Mark Wales Interview: Australian Survivor

0:00 Welcome back to the nullified tag where we've got the tnt takes for you on australian survivor blood versus water i am here today with the champion of australian survivor blood versus water mark wales mark how are you good mate enjoying it's been a hectic week so glad i can have a bit of recovery and an easy chat to you know to reflect on it all yeah well you know with me in any case i'm a i'm a big fan of yourself and sam so i think this podcast will be pretty straightforward i'll try and keep the i'll hold you accountable for some but i'll be as far as possible on the podcast no go hard so firstly mark just sort of curious to know you know you played this game before and it's been a while since you came back to play this time around did you ever think that this was going to be in the cards for you to come back to australian survivor did you always want to keep that door open or did you feel like when you left the previous time you know it was it was a great experience but it's a it's a one-and-done deal i think over time i was like you know i probably won't go back because we played okay but we didn't do anything too dramatic you know maybe there's an option if you do second chances or something like that but i kind of mentally made sure i'd moved on a bit but then when i heard there was blood versus water in the wings i was like oh that's interesting because clearly sammy and i are a

1:20 Product of the show in a lot of ways so our blood versus water return would make a lot of sense and when we got the call we'd had a rough year we'd been our house had been damaged by storm and yeah when we got the call we're like yeah of course of course we'll play and we were excited because we'd watch the show and i felt like we were ready to do it better second time around so yeah we're ready to go were you a fan of australian survivor the first time when you went out there to play or was this something that was quite new to you no it was new to me and i did as much work as i could but you really do need it's like a long novel you can't just read the back and look at the pictures and hope that's going to be enough like you've actually got to get involved in the shows and watch the machinations and the moves and the gameplay to understand some of the traps that are in a game like survivor because there is a lot of skill there's a lot of easy areas you can make early when you're a rookie player and you just got to avoid those traps i didn't first time around and second time around i was like i'm not making those simple errors again i'm going to try and put as much effort into playing a strong strategic game as i can yeah definitely saw the difference very early on this season were there certain players that you sort of looked up to or thought i really like what they did in the game and i'll try and take

2:40 Elements of it because i know it's very difficult every person ideally when they go out there wants to play their own game but were these certain players that you thought oh no i'll take a little bit of this i'll take a little bit of that and put it into my game as well what was interesting is each player i'd spoken to that was a strong player from the aussie series all had like one key takeaway and each one of them was different and each one of them was really valid like say luke toki for example he's like you don't actually have to lie about everything you can just choose your moments and be really careful and just be open and honest and that can actually really help your game so that was one ak was like look take out a threat someone who's like you someone in the team who's indispensable physically like take them out and then you'll be more important to the tribe and then there was like dave janae he's like do not share information don't tell anyone thing you know just keep the information to yourself and use it when you think it's right so each player had something to say jericho as well he had a couple of really good points each top player had one takeaway that was just gold on its own and i kept i kept them in mind as i went through the game yeah so interested to know you get a legend of the game play this season with you and sandra diaz twine what was the early thoughts when you saw sandra coming in a helicopter and

4:01 You found out that nina her daughter was going to be in your tribe yeah i was pumped i think i knew they were a military family so i'm like yeah i've got an in here right away nina was a lot of fun she was you know she was clearly a game player but she was patient she was humble she was not everything the americans have a reputation for being so the way they adapted to the australian version was impressive and sandra you know she went the challenges played hard and she didn't really she wasn't known for doing that so i really commend their the way they adapted their game approach to an australian version and i on uni was a really good player and frankly i was dreading having to go against her at some point i knew it would happen and by fortune by fortune and it's unlucky for her because i hated seeing you leave this way i wanted to see it go through it tribal the same as anyone and get the full experience but the injury took her out of the game so it was sad to see but i am very confident we're going to see her back and i think australia has stolen what should have been an american you know an american contender she's ours now i was i was going to say so she's team australia if the overlap even happens and it's australia versus usa crossover turn code exactly so obviously in your tribe

5:21 You had another returning player and andy come back i'm a big fan of andy's i really enjoyed him in his first season i've actually had him on the previous podcast i did once before to recap an australian survivor epis a couple of episodes with me and you know really enjoy talking to him quite interested to know you know what was the strategy behind taking andy out so early and did you weigh the pros and cons in regards to having another returning player there at least so there's two targets or did you feel like he was just too big of a threat even if they that meant that there was two targets in their tribe that have played the game before yeah i felt like it was a case of that piece of advice i'd been given from ak which is look if you have someone who's like you in the tribe if they're gone all of a sudden you become more critical to that tribe in the early challenges which are always really physical in australian survival and i was a big guy andy was also a really big guy and that was kind of my rationale behind it plus he had a bit more baggage than i did which was kind of unlucky for him and lucky for sam and i so he was a bit easier to put forward as a target but to his credit he didn't actually do anything wrong i know they kind of stitched the head up to make it look like he was you know directing traffic it came he actually wasn't he was just helping build the shelter and he did a really good job he didn't actually put a foot wrong he just got unlucky

6:42 In that first round and we also lost that challenge under kind of weird circumstances one of the obstacles didn't really work properly i think so yeah he got a bit unlucky he got a bit unlucky for sure and i think a lot of viewers may have forgotten they only remember andy the snake you know from his episode and the way that he played the game and wanting to backstab and do big moves but he actually came and clutch in a lot of challenges that season and ended up helping his tribe win a lot of communities so that makes perfect sense in the sense that you wanted to have that leadership role and the challenges how difficult was it for you as a returning player coming back and knowing you've got a leg up on some of these players you may be able to help with the shelter you may be able to direct them in certain ways to sit back and not take that lead in the tribe because i'm assuming you step back from that at camp that's in any case how it looked like on the tv show it looked like you were a leader in the challenges but at camp you try to not be too overbearing yeah i think i stepped back from kind of camp leadership roles but i definitely took a leading part in kind of mentoring people in the early part of the game so i just talk openly about my experience on the first survivor and be like this is a mistake i made like and then i would say you know don't maybe don't do this or don't do that don't be out doing camp work all

8:02 Day when there's strategy to be had so i would offer that advice up and i think it was just i would have done that anyway but i think it's helpful for people it's disarming they don't really see you as a threat i said you know i went to two tribal councils and i was voted out my third one i'm not really a game player and that was that was a helpful kind of i disarmed that particular tick in the box that highlighted me as a threat and then in the challenges i just stepped up and helped there because i feel like being an ex-military guy people would expect that from me a lot of those challenges were suited my kind of background and so it made perfect sense for me to step up and try and help win those challenges which we did quite a lot yeah so you mentioned a little bit earlier obviously there was a few injuries this season nina got taken out unfortunately early in the game alex had a lot of trouble with his back and i think tara was a little bit vocal about that as a previous survivor player seeing someone go out of the game the way that he did what was your take on alex i noticed that in that specific tribal council you did try to get him to stay and you try to direct the vote in a different way this is what i'm being creepy and whispering to him behind that yeah on the trail like stay i so we kind of looked after

9:22 Alex when he was injured and we're like dude we've got you back we're not gonna vote you out like get better i wanted to see him come back into the game and get the most out of it because it's such a rare chance to go on survivor so we helped him out but the injury was too bad he eventually opted to leave and the issue was that we had sophie lined up at that tribal council so i was just saying look mate you can leave just do it tomorrow like let us go through this tribal now and just do it tomorrow but he didn't he left then and that kind of ruined our plans to get sophie did sophie coming to their tribe hurt kj's relationships within the alliances that she had and where did kj sit in these early stages because it did look like you were kind of in the middle of quite a few different alliances before the first merge yeah it was a massive distraction for kj she was going pretty well in the game she had good links good relationships and then she has to deal with her sister and her sister had been through a lot but it was kj was then having to put spot fires out and it didn't help her game it did wasn't super detrimental but it just didn't help she could have been doing other more constructive things instead she was kind of catering to the issue of the day or whatever came up with her sister yeah now obviously with having her sister in the game this was a blood versus water

10:42 Season it was always going to be difficult to navigate those relationships throughout the season how did you prepare yourself and sam going into this knowing that you were going to have to go up against each other in immunities and things like that because when the choice came for you to potentially join her tribe she on the tv show looked like she was upset that you made the move that you did in the initial did you guys talk about the potential of these things happening before going out there or was this more a spur of the moment thing where you had to make a decision what we did talk about is we said look if there's a reward challenge don't take me just keep us separate so we did discuss that scenario but we didn't really discuss like if we have a choice around tribe swap what we do because that's pretty rare that you actually have a choice but i only had about 30 seconds to think about it and in hindsight it was a really good choice because i separated myself from sam it gave us the chance to both play individual games building good alliances making our own moves and all the while people aren't getting a look at us as a threat they can't like they can't mesh the intelligence together that we are actually a threat couple so that so being a part longer i feel like it bought us quite a bit of time and it brought us a strong alliance that we could bring

12:02 Together after the merge yeah so when you looked at that decision at that point you had obviously the likes of josh and jordy and some of like nina and those guys in that specific trip that you ended up choosing was there a specific reason outside of not wanting to play with sam and not painting that target on your back did you already have those close bonds with josh that carried you as deep as it did in the game yeah josh was probably my tightest guy we'd work together a lot we knew we were similar backgrounds similar values we could predict that the other person was going to act rationally and so we knew we were going to cooperate for most of the game i had that feeling about josh straight away and that was an easy choice for me to go over with them with what was going to be a water majority a water og majority over there and so it was a perfect scenario really and i'm really glad i picked the right side even though sammy was initially disappointed but she totally understood what i was doing strategically hey listen it has to be difficult when you don't have food and water and things like that you're probably overreacting to the smallest things sometimes while you're out there and i think that's something that a lot of viewers probably just don't appreciate that when you're pushed to your limit like that it is very difficult sometimes to act rational in the moment you know it may take you a little while to gather yourself yeah

13:22 And there's always optimal decision making in a vacuum right so when you sit down analyze a show you can kind of pick the best option for the story you've been given but when you factor in all those human elements the fatigue and the uncertainty and the fear it does make good decision making trickier and so for me probably my proudest efforts is when i was at the very end of the game clearly in a lot of trouble i was still able to have the presence of mind to read the situation correctly come up with a plan it wasn't the best plan but it was a plan commit to it early and just stick to it and that was the difference between getting voted out or not i feel like sometimes you've just got your first plan is literally your best plan just by virtue of the speed that you can move at just being a little bit faster can make all the difference yeah and we'll definitely get into a few of those decisions because i think there's a few interesting things that we can dive into i did have another question for you here you know with josh you had a close alliance with him but you chose not to tell him about the idol which later on came back to bite you a little bit in the in the in the behind i guess with geordi finding out about it i guess firstly let's dive into the jordy of it all jordy saw you get the clue

14:42 You went out to go find the idol and then ultimately you do end up telling him about it what was the rationale behind telling him about the idol and not just keeping it a secret for a bit longer yeah the rationale here was i knew he'd seen me get the clue and i was like it's pretty hard to recover the clues without people seeing you just in those reward environments they're pretty small people are paying attention he saw it and then i spent about three days looking for it and i kept telling him dude i'm gonna go look for it come help me and we went and looked together and i was looking in a dummy area so he wouldn't find it so i eventually found it i was keeping this facade going after i'd found it you know let's go look for it again and then i was like actually i'm going to end up burning a lot of social capital here if i keep lying about this and giving people to run around so i kind of made a really tough decision i'm just going to i'm just going to close this loop off type this kind of loose thread i'm going to tell jordy about this and i'm just going to have to watch closely because this is going to become a public oh it's just a matter of when yeah and that was my rationale behind it i was like i need to move on i need to move on with my game let me put it in his court and i'll watch what he does it was interesting because you did mention early on that geordi was a bit of a loose unit someone that would be hard to trust and we see a lot of this throughout the game obviously you can only tell it from

16:02 Your perspective why do you think it was so difficult for geordi to find allies and for people to believe in him when he started talking about the idols and things like that out there because for the viewers that were watching they were extremely frustrated at all of these other players that weren't listening to jordy but obviously there's a lot we don't see on camera and i can only imagine that there must be something that geordi did prior to that came across as untrustworthy where people didn't want to believe him yeah there was people who kind of connected the pieces on geordie because i said josh said came to me and goes look he told us about the rewards straight away he told us about the idol straight away like we didn't even have to ask him he just came and told us and i was like no way and we kind of fit our intelligence together i was like dude he told me that you guys asked him like pressured him into telling you so there was this disparity between what he was saying and what was actually happening and what and what josh was telling me so we just pasted it look we just we can't trust him because we don't know what he's doing and so when jordy actually needed people to believe him he cried wolf a few too many times and people just weren't sure whether he was telling the truth or not and it really muddied the waters and i said that to sam i'm like look they don't have to believe us right but there's just got to be doubt and that ambiguity will be

17:23 Sufficient protection for us in the short term yeah so obviously a couple of things happens here early in the merge yourself and sam gets back together sam has got a few people that she's been loyal to prior to the merch you've got people that you've been loyal to and at some point you were always going to have to go in one or other one of one of you were going to win that argument in regards to which direction do you go and which alliance do you stay with you ultimately do went out and you stick strong with geordie joy sorry with josh geordi i guess at that stage and jordan and it looked like juicy dave was somewhere in there between with the boys as well there was a lot of people online that were very critical of the fact that you know you didn't listen to sam in this case and stick true to khan and jesse what was your reasoning behind it and how do you think ultimately you convinced sam to come your way in regards to the alliance that you wanted to work with the main argument was really around the stability of the alliances my argument was look jesse and geordi are a question mark jordy's especially question mark jesse is a younger player and i played with younger players on my first season and it was a handful because they just don't they don't cooperate in teams it's quite rare whereas josh and jordan i knew being rugby players being older they were going to cooperate they're going to have the

18:43 Same values as me they're going to be easier to predict and i had a better connection with them and i said that to sam i like look i think it's a more stable alliance so that was one part and then we talked about khan and this was hard because khan and sam were tight calm was looking after sam but my argument was look in the if you if we if he goes to the end he's going to be very hard to beat he's a very well-rounded player we should deal with that sooner rather than later i was i saw him as a front-runner he's he was a clearly a strong player big personality and a real threat and that was where the real friction happened i think i said this previously but my biggest mistake is probably not giving enough credence to how sam felt about the impact it was going to have on her i was like no this is good for us trust me but i wasn't thinking about the stuff she had done and considering that enough and that's hard and they show like they show a conversation we're having behind a tree when you've got 60 seconds maybe to talk strategy so you're not talking about the weather and niceties and how good it is to see her you're being pointed direct and like it just looked terrible on tv so you know it's a bit of a that was it was my fault and also they edited to make sure

20:03 It looked like a good conflict yeah obviously they're trying to make a tv show here as well but i guess it was two strikes in a very short period of time the other strike being that you didn't tell sam immediately about the immunity idol and i think i had a comment that i thought was funny i hope yeah i don't know if you listen to it but i was like you know it's kind of like when you're courting a woman and you don't give her all the information from the start but sam and you guys have been married for a long time there's no reason to do that so what was the what was the reason i guess for not immediately letting her in on the idol well in the so the biggest one was just hot protection of information and in an emerge situation you've got 13 people who have just come together it's very volatile people are sorting out the pecking order there's a lot of movement around camp and i'm like look we're not in threat right now i'm just going to not say anything about this idol for a bit because this is a high risk period and when the time's right i'm going to bring sam in because i can't use this all on my own i actually need her help to figure out what we're going to do with this and it just so happens that geordie told us right off the bat now i'd said to geordi back at camp i was like do not tell anyone i mean do not tell anyone and that was my test for him and sure enough when he told sam it kind of had the opposite effect josh

21:24 Found out about it he's like holy mark didn't even tell sam that's how serious he was when he says don't do something he does what he says and that was important for my trust levels so on the one hand it was back as sam finds out about this in a back to front way and it's just it's terrible and causes an argument for us but on the other hand josh and jordan look at it and go this guy's crazy he like said do not tell anyone he didn't even tell his partner about this idol it was geordie that did it he's the unreliable one so yeah it was kind of a it was it was bad on one hand and helpful on the other yeah so i guess at this point this is where sam goes and walks with jesse gets the idol somewhere other way from him and she ends up voting jesse out what was your first reactions to this out there when you were on in the game i guess and you found out that she managed to get this idol off him and you realize we're voting this person out and she's most likely going to have this idol at that point do you in the moment think about anything outside of the game can you allow yourself to for a brief moment think oh how's this going to look on tv or is it just game mode we need to make this move and get ourselves ahead no it was very much game mode i was i was happy to be doing something that i knew was going to look it was going to be excuse me it was going to be big viewing

22:44 On tv so i knew it was pretty sensational in the way of just survivor moves and survivor history so i was really proud of sam for kind of getting your hands dirty but i knew this was going to shift like the tectonics of the game this was going to be a totally new shift and because of this vote we were now going to be aligned with josh and jordan which i still think was absolutely the right move the issue was that sam and i were going to take tremendous heat for it and we knew we were going to have to lie for it and i was just like st stealing myself going this is going to be a hard you know this next week's going to be really hard but you know we stuck to our guns and we did the best we could under those circumstances and planted enough doubt in people's minds we're able to keep playing now for me personally it was the move of the game and i think that this specific move will be remembered 10 15 20 years from now if australian survivor is still on and i know sam does not want that to be the case and she'd probably rather forget about it now that the game is over right she's part of history she's part of history and as a as a massive fan of all of the franchises you know south africa australia us you know just let her know when you speak to her hopefully at some point i get an opportunity to

24:04 Talk to her as well but you know i like just let her know i think that you know she should own it's it's a massive move and i think that the real fans of the show the ones that understand it's a game you know we all were very proud to see her pull it off i mean we've had similarities to that in other countries where things have happened to that level but this is probably the biggest one in australian survivors so i think it's up there with the dead grandma liar that johnny fairplay told yeah i think it'll be a celebrated and controversial move and i mean i'd give her full credit for her she did such a good job and i give jesse a lot of credit because he played along like he didn't play like you know sour grapes he embraced the move he knew would be famous for good and he's been really good about it so being the super fan that he is i was also really proud of how he responded to the to the event yeah well he's going to be remembered now as well he's just on the opposite side of the move but he'll be remembered for sure he'll play again him and geordi will play again the young guys there they were great tv i'm sure we'll see him again i agree i mean we saw eric reichenbach who was the main person over in the us who had an idol that he gave away to one of the ladies and then ended up getting voted out he came back to play again because people looked at that and said well we need to give this guy a second chance so i think jesse's definitely got a chance that was so funny that was one of my favorite moves it was

25:25 Was probably that one out of the usc yeah so basically were you afraid that going into this final tribal council that this move was going to get held against you like you know you've got jesse and jordy both there on the on the jury that potentially could poison the jury to a degree because you pulled such a ruthless move or did you know the level of fans that they were off the show that they would be able to see it for the move that it was i thought yeah they were fans they would see it for what it was and i was also conciliatory with geordie afterwards like there were a few tense moments but ultimately i remember saying look mate keep working with me because even though you're getting beaten on the bottom at the moment eventually it'll be me who comes to you cap in hand you know tomorrow because of some twist so i was trying to be good to people that were you know either on the bottom or getting targeted and i think he appreciated and they knew that i think they took it in the spirit of the game like we didn't we didn't get personal with that stuff we just you know it was it was a game and they knew we were decent people and yeah it's all a bit of fun yeah entertainment now you spoke about you know the potential of a twist that could flip the whole game upside down we did see purgatory come into play now this is a big thing for australian survivor to either do redemption rock or

26:45 Purgatory or some form of players coming back in the game i'm personally not a fan of it never have been don't think i ever will be i kind of picked up a little bit from you that you weren't the biggest fan of this twist this season as well yeah i certainly wasn't sitting at camp rubbing my hands going oh welcome back everyone so great to see you again after we put all that work in to try and vote you out it's hard because you do expose yourself when you when you make any vote outs or you're involved in any of these moves you do use some strategic capital right to try and move these people if you're voting yestermore you're going against someone it does put you in the firing line so to do that with four different vote outs and to have to deal with it coming back into camp that was just there was definitely a low moment there and then we there was no point i'm i think this is where my mindset is good i'm like i can complain about this all day this is what we're dealing with like let's just get on with it and we did that and i'm glad we were resilient about it and didn't you know throw our toys out of the cot you had a scenario where there was six of you left in the game both yourself and sam were in the game and you had two idols in your pocket did you see the way for you both to get to that final three spot from there and sort of see it get ripped away with these three players come in and what was your strategy i guess

28:05 At that point how were you going to play the idols knowing that you were that close to the end what we did was when josh and jordan were still in the game we grabbed them and go look we're the last pairs left you know i've got this idol that i talked about i didn't talk about the second one i've got this idol i'll use it to protect our alliance like let's go and then jordan got voted out and then sam and i are sitting there going right the seven people left the jury bench is getting bigger where the last couple we're going to get targeted it's just a matter of which vote it is whether it's next or probably going to be next vote and so we started thinking like actually this works like we can go to tribal we can keep the idols secure here we can try and dodge it one person probably end up going home and the other can go back to camp and work with the last two idols and just do their best and the other will play a parallel game on the jury where they're explaining our game and the more we thought about like that makes total sense like it makes total sense and i've said this before i wasn't fast who it was going to be i was sure it was going to be me who got voted out because just because of my physical size and because i'm a threat sam had played hard even though she's less physically visible she'd played a big game so i just wasn't sure what was going to happen and the way it panned out was that i got that

29:25 Immunity necklace and she was under threat and ended up going home that night did you talk between yourself and sam about who would get the most votes if you were to reach the end was that ever a discussion where you thought listen between the two of us who's got the most social capital at the moment so that if they did make a final three they probably have the best chance at winning did that ever come up not really because the jury bench hadn't fully formed and there was still more moves to come so we're like a bit too early to say you know there could have been moves i was going to make towards the end that could have burned people a lot so yeah we weren't sure at that point it felt like it was fairly even yeah now you do lose you do end up losing two members of your alliance and i guess jordan and also sam at this point in the game that forces you to play an idol that ends up saving you but then the second idol that you play some people obviously armchair critics sitting there saying oh that idol was wasted i came on to say hey listen it's a tough spot you know you just copped the majority votes in the previous round and you've only got two rounds so you've got to back yourself to win another immunity what was the thinking i guess going into that tribal council in regards to the idol and you know when the cat was finally out of the back how did that change the mood between your alliance

30:45 Members now that they knew that you were lying to them for quite a while yeah it was a funny one because i was sitting there too going i'm going to have to play this all tonight and i didn't want to do it and i wanted to make a move with it but i just couldn't see how i was going to do it and then we were going to tribal i was sitting there going i don't think the votes are on me because jonathan's not talking to me i haven't seen any visible changes with josh i think i'm actually safe and i'm sitting there going i'm going to play this idol and it's not going to be needed that's what i was thinking but i was also concerned because we were late in the game people gotten better at blindsides and my rationale was i've just got to play this and hope for another immunity win if i don't play it now and i go home that'll be a lifetime of what-ifs and i don't want that so i'm going to play this now it's going to get me to final five and i'm just going to have to chance my arm at getting an immunity necklace there and it was super funny because i played this idol totally wasn't necessary i made this speech to the jury that totally antagonized half of them hoping that i had been blindsided and i was going to all work out didn't work out so it just was a it was like a three strikes it was like a rookie move and it i feel like it disarmed again it kind of lowered my threat profile quite a bit because they're just looking

32:05 At me going that was terrible and so we went back to camp and i was like look you know i had a bit of fun with it i said you know i told her that second old was and just said look i'm sorry i was lying about it you know it's an idol you've got to conceal these things but it's gone you know i've got any more tricks up my sleeve and i think it kind of lowered my threat level a bit and there was less fallout than i thought there'd be yeah it's an interesting point you make a sort of an observation that you make around that because you saw chrissy change her vote to go to josh instead of voting against you again so maybe that played a little bit into her decision-making in regards to who she should take to the end but before i go into that last round or going into the last two rounds here i do want to ask a question about the immunities itself you had really good competitors out there this season i think it's one of the reasons why i personally rate the season higher than other people that are maybe a bit more casual fans of the show but you had people like geordi josh shea yourself all really good at winning immunities khan before he was taken out was pretty competitive as well were you someone that when you got to the merge you made a conscious effort at not going too hard in the immunities early on was that a game strategy from you or did you try and go for it right from the start no i saved my energy and i'm playing the probabilities here i'm like i think i'm okay

33:25 You've got excuse me you got 12 people after emerge 12 or 13 people if all players being equal the odds of you getting voted out are actually quite low so as you go further into the game those immunity necklaces become worth more and more just mathematically they do so to me i was more than happy to step away from the endurance challenges that i knew i wasn't going to win in the first maybe five maybe four or five challenges we did i just wait until i was like a third of the people had gone and then i'd just step off i didn't want to be up there trying to win something that i just i knew the probabilities of me winning was super low you don't have the energy for that and it lowers your threat profile so i was definitely doing that and then the time when i really planted my foot down was when [Music] after that voted jordan out and i was like this is this is the time where we now have to unmask and go all in and like high threat high force high everything no more hiding no more concealing our threats and that's where i really went hard and that's when i won the that domino's challenge and that's why i was so i was so pumped about it because it was such a hard challenge it was bloody really difficult and the people that were left

34:46 Were challenge beasts there were so many people that were good at challenges and there was such an even spread among the immunity wins that's something i was proud of this season it felt like winning in immunity was just a it was a slog every time yeah so that's when sam and i really went hard harder than that final kind of seven yeah it definitely came across that way you get some seasons where it's very one-sided and who the challenge beasts are but this season was so well balanced which even more impressive for what shae was able to accomplish with her for immunity wins this season i think it really puts it up there she was really balanced now you had to plan around shea going into the final rounds because you knew she had a good chance at any endurance body weight type of challenge that she was going to go in and you had the ability to take josh out one move earlier but you decided not to do that because you banged on josh being the bigger target than yourself so two questions out of this for you firstly were you always planning on going this deep with josh in the game or was it sort of circumstance that led him one step away from the final tribal council or did things work out the way you sort of planned around that yeah i wanted josh with me for as long as possible because we worked together we cooperated together we never went against each other really the exception was the same vote which made sense anyway because we

36:06 Were the last couple so i didn't hold that against josh too badly and so i wanted him there with me because i knew we were a shield for each other and he thought the same way as i did we're like we got to cooperate when we got to the five vote we're looking at it going dude we can't go against each other because we know full well that shay's going to win the endurance challenge which means that if we go against each other now there's one male left they're going to get knocked out it'll be all female final guaranteed and so josh and i came back and with that knowledge i just went look mate i'm happy to load up on kj i'll sell you as the vote i've been doing it for weeks already like let's go this will pay off like all this hard work is going to pay off of just this subtle like saying josh is the threat i'm going to keep him with me i said this publicly i was i was never going to go against josh until the last moment and then when i sat down i made that early decision and i sold it and i had to go back and sell it again to kj and shay i did it with such conviction and such speed that they just assumed i was telling the truth in fact i've made my mind up on that a long time earlier and i think the mistake they made is they overthought the situation all they needed to do was get one of the guys it didn't matter who it was i think i was probably the smarter one to get knocked out at that point

37:28 But they didn't do it and they scrambled their vote and i think that josh and i exploited probably the biggest weakness in a lot of players in the game and that was they couldn't cooperate when they had the chance to do it josh myself jordan juicy dave even geordi we could cooperate to achieve a vote and you can be the weakest players in the game if you can cooperate all of a sudden you're the most dangerous players in the game and we just knew by the backgrounds of something there and what they did in it in their day-to-day life that they were not going to be team players and we use that against them a lot yeah it's an interesting it's an interesting observation because that dominant alliance mate at times very straightforward in regards to who was going to go home but that is the you're not out there as a player mark to make it easy on other people you're there to win the money at the end of the day so you know you want to have the most effective way to do it and i kind of picked up very early on that yourself and josh seem to be the same player i look at josh's mark 2.0 and i really hope josh gets another opportunity to play but i don't know if other podcasters i haven't listened to them as high on josh as i have been throughout the season but you know i feel like josh may be someone that gets a big target on his back if enough people are aware of how good of a player i think he is you know maybe there's more that are sort of onto it

38:49 I think in hindsight i'm almost glad that josh didn't get a strong edit because he will go back and he'll be one of the most dominant players there he was exceptionally good across every pillar of the game he played a better game than i did and he's just he's almost a victim of his own success he was so good at the game that he just had that slightly higher threat level to me and when there was a choice it ended up being him and yeah that drove people crazy that we formed an alliance that cooperated backed each other up and just went and executed against whoever we thought was the next best person to go and anja wouldn't make good tv and i couldn't care less because all i cared about was having this stretch a period where i could actually just rest a bit not be scrambling all the time because i knew that when we got to that second part of the game we're going to be fighting hard and you need the resources and the faculties to be able to do it you can't sprint your way through a marathon you've got to kind of pace yourself in survivor and i think we did that really well but it drove people crazy they could not stand the fact that we worked together and we cooperated and that's what made our games easier so for me it's interesting because i look at some great players in the past who have made seasons

40:09 Predictable and boring as well but for some other reason they're put in very high regard when it comes to the survival boston robin redemption island very straightforward season kim spradlin and onewold very straightforward season rob bentelli and survivors south africa secret of the islands very straightforward season and again very dominant winner and i think you can count yourself as a very dominant winner now the only difference i think that could have made your season even more exciting is if josh had a bigger edit that would have kept us guessing until the last four i think this season would have been an all-time great so that's my biggest criticism of the season is that josh's edit was missing pre-merge but i could pick up and deduce by seeing how different people were reacting around them and they weren't making a move unless josh was on board that he had a way bigger game than what the edit probably showed us at times yeah i think the two parts are missing is they just needed to do a little sprinkle of character building around josh and his background is you know and his personal like we're trying to have a baby and you know i'm here to win like that and then when you get to the end that's really compelling and then they need a bit more on how josh chrissy and i were tight because when you get to the end of the game again that dynamic plays out quite a bit and the other thing was they just needed to carve out some confessionals for people that got those purple edits

41:29 The twins kj josh like jordan like everyone talks about the twins jordan got no edit josh got no edit and they played pretty good games as well so like i really wish they'd put a bit more into everyone that was that was there but i also hope they get another chance to play again and really show what they've got so if josh were to make that final with you let's say the unthinkable happens and he wins the final immunity and somehow both you are sitting there in the end how do you think that final tribal council would have gone down do you think you would have had split the votes between yourselves pretty evenly where do you sort of i know it's hard now because in the game you probably would have thought one thing and then now watching the edit may be a completely different thing i think it would have been neck and neck so i think josh played a slightly better game than me but i also feel like i could have presented a case well just because my background of speaking and structuring a story and all that i feel like my pitch would have been really good as well so i think it would have been very close but i wasn't trying to engineer the end game too much and i think people make this mistake they get all machiavelli and think they're moving chess pieces around the board there's very little you can control in survivor you can control your own social game some of your strategy where your vote goes and that's pretty much it i mean you can

42:49 Control whether you look for idols and whatnot the rest of it's out of your hands and i think people make this mistake of thinking they're puppet masters and they're doing this and that they're not controlling anything and if you're trying to engineer who's in the end game with you it's a very risky thing to do just get to the end figure it out when you get there because if you don't get to the end what's the point in having some mad plan about who you're going to be up against and what your pitch is i think just keep it simple and just get there yeah i think napoleon said it he's like if you want to take vienna take vienna don't like don't mince around go and take vienna like just go there yeah no it's an interesting one because you know urgency is important and being able to move and not think about something too much but actually being able to act in a way that is relevant to the situation that you find yourself within in the game and a lot of people come into these games with pre conceived ideas or plans for how they want to play the game and then they're out there and the situation does not allow for that gameplay to unfold because i'm sure you had thinking you probably had thoughts coming into this saying i'd love to play this type of game but when you're out there it all changes because the people that you play with you don't know who they are and you don't know what they value and the game that you played for this season was an incredible game you had an incredible story at the end i do agree with you being a great storyteller i thought that your final tribal council speech from the beginning to the end

44:09 How you explained your game was far clearer than what anybody else explained based on the edit that we saw i know that there is a lot we don't see as well but that definitely came into play and you became only the second player in australian survivor history to get a clean sweep of votes putting you up there with pierre from champion scissors contenders two is the only other winner to win with a clean sweep of wins that would put a massive target on you mark if you were able to play this game again but i am going to ask you the question you know i know that for a winner to come back it's very difficult so let's put the picture let's paint the picture they pitch to you that there is going to be a global winners at war season where you're going to have some winners from south africa the us and also australia playing would you be interested in a season such as that or would you even consider coming back at all i reckon if there was a global one i would i would salute and go back into the fray like knowing that i would be cannon fodder but just with a spectacle it's just too much fun but i really want sam to play again that's probably my top priority i think what she's got more to give the game i think especially without me around to complicate her game i'd love to see that i hope that the people in my season that played really well get another chance kj josh jordan jesse and jordy i really hope they get to go back a second

45:29 Time even you know khan there's so many people even ones that went before the merge that were great players croc i hope those i hope they all get back at some point and i think there's going to be opportunity to do it and for most of them i think i'll be watching from the couch now i know that there's a lot of fans that are listening to this that are very happy about the fact that you also want sam to play this game again because i think there's a lot of us that are very fearful that the experience for sam has been really negative online and that she may not want to go out there and play the game again but it's good to hear that you know you're behind her to go out there because i do believe as great as it was for you to win this season i do believe you were probably her biggest achilles hill when it came to the merge and if she played her own game it could have been very different getting into the end game with her alliance members that she built pre-merge yeah exactly there's no there's no telling what she could do on her own i think yeah it's just blood versus water is one of those really unusual dynamics and i was super grateful to get asked back and to play again it's hard to play the game in the first place but getting asked back is a is a huge honor so you really want to do it properly and i feel like we gave it a really good go i felt like and again i didn't go for the edit i felt like there was you only saw my other dimensions at the very end of the game i felt like it was quite a one-dimensional

46:50 Edit to that point but you know i was equally i was so proud to be there i made great friends i feel like my social game was a massive improvement and i can't wait to see where the rest of the seasons go you want to say hello hey harry come say hello to chris jump on ready hey there little man ready say hello hey little man how you doing are you good so hello [Laughter] yeah you're going to play one day you're going to play survivor yeah you're going to follow mama and papa's footsteps did you see mummy play my play yeah i did see mommy play bye-bye yeah that's awesome that's awesome to meet him as well and i was gonna i was gonna say yeah again yeah i was gonna say that's i think that's one of the reasons sam and i went so hard is because we're away from our boy and yeah it carries even more weight you're not out there for fun or to create a tv character we're actually out there to really play hard and it was it was difficult being away from that long yeah no i can i can imagine last question i have for you know there's a new tv show that i may

48:10 Cover as well on the channel coming out in australia it's called the challenge australia there are some rumored survivor players potentially in the in the contest to go out there and do the challenge australia how it works is it's basically you vote people out but they get a do or die situation where they're going to the arena to do a challenge against someone else to see who goes home so ultimately you have to be a challenge beast to win this show if you could nominate three players from survivor australia to go out there and represent the australian survivor franchise who would it be oh i'd have to be josh sam and chrissy love it love the answer love the answer chrissy on there would be a lot of fun she just vocalizes everything she's thinking so it would be great what she would go into a challenge commentating your own her own battles i want to see chrissy get her own tv show i think a camera crew following her around would be absolutely hilarious chrissy was no slap i think i picked it quite early i'm like she kind of plays the goofball but she knows exactly what she's doing and she's not silly she played such a great game you don't get to the end without playing a great game and you really can't characterize people who go that far as bad players you've to get that far you've got to do something right and then they certainly did shea and her were great players yeah mark it's been so much fun

49:31 Talking to you here let the viewers and listeners of this podcast know what are you up to next is there anything that they can follow i know you've got a book out there as well that i've got lined up to get myself to read is there anything else you want to promote here for people listening to this if they want to find out a bit more about what's next for mark well if you like very good apparel made in new york city check out kill capture with a k check it out we're expanding this year we've got some good products going off we're into the jacket into the into the jungle on the beach there's the jacket you see me within 2017 and this season as well so if you want to survive a season of survivor get yourself one of those jackets i'll have to get one of those flavors out to go out and play the game mark i'll get the link for that after this and if you send through on instagram or something like that i'll put it in the description for people to find that as well