For Michaela Bradshaw, surviving Survivor is going to come down to a few key factors: a little bit of luck, a few deals here and there, and keeping her eyebrows from telling too much.
“My face is very telling,” the 25-year-old says with a smile you can hear over the phone, during our eight-minute call the day before she and the cast of Survivor: Millennials vs Gen X fly out to Fiji for their 39-day adventure. Based on her own self-assessment, Michaela does not suffer fools easily — and Survivor is a game filled with fools and foolish decisions.
With that said, Michaela knows a thing or two about overcoming challenging odds. During our conversation, she goes into great detail about how she managed to pay off her student loans by the time she turned 23. In other words, Michaela sees money as a powerful motivator, one that’s strong enough to keep her facial expressions in check… or at least to give it the good old college try.
“Michaela, are you really going to let a facial expression cause you to lose something this big? Heck no,” she tells me, and herself. “So you need to learn how to be extra bubbly, how to hide what you feel, and than just find that rock with the camera and tell the camera the truth, and let the people see that happy face all of the time.”
Click here to read Michaela’s bio, and read on for our chat:
Wigler: How are you doing, Michaela?
Michaela: I’m doing fantastic. I’m pretty excited!
Wigler: Freaking out at all?
Michaela: That was yesterday.
Wigler: What happened yesterday?
Michaela: Yesterday, it’s like, you’re excited, and then you’re scared. They take your phone, and it’s like, “Oh my god. This thing is real.” Then you’re sitting there and it’s like, dang! I can’t talk to anybody! It’s like going back to 1992. Who has a beeper? I need to borrow a quarter to use a payphone. It’s crazy. But I’m freaking excited.
Wigler: Are you a fan of the show?
Michaela: Yeah! So, the funny thing about me is that I gave up TV for a couple of years in order to run a business. When I was reached out to about [playing], I started binge-watching Survivor episodes — basically the only television show I’ve watched since October.
Wigler: What’s the appeal? Why are you excited to take this on?
Michaela: It’s a crazy challenge. It tests everything about you that’s social. Part of what I do, with vacation sales, involves learning people. You have to learn people. That’s one thing I’ve messed up a lot on in my own personal life. My thing is that if I don’t care about you as a person, then I just don’t deal with you. But here, you have to learn how to manage all of those dynamics. It’s the ultimate freaking challenge, and an awesome way to [make money]. If you make it all the way, you win a million dollars. So what the heck? Where else can you do that?
Wigler: Going back to the social thing, is that still a weakness for you? When you don’t like someone, do they tend to know it?
Michaela: My face is very telling.
Wigler: Uh oh.
Michaela: Yeah. (Laughs.) But the thing about it is, if you have a weakness and you know about it, you can make adjustments. So I’ve known about this. Now I have a million dollar reason to fix that problem. I’ve found with myself that when you attach money or goals to something I need to fix, I’m ten times better at fixing it, then just fixing it to make somebody feel better. So it’s like, Michaela, are you really going to let a facial expression cause you to lose something this big? Heck no. So you need to learn how to be extra bubbly, how to hide what you feel, and then just find that rock with the camera and tell the camera the truth, and let the people see that happy face all of the time.
Wigler: It sounds like we can look forward to some fun facial expressions from you this season.
Michaela: You know when they have sound effects that go with eyebrows moving? My eyebrows are gonna go POW! These eyebrows and this face are going to be twitching by the end of this thing.
Wigler: Your personal claim to fame is that you’ve paid off all of your student loans. Can you tell me more about that experience?
Michaela: Part of my push in going to college is that I wanted to find a way to be successful. My mom used to work for a big company and made a lot of money, but we never saw her. Then she left that to do something more fulfilling, and on top of life events, ended up being broke. It’s been a financial struggle for my family for a long time. I saw college as a way out. I was at the top of my class in high school. I had lots of offers to go to college in different places. I picked a place that I didn’t know how much it was going to cost me until I got there. It was a real struggle. I had to take out like $15,000 my first year. I worked two or three jobs. I didn’t have really any fun in college, because the whole thing was, when you graduate, you’ll be successful. Then I graduated, and I was looking at these loans, and was like, man, you know what? I don’t want to be in debt like my parents were. I don’t want to fake and front like all these people acting like they have it together, and then they’re piling their bills on the table, deciding which one to pick. So I said, I’ve been broke my whole life. One of these days, I want to be successful and rich and wealthy. But right now, I’m used to being broke. So even though I have income, I’m going to act like I have nothing. I’m going to get this debt off my shoulders. Maybe once I get there, I can figure out how this wealth thing works. So for my first couple of years out of college, I didn’t eat out at lunch. I drove around in my same 1992 Honda Accord back and forth to work every day. I didn’t shop. I didn’t go buy stuff. I lived very poor. I didn’t have cable, I didn’t have Internet, I worked all night in the summer so I didn’t run my AC, and I worked all night in the winter so I didn’t have to run my air. It sucked, but I figured that if you can find a way to pinch pennies, why not find a way to make more money? So in addition to pinching pennies, I made myself more open to other ways of making money, and found out that if you only make a couple of extra hundred dollars a month, if you put that directly toward your debt, you can make it go away. So I ended up paying all of my debt from college a few months before my 23rd birthday.
Wigler: Wow.
Michaela: It was super exciting. Then I was like, “Alright, I’ve done that! I’m not trying to go back in debt.” (Laughs.) So then it was about moving forward from here. It was an exciting thing. It was a big accomplishment. Maybe Survivor can be the next thing I can accomplish.
Wigler: Looking at your bio, your hobbies include cuddling…
Michaela: Yeah. (Laughs.) Only one person though. You can’t cuddle everybody. That makes you a [redacted], I think.
Wigler: Hey, it gets cold out there!
Michaela: You just have to sleep in the middle of the bed, so you can at least switch directions in the middle of the night. But I’m good at it, so maybe they’ll keep me around!
Wigler: The Cuddle Strategy. I like it. You list your reason for being on Survivor as leaving an inheritance for your children’s children. Do you have children?
Michaela: No! Heck no. Children cost money! (Laughs.) I gotta get the money first. The average child costs more than $100,000. I need $100,000 before I can have one.
Wigler: Pet peeves include when incompetent people try to instruct you, when people do things inefficiently or wrong, when you lose or when other people make you lose… Michaela, you do realize you’re about to play Survivor, right?
Michaela: I know. That’s why I’m telling you to get those sound effects ready, because these eyebrows are going to be going ham. I’m putting myself into a place where all of my buttons are going to be pushed. My responses to them, in addition to some luck and other things I’m able to work out, but really my responses to them will determine how far I get in the game. What better way to improve yourself? Make it do or die, man.
Check back every day for more Survivor 33 pre-game interviews.
PREVIOUSLY: Paul Wachter
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.
Survivor: Millennials vs Gen X premieres on September 21.
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