
When I ask him if he’s reflective about his first season, given his comment on how it’s almost twelve years to the day since he first began his Survivor adventure, he shakes his head. “I’ve moved on,” he insists. Moments later, we’re talking about Lillian Morris and Ryan Shoulders, and for a few minutes at least, we’ve moved back to the past.
ON THE NEXT PAGE: Outwit, Outplay, Outcast
View the original at Parade or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+