Survivor Kaôh Rōng Winner Michele Fitzgerald Speaks The Truth

It’s not malarky, it’s the truth; after thirty-nine days of battling it out on the beaches of Cambodia, New Jersey bartender Michele Fitzgerald has been crowned the champion of Survivor Kaôh Rōng.

Michele’s low-key game relied on strong social connections, fitting in with the right alliances at the right times, avoiding Tribal Council entirely for an astonishing twenty-two days, and winning crucial challenges during the end game. She didn’t need to be carried, as evidenced by her 5-2-0 victory over fellow finalists Aubry Bracco and Tai Trang — a result that shocked a whole lot of Aubry supporters at home, according to a quick scan of the internet.

I caught up with Michele on the red carpet at the Survivor finale for her take on why she won, her thoughts on the jury twist that sent Neal Gottlieb packing, and her reaction to some of the online chatter throughout the season.

How are you doing, Michele?

This has been crazy. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. Luckily my family has been so supportive. The initial feeling of coming back and getting into regular life, and then you get into this mode of wondering, “Oh, what’s going to happen?” And then it airs… it’s just a lot of ups and downs. A long time coming.

What was your feeling throughout the Final Tribal Council? Did you like your odds?

I really was 50-50. I didn’t know which way the votes were going to fall. People were keeping their mouths shut. I knew I had two for sure. I knew Aubry had two for sure. Then there were some in the middle that felt pretty uncertain to me. I was going in humble and hopeful, and at the end of the day, it paid off.

What’s going through your mind when Nick tells you to speak intelligently? That would rattle me. Pretty weird thing to hear.

It was a very weird thing to hear! I think it speaks to my story a lot. It speaks to how people were perceiving me, as someone they could carry and talk down to and bring through the game as a number. That’s not how I wanted to play. I should have said something really sassy back to him, but I kept my mouth shut. Do you know how many times I’ve gone back to that moment and thought, “You know, why did I not just say, ‘Speak intelligently? Well, clearly I’m intelligent enough to be over here, and you’re the first juror, but whatever!'” [Laughs] That would’ve been great.

When you won the reward to remove a juror, was it clear to you immediately that Neal was the target? Or was it truly as much of a process as it was shown to be?

I wanted to make it a process. I wanted to make sure that I was making the right decision. Impulsively, you think, let’s get Joe out. Because you know that Joe is…

Locked.

Right. He’s locked in on Aubry. There’s no way he’s going anywhere else. But at the same time, Joe’s an upstanding guy. He would never drag my name through the mud, and I knew that. It took me some time to step back and think, “Okay, who’s going to damage my name? Not only who is voting for someone else, but who’s going to bring me down as well?” So, it was a process that I talked through with both of them. The people who they were shielding told me a lot about who they thought they had.

When Neal says what he says to you… is that burned in your memory?

Yeah, it was really awkward. So awkward. [Laughs] I’m pretty sure I was like, “[Expletive] you, man!”

Never has an F-bomb been more fairly deployed.

Seriously! I was like, “[Expletive] you! Get outta here with that.” But in that moment, I really did feel for him. He got pulled from the game, and the one impression he could have made — the one thing he had control over — was that jury vote. I stripped him of that. That hurts, on a personal level. For someone who really loves this game and really wanted to play… those words he spoke hurt me, but I knew that in turn my actions hurt him. I took it with a grain of salt. We joke about it now.

If Neal is there at Final Tribal, and he’s able to give a big speech for Aubry, does anything change?

I don’t think so. It adds one vote for her. Seeing the votes tonight, I don’t think anything shifted. Cydney’s a strong willed woman; I don’t think Neal’s going to sway her. I don’t think he was going to sway Debbie, either; they had been at Ponderosa for a how long now? If he hadn’t swayed her by then, I don’t think he’s going to sway her with one last upstanding speech. So I think it would have been an additional vote for Aubry, but it just wouldn’t look good for me. And it throws you off. You get in a rhythm of speaking. To have someone just get up there and bash you? My morale would’ve been down.

How does it play out if Cydney’s in there instead of Aubry? That’s what you would have preferred.

Yeah, it is what I would have preferred, just because she had been my loyal friend for so long in the game. I would have loved to sit next to her, since I love and respect her so much. But I’m not sure where the votes would have landed. I think Scot and Jason were very bitter toward her. I still would have Julia. As far as I know, Nick said he loves Cydney’s game the most, so I think he would have voted for her. But I don’t know. I’m really not sure. You don’t know until you’re at tribal. Maybe Scot and Jason could have gotten over it and said, “Props to you! You were able to get rid of us, and you recognized the threats we were, so good on you.” But it played out the way it played out.

How awesome did it feel to roundhouse kick the final four immunity puzzle?

That was bad ass. I watched that back tonight and was like, “Damn, girl! You get it!”

You won some very important challenges here along the way…

Totally. I felt on a roll. I felt my energy moving up and up and up through this part of the game, and I wanted to run with it. It lit a fire under my butt. I knew I was on the outs. I knew the only way I’m getting out of it is through me. So, pick it up, girlfriend! Move that ass up because there’s no other way. I just put it into another gear and I did it.

You avoided Tribal Council until Day 22. When you finally get there, you’re voting out Nick, someone you were close with for a very long time. How nervous were you when you finally arrived?

I was incredibly nervous about whatever the repercussions of this move were going to be. To make a huge move on your first Tribal is intimidating, but my relationship with Cydney — which was downplayed on the show — we had talked about voting out Nick ever since the early days of Chan Loh. We were talking about it for a very long time. We knew this was a path for us. As soon as he lost that immunity challenge, it was something we immediately discussed. Then we talked to a few other people, including Julia. We weighed it out. How willing are you to move into a new alliance that will be stronger for you in the end? My relationship with Cydney was way more personal than my relationship with Nick, who wanted to downplay who I am — or I could be accepted for who I was by Cydney, who saw me as a strong person.

The Julia vote must have been another difficult one.

It was. But I’m the one who suggested that vote. Being left out of the Scot vote was a really bad thing for my game. It could have gone a different way; the idol could have been played and someone else had gotten bounced out, and it could’ve been a great move. But knowing that I was on the outs, I had to get back in. Here was Julia, also on the outs, someone I wanted to work with so bad, but the biggest way for me to get back in is to say, “Hey, trust me. If you don’t trust her, then let’s eliminate that, and we’ll do this alone with us.” It was a hard experience for me, but I tried to play with logic rather than emotion, and know that those relationships I built would let them rise above to see it as a move, rather than a personal dig.

How much did you pay attention to the online chatter about your guaranteed victory?

Oh, the winner’s edit. [Laughs] I wasn’t really paying attention to it, and then I get tagged in all of this stuff on Twitter, and I’m really confused! Because I’m a Survivor fan, but never at that level of that world. So I start paying attention. I start looking out for the cues. I wanted to stay humble and not get my hopes up, so as much as I loved seeing that stuff, and as much as I was hoping that what they were seeing was actually the truth, I also knew I was sitting next to someone amazing. So I didn’t know.

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.