Traditionally, Survivor features anywhere between sixteen and twenty contestants per season, but there’s always a hidden player on the field. Her name’s Lady Luck, and this week, her fortune frowned on professional poker player Anna Khait.
The Brooklyn Beauty entered the fifth episode of Survivor: Kaôh Rōng in a promising position, closely aligned with Julia Sokolowski and Michele Fitzgerald, at the center of a tribe with strong numbers. Then came the three-word bombshell: “Drop your buffs.” Brains, Beauty and Brawn were destroyed in seconds, with all three of the Beauty women scattered in different directions. Given her minority position on the new Gondol tribe against three Brains and a Brawn, Anna’s odds of surviving the swap were tragically low… and they plummeted to zero as soon as the tribe lost immunity.
It was a swift and sudden fall from grace for Anna, viewed by many fans as a preseason favorite to win the whole game, given her experience as a professional gamer. That’s both the beauty and the grotesque truth of the tribe swap: No matter how it shakes out, someone’s game always gets screwed.
Here’s Anna’s take on the swap, the origin story of the Beauty alliance, and her take on the season’s breakout sensation: Tai Trang.
Why are we talking right now? Aren’t you supposed to be the winner?
You know, I had a lot of people pick me as their winner pick! [Laughs] And it’s very disappointing. I feel bad! I feel like I disappointed family, friends, and fellow Survivors and stuff. It’s very disappointing, to not even make the merge, which I really wanted to make. It stinks. But luck changes. It changes really quick.
It does. The tribe swap has taken down many promising Survivor players in the past…
And in this game, there’s a lot of twists and turns. There’s a lot of skill required, but there’s also a lot of luck, just like in poker. You have to balance how to make the best decisions, and sometimes, there’s just nothing you can do but try your best. I fought for my life and they didn’t show some stuff, but I really fought. It just so happened that it didn’t work out in my favor, and that’s okay. It happens sometimes. You learn and you move on.
You mention that they didn’t show some stuff about your struggle to stay in the game. What didn’t we see?
Tai and I were just going against each other, that kind of thing, where it was a situation where another Beauty was going to come in and take our place. So Tai kind of had to go after me, and I had to go after Tai. It’s not that they didn’t show anything… but it was just a sucky situation where the twist kind of entailed a Beauty coming in to take a Beauty’s spot, so they didn’t have an option in terms of getting rid of who they had to go after. The Brains tribe doesn’t want to lose a member, so they have to make sure a Beauty goes home, because Julia will enter [the tribe] in the next episode. They had to make sure they didn’t lose their numbers. I was very aware of that. But I fought as much as I could. I thought Tai could use his idol and take control of the game.
Going into Tribal, did you think Tai’s plan to use the idol was still in place?
I did. I was going to come after Tai [at Tribal] like I normally would, so as not to raise any alarms, to stick with the plan. I’m going to come after Tai, he’s going to come after me, and then hopefully we would blindside them. I was definitely shocked when he didn’t use the idol. It didn’t make much sense to me. But I understand it was early in the season to use it. I thought maybe Tai would want to take the game in his hands, and Julia would come in, and the three of us would take the game over, make the merge, reunite with Michele, and glide through and work our butts off… but it is what it is.
How was your relationship with Tai? In this situation, you’re clearly positioned against each other, but before the swap, did you have much of a working relationship?
I fell in love with Tai out there, actually.
You and all of America.
I know! I told him that while we were out there: “You are going to be America’s favorite. You’ll see! You’re going to be fan-favorite, I promise you.” I fell in love with him out there. I was really rooting for him. The girls kind of liked Nick, and I kind of saw through that, so I was really fighting for Tai. They didn’t really show that, but I’d fight for him. I always had his back, and even though it’s a game, I adored him. But it’s a situation where if it’s you or Tai, you have to make the best decision for yourself, and the best decision for me was going after him and putting him under the bus. It sucked, but I knew it was what I had to do — until he showed me the idol.
How does the situation play if it’s Julia on your tribe, and Tai’s the one exiled to Brawn beach? Do you still kick her under the bus?
That situation would have been a lot different. Well, not different… it would have been the same circumstance where we have to go against each other, but Julia was the one person I was closest to in the game. It would be really hard to throw her under the bus. I would try as much as I could to work with her. But with Tai, he was injured, his thighs were a little hurt, he couldn’t go in the water… I wanted to make sure I got him out and Julia would come in and we would work together. If she had come in [while I was still in the game], I would have been fighting with her, not against her.
In the episode, Julia says she hasn’t told anyone that she’s 18. Did she keep her age a secret from you?
Actually, the only person Julia told her age to was me, and she’s the only person I told that I play poker. Right away, she told me she’s 18. I told her about me five days in. I thought I wasn’t going to tell anyone. I even kept it from Michele. It took a while for us to get in with Michele — about day four — but once we got in with Michele, I still kept it a secret from everyone except Julia. Her and I were really close out there. I had her back one hundred percent, which is crazy to say in Survivor, but she was my girl and I had her back. I didn’t want to do her dirty. It’s a game where you have to do people dirty, and if I got far enough, maybe I would have had to, but in the moment, she and I were really close, and Michele came in a little later.
Why did it take so long to win over Michele?
For the first few days, she was kind of with Nick and Tai. I wanted to work with me, Julia, Nick and Tai. Michele didn’t talk to me too much on the first day. Maybe it was my own insecurity or my own first impressions, but then we started talking, and there was more strategy going on. I knew that Nick was thinking about coming after me, and that Michele was talking to Nick. I told Jules that if Michele comes to me and tells me what Nick’s saying to her, then I thought I could trust her. And she came right up to me on day four and said, “Anna, Nick said this.” So we were set. We pinky swore that we were going far. So I had their backs. I trusted them.
It sounds like you were the glue between Michele and Julia, then?
Yeah. I think they had their own relationship, but it took a few days for us to really trust each other, which is a crazy word to say in Survivor, when you’re playing for a million dollars. But you have to trust someone. I was very lucky that I knew I could trust them. I knew that Julia was young and if she tried to lie to me, I’d see through it very quickly. And Michele, I really trusted her too. I love those girls. It was fun to play with them.
You just hinted at a story about Nick coming after you. Right now, we don’t know all that much about how he’s playing. He spoke this week, which was a shock! What are we missing with Nick?
It was a day four or five kind of thing. I just didn’t trust him. My gut told me not to trust him. My gut told me that I’d like Tai — he’s playing the game. Watch him. Pay attention. Keep your eyes open. That’s what I was thinking. Nick rubbed me the wrong way. I knew he was playing the game, right away. Having that gap between the guys brought the girls closer together, and then Tai looking for the idol solidified that. The whole Nick situation, which they didn’t show, really solidified the girls.
How about Caleb? How important was he in your plans?
We were getting close with Caleb for sure. Julia told me he was booted in Big Brother in a very dishonest way, where he was very loyal to his guys… I understood that for the first few days, he wasn’t really playing the game, and I understood later on why: Caleb takes time to get to know people. He takes time becoming loyal to people. I knew that he was a loyal guy who takes time, and once you do get in with him, he would be loyal and strong. I already trusted the girls, and he would have been a very good guy to have on our side. Once he was [pulled from the game], the first thing I thought about was his health and his life. That was the most important thing. I hoped he was okay, and he was, thankfully. But then you go back to camp and think: “Wait a minute… that really changes up the game.” We were in a spot where it was either Nick or Tai [next], so that moment didn’t really effect it, but in the long run? We had the numbers. Six beauties, five brains, three brawn. So it sucked. It was also just a hard moment for all of us to go through. But we still had the numbers, as far as the women on our tribe. You have to move on and adjust.
After the swap, how much did you explore fractures between Joe, Aubry and Peter? Did you have any sense that Peter was on the outs with Brains?
Right away, Peter told me I couldn’t trust Joe. And Joe, he’s not very strategic, and the first thing he said to me was, “I don’t like Peter. He’s on the bottom.” I thought this was a great way for me to wiggle my way in there. I was trying to figure out as much as I could for myself. But my read on Peter was that I couldn’t trust him. He seemed very schemey. Then body language came into play with Joe. He stopped looking at me. When Joe stopped looking me in the eye, I knew I was in deep trouble, so I kept working and working to get Tai out. I knew then I couldn’t get Peter out, because they wanted to hang onto those numbers.
What was your impression of Scot?
I liked Scot out there. I knew he was there to play. I knew he was a big swing vote. I was trying to talk to Scot as much as possible to make sure he would play with me. I knew he was afraid of the girls’ alliance. I wanted to make him feel okay about that: “Dude, we’re not really that close. I’m not close with Michele. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I didn’t know which way he was going to go. I did my best to make him feel comfortable with me. I tried to make an alliance with him, but I wasn’t sure. When Tai showed us the idol, I thought it really tied me with Tai and Scot. I thought I’d have to have Scot’s back for a while until I needed to cut him.
What’s your final take on the way your game ended?
I had an awesome time on the show. Man, it’s a whirlwind. You don’t really realize it while watching the show, but once you’re out there playing the game, it changes every single day. It’s a lot of fun. I had a blast out there. I wish I had the chance to go back. The challenges are fun. The whole thing is an amazing experience that makes you reflect on how lucky you are living in America, and people are not as fortunate living the lives we have here. I’m very grateful and feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to play. Being a fan for a long time, I never thought I’d have a chance to actually play the game. When you’re out there, you have to strategize and adjust and think about everything you want to put into reality. You try your best and you stay aware and make the best decisions for yourself.
It’s just a big life lesson and life experience. I would never get that chance outside of the show to put my people reading abilities to the test, to put my personal skills to the test… it was a lot of fun to get the chance to do that. I hope the fans loved it. I tried my best. I got screwed with numbers. Sometimes the luck is not on your side. You try your best to make it work in your favor, but sometimes you get a bad piece of the pie and you have to live with it.
Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Comic Book Resources and more. He is the co-author of The Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.
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