The past several weeks of Survivor have featured some of the most shocking and brutal personal attacks in the show’s 30 season history — and now, the person at the heart of those attacks is no longer in the running for the million-dollar prize.
Shirin Oskooi, a Yahoo Executive from San Francisco, became the fourth member of the jury in this week’s episode of Survivor: Worlds Apart, the latest casualty of an uncrackable six-person alliance’s march toward the end game. Well, seemingly uncrackable, at least; although the six have yet to turn on each other, a gutsy bluff involving Mike Holloway and a hidden immunity idol exposed some chinks in the alliance’s armor, even if the move didn’t work out in his friend and ally Shirin’s favor.
But getting voted out is far from the greatest source of pain Shirin faced during her time on Survivor. She was the repeated subject of mocking and verbal abuse from some of her fellow contestants, especially from Will Sims II, after he publicly accused her of lacking friends, family, and a soul. The comments were especially vicious given Shirin’s personal history as a survivor of domestic abuse. Between what Will said, and a litany of comments from Maine castaway Dan Foley (“Somebody should slap her,” he told the camera some episodes ago), Shirin’s Survivor experience was an emotional one, to say the least.
When I had the chance to speak with Shirin this week, we put the negativity she experienced aside. We didn’t talk about Will and Dan, and the hurtful comments they made. We didn’t talk about the ugly. We talked about the good. We talked about Shirin the Survivor super-fan, the person who emerged early on in Worlds Apart as a fan-favorite castaway, what with her wide-eyed wonder upon gazing at monkey sex, her jittery happy dances before reward challenges, and her endless wealth of Survivor trivia she used to benefit herself and others in the game. We talked about her history as a fan, her aspirations as a juror, her thoughts on the season’s don’t-call-it-a-vote-doubler twist, and more — including the good that’s going to come out of the bad she suffered on Survivor.
Shirin, how’re you doing?
I’m doing surprisingly well! I mean, you saw it. I got voted out with a smile on my face. I have a smile on my face today. It was a tough journey for me, but I had so much fun out there. Some really ugly things happened to me. We’re turning those things into good. I made these beautiful lifelong friendships. Love and humanity and goodness exist.
Let’s focus on the good today. There was a lot of ugly out there, and I know you’re getting asked all about it in other interviews, so I’d rather just talk about the fun Survivor stuff, if you’re cool with that.
Yay! Yes!
What’s your first memory as a Survivor fan?
My first memory as a Survivor fan… I mean, I watched the show from season one, but I think the thing that really stands out is the Sue Hawk speech. It was life changing and amazing. The earliest memory that stands out the most is how Elizabeth Filarski [in Survivor: The Australian Outback] managed to get the Colby-Tina alliance to vote out Jerri and Amber before her and Rodger. That made me realize, holy crap, hope exists. If you’re a really good person, if you’re likable, if you can turn people around on you and get them to make life easier for you, they can help you go further, and it’s worth it.
Did you ever skip a season? Or were you watching from season one, all the way through now?
I kept going all the way through. I almost stopped after Survivor Thailand. After Thailand, I was like, “Ugh, I can’t do this anymore.” But halfway through Amazon, I said, “Alright, this is ridiculous.” I’d recorded all of [the episodes], I just hadn’t kept up with it. I went back to episode one of Amazon and pounded through it. It was such an amazing season, that I was catapulted right back into it.
Do you have a favorite underrated season? A season you feel doesn’t get enough love, but one that you hold near and dear to your heart?
Gabon. The gameplay was [expletive deleted], but holy [expletive deleted], the people. You have Randy Bailey, you have Corinne, you have Crystal Cox. You have Crystal Cox! Going up! To the voting box! And loudly, for the first time ever, saying, “YOU HAVE MADE MY LIFE HELL FROM DAY ONE. FORGET YOU. GO HOME. GOODBYE.” And then you have Randy Bailey at that same Tribal going up there, saying, “This is not strategic! This is strictly personal!” And the fake idols? I can’t even. I can’t even. Gabon is like… whoo! So underrated.
While you were playing, were you thinking about Nicaragua, Redemption Island, or even the season that had just finished filming on the same beach you were playing on? How often did you stop and recognize that you were literally standing in the footsteps of people who had played Survivor?
Oh, yeah. Totally. The White Collar beach, which was also Exile Island [on San Juan del Sur] because it was [expletive deleted] miserable, that was also the merge tribe beach for Redemption Island. I remember having a moment thinking, “Boston Rob played at this camp. Right here.” I geeked out about that a little bit.
If I ever played Survivor, I would have a very hard time not geeking out about everything. How tough was it to reign in your excitement? It seemed borderline impossible.
Well, clearly not impossible, because toward the end of the game, I totally reigned it in. I only selectively brought it up. But in the early days, it was tough. There’s not a whole lot to talk about. Once you run through your family, where you grew up, what you studied in college if you went to college, then you’re kind of like, “Alright, what do we talk about for the rest of the 24 hours of the day?” Naturally, you’re playing Survivor, so that’s something you all have in common. You start talking about it.
Unfortunately, the only person who loved talking about it as much as me was Max. It’s weird, because I don’t have a ton of friends in real life who love Survivor, so I’m just geeking out by myself in front of the TV with a few friends, but not all that often. But something inside me exploded. I think it was just having Max with me. We got so excited to have a peer in Survivor knowledge, a person to talk about it with, while playing the game. And that was our downfall, right? We really should have reigned it in.
So, we know about the bunny. What else did you do to prepare for the game?
I hired a survivalist who trained me. I did a one-day, eight-hour training day with a survivalist who taught me how to make fire, how to weave palm fronds, how to test if fruit was poisonous or not. For the most part, the main thing it helped me with was how to make fire. I won’t even go into why White Collar didn’t have fire. I’m going to skip that.
Not a story we want to hear?
It’s not interesting, it’ll bore you. The other thing I did… it’s funny, all the skinny dudes on the show were trying to put on weight for going out there. I was the opposite. I was trying to drop weight. Last night’s challenge was a perfect example of why. There are so many weight-based challenges on the show that having lower weight is totally beneficial to you. I had almost 30 pounds on Carolyn. So on that holding onto the log challenge, and then this last one holding a quarter of your body weight, I’m at a distinct disadvantage compared to Carolyn. She’s also a badass, and I don’t want to take away anything from that; she’s a challenge beast. But every single pound you’re holding onto counts when you’re starving out there. So I was trying to drop a lot of weight. I worked out a ton. I was getting used to being calorie deprived. That was probably the biggest thing I did. I was swimming every day and doing intense cardio sprints and that kind of training.
When did you try out for Survivor for the first time?
When I was 21, which was, at this point, 11 years ago, I started applying. At the time, you had to be 21 to apply for the show. It took me seven years to even get my first callback. I applied every year. I just assumed they didn’t see my audition video or whatever. I just assumed it was a random selection, like maybe 20% of the auditions sent in were actually viewed, so as long as I kept submitting one, at some point I would fall into that random 20% distribution. So I was sending them in every year. VHS, DVD, and then the online submission. The first time I heard from them was seven years in, for [Survivor: Caramoan – Fans vs Favorites]. I was cut before finals.
Well, you made it onto Survivor 30, which is obviously a monumental moment in the history of the show. What were some of your bucket list items in being on Survivor? Like you already said, you were smiling ear-to-ear as Jeff snuffed your torch. Were you looking forward to that in a weird way?
Yeah, I definitely had a bucket list. It’s funny, because there were tangible ways that my super-fan status helped people in the game. My knowledge got everyone their loved ones letters. On my bucket list: coconut popcorn, crispy rice, going on a reward — and I mean going externally to a reward, which I got to do several times. Making the merge… and the top of my list was making the jury, probably more so than winning the game, to be honest. That’s an attitude I’d change if I ever went back. But making the jury was so huge to me.
Once you hit that stage, once you’re on the jury, did you start thinking about the pantheon of great jurors — the Eliza Orlins of the Survivor world — and how you would fit into that?
Once we were in the jury stage of the game, I was playing harder than I played the entire game. I wasn’t thinking about being a juror. I was thinking about how the crap do I get to the end with enough jury votes to win? I was constantly hustling and trying to work my way into a positive numbers situation. But once I got voted out and became a juror? It was incredibly important to me. I wasn’t thinking about being the best juror of all time, but I did know… look, it’s obvious that I have Eliza-style facial expressions. I drink the Eliza juice. My face does all kinds of crazy [expletive]. [Laughs] So I knew… I didn’t want to look like a try hard. I didn’t want to look like a Gilderoy Lockhart in this situation, trying to get airtime. At this point in the game, I’m trying to think about reigning it in, but I assure you, I drank the Eliza juice to my dying day.
The other thing that was super important to me was, “What am I going to say at Final Tribal?” I’m looking at everyone left in the game and I started thinking about what I was going to say, from the day I was voted out. They show me in my Ponderosa video writing a lot in that notebook, and it looks like I’m writing a guacamole recipe — which I was! However, most of that writing I was doing was writing down my thoughts and notes for the kinds of things I wanted to talk about and wanted to learn.
So, we have things to look forward to in your jury speech.
Oh, yeah.
What’s your take on the vote doubler? This is a big new twist for Survivor. How do you feel about it?
I like it. I like it as a concept. I like the idea of people having a second vote. But I don’t like that people call it a vote doubler.
What would you call it?
Having a second vote. The distinction is… saying vote doubler implies that you’re going to vote for the same person twice. But strategically, I think you could actually vote for two different people. I think there’s a lot of interesting things you can do with it. What I like about it also is that it changes the game now where even numbered Tribal Councils are interesting. Now all of the sudden when you have six people remaining or eight people remaining, you put your majority in a swing position at these otherwise boring Tribal Councils. The issue I take with it is is that we don’t know it’s out there. It feels wrong that they would introduce such a new and different twist that the rest of us didn’t know existed.
Looking back on it all, what’s the big win you’re taking away from your time on Survivor?
The big win is that overall, it was a positive experience, and I’ve been able to turn the ugly things into something positive. I am donating money to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and I’m trying to raise awareness on issues of sexism, bullying and abuse. Anything negative we’re seeing on the show, I’m trying to turn into a positive.
And I’ve made incredible friendships with amazing people. Shoutout to Jenn, Sierra, Hali — and Michael Anthony Loving Holloway, who showed me that real men and real human beings step in and help each other out when someone’s being attacked. Real people are loving and say, “Forget this game for a million dollars. I’m a human being. These people are human beings. We need to do the human thing in this situation.”
Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, Comic Book Resources, Digital Trends 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. Josh hosts podcasts about film and television on PostShowRecaps.com.
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