Survivor SA: Return of the outcasts Exit Interviews Week 2

0:00 Well welcome back to the nullified tech channel here on youtube where we've got the tnt takes for you on survivor south africa return of the outcasts i am joined by three former tribe mates for return of the outcast shona teven and sheamus it's so great to meet all of you how are you doing great alive good thanks for asking there was a real fear there shona after this last episode if you were going to be alive but we'll get into that a little bit later on firstly you know as a massive fan of the franchise and i know all three of you are massa fans as well i just firstly want to thank you for coming back and participating this season because without the three of you there wouldn't have been a season right you could argue yes they would have found three more people but you need participants to be out there to give the fans a show and thank you so much for coming back and playing joe it's a pleasure yeah it was it's a huge honor to be on once at le twice so i think we all really thoroughly enjoyed coming back playing the game again also playing with returning players who have their own experience from before understanding how the game helped shape people before what the impact it had we realized we all had shared trauma that we were coming into the game with that we worked through

1:20 I was going to ask you so shawna we'll begin with you how was this experience different from your first experience like i'm assuming that you know going back out there this time mentally preparing for what's ahead you had a bit of better preparation going into this how did it sort of you know compete with the first time that you were out there yes i prepared a lot mentally as you mentioned i think survivor is a very big mental game you don't have that much time from getting the call to actually going on so there's only so much physical prep you can do you know so i was doing cold water swims that helped a lot especially because the water in the eastern cape was surprisingly freezing it was you know not desirable to go and wash yourself in the ocean but i was one of the people who was swimming all the time it helped with the challenges it also helped with the cold at night the nights were very cold you know just getting into almost a meditative state of mind being able to listen to your own intuition that comes up quite a lot sometimes it saves me sometimes i don't listen to it so yeah essentially it's mainly it's mainly it was mainly a mental prep for me but also just you know getting yourself

2:40 Emotionally ready for the game because it is quite a roller coaster tevin same question for you what was it like coming back for a second time and also you know i felt coming back this season you were the one person where people looked at you and they're like this guy's a player even though you left like pre-emerge everybody thought you were going to be a big target coming in you know if any fan that you spoke to said well evan is the one to look out for in this tribe what was it like coming back with that type of target on your back because it looked like everybody was very aware of your potential in the game yeah i mean first of all i just want to apologize for the sound i'm not sure what's going on with my mic just in case the audio quality is work for me it was look it's a dream come true i mean we've all said this playing you get to play the greatest game on earth one more time and it is my favorite game and i love survival so much but yeah it was it was daunting knowing how much people perceived me as a street i mean in philippines everyone saw me as the guy who formed this core alliance i prior to verona took over the tribe i was the one who broke the bus so the threat level was very high and then when i saw our tribe dynamics and i saw the other side and i realized i mean they've got these craft characters i mean tasia and dante chappies this stephie these beasts and i mean we felt quite threatened by

4:00 Them and i immediately knew my trump i'm going to be a huge target because i've got two people on the other side that got matching tattoos with me so all those talks of kevin and the tattoo trio it was it was real yeah but if we got together the chances of us aligning was very high but i mean these two people that are on this podcast seamus and shawna were part of my alliance and the only time you know which side of the lines you are once that line is gone [Music] it's happened to many great players in the past you're not the only one and sheamus i want to come over to you were someone that in your first season played a very tough game very early on you try to take out tom ultimately goes on wins the whole season your reed was right to take a move or make a move on him but sadly it just didn't work out you nearly turned it around you just didn't have ace in that vote you know you talked about the trauma of being the first person voted out you know not enjoying your brides i can relate as a former south african myself the brides are important you know are you at least able to have brides now without people coming at you what has it been like you know being back and getting a little bit further i know you didn't go as fast you wanted to how much pressure did you feel coming into the season to turn things around well i mean the pressure was immense

5:21 You know you have a standard for yourself and a goal you want to achieve obviously the open wound on my back of being first voted out carried a lot of weight and i knew coming in you know it's a default response you'll see this guy is he going to play the same way as he did before is he going to go completely in the other you know opposite direction so for me i had to sort of weigh it up and go okay i do have to present a reliable sort of strategy a player that can be dependent on but also i can't go too far in the other direction because then all these red flags are going to be raised up so i try to focus on the relationships and same as shona i you know did a lot of preparation for my social game as well as physical i knew that you know i would be considered a physical player and i needed to uphold my end of the bargain when it comes to challenges so on the side of preparation physically i probably went a little bit too far i wasn't carrying much in the way of storage in terms of fat reserves so you'll see i mean i lose close to about a kilo a day while i was there so around camp you know i was wanting to build shelter wanting to provide food wanting to play a basic game of survivor but you know like tim we both love this game and we fans and you know the viewer sees a condensed 45 minute episode but for us you know there's a lot

6:41 Of down time during that day you know it can get quite stagnant quite boring and you know often say i'm probably more of a fan than a player when it comes to this game you know i play it the speed at which you watch it but you know the right way is a lot more you know held back a lot more reserved but you know all of that being said i think i did get a lot of peace of mind you know i managed to sew up that wound on my back you know we were in a great tribe and as i've said in my exit interviews you know there was a lot of love between us the shared trauma was real it was also a great narrative to jump on for us you know players like myself and tev could you know hide in the background as much as we could and push this you know tribe unity thing that we had going but i think it was inevitable and myself and him you know in hindsight probably should have been a bit quieter but when we when we get talking about the game it doesn't stop you know it was it's exciting we're fans even when we chat that's all we talk about so hindsight is 20.

7:40 I'm happy you know i can't wait to go to another bra let's put it that way that's awesome no that's important that you can at least go to the prize go to the survivor bro i'm sure tevin would invite you absolutely you and sheamus you and sheamus just from the start gravitated towards each other what was it that made you want to work with sheamus so early on in the game and who else you know you mentioned shona being a part of that alliance who else did we not see that sort of on the edit didn't show but you had big plans to have this person as part of your core group moving forward in the game yeah no i think when i saw sheamus on the tribe i felt very comfortable knowing that from the get-go i wouldn't be perceived as the biggest threat because i know sheamus also carries a lot of strategic gameplay behind him and i know the fact that thames is a big fan and that's what gravitated the two of us together we knew how we wanted to play this game we wanted to play very not cutthroat but he wanted to have an epic season we wanted to put on a show because we watched it as fans and so i knew that's exactly what he's going to do as well so we once we met i mean we had some nights where she was literally we had some deep chats unfortunately we started being perceived

9:01 As this duo which we spoke about a lot i mean we did discuss it's not like we were blind to it we said that we have to separate at some point we have to talk to other people i know one person who was definitely part of my alliance except for shauna and james was felix and i trusted felix quite a bit and he was apparently 98 on board telling me that they're going to vote for me and he said at the very end he decided not to because he felt like he must not be seeing something that the rest of them but killarney shown myself i mean we were training as we were definitely in an alliance the problem was navigating every other person within those alliances because there's so many segregated alliances and yeah i mean dino and felix would definitely be part of it full i just i didn't trust him either so for me fall was never part of my long term game and clearly i was my confidence yeah one of the questions i had for you tavern is in the show it showed a specific confessional we said the first time you built really deep connections with people the second time you didn't have time for that it was all game from the start do you feel like that contributed a little bit to you going home early or do you think the edit was you know it needed to tell a story there but you actually did do it even though you played it up to the cameras like you were all game

10:22 No i definitely did do it because i told a very similar lie to everyone which eventually came back to bite me at some point but [Music] but the fact was that i needed to i didn't want to form that close bond because going home when tony and pk voted for me really hurt it stopped quite a bit this time it didn't i just felt like this is good gameplay done and i left gracefully knowing that listen this just stay playing and so to me it didn't hurt as much and i think that's what i wanted i didn't want to go home thinking like i had these two friends who literally just destroyed me internally so it was a lot of it was much easier leaving except because i had an idol in my drawing that was what are you doing with the idol do you still have it are you keeping it as a souvenir [Laughter] coming back over to you tevin gets blindsided and yourself and shona and kalani you not in the vote you don't know about it you obviously at this point think well shona and kalania they're both in the out so you're going to entrust them with the plan of trying to turn things around to dino and to try and vote them out where do you think things went wrong you know obviously shona is on this call and she can obviously afterwards

11:42 Enlighten us a little bit about her part of this but she ultimately decides not to go with you here in hindsight you know obviously 2020 being perfect vision you know what went wrong and where do you think you could have gone differently and why was dino your main target at this point sure so looking back on it right before the tev invited at camp before we left with trouble i actually pulled dino aside i felt something wasn't quite right in the air and i just checked in with him i said listen bud if we're going for tevin i need to be on the right side of this boat because if i am we can then work together if you drop me out underneath this it puts me in a very difficult position and going back to other alliances myself and dino are actually quite close so you'll see in the edit when tevin goes he dino leans over and says to me don't count me out yet i hope you can understand but you know the lines are drawn at tribal council so i felt that irrespective of what he was saying the action dictated that you know i was next so i had to put some sort of play into motion i knew that felix and phil were very close dino and teresa in the background were close but i didn't think it was as strong as it actually was and i needed to generate some momentum so the logical start was with shona and kalani

13:02 On the bottom in terms of being excluded from the vote but the interesting thing about our tribe is we were all almost notably connected that the tribal lines weren't as clearly drawn as it comes across so there was a lot more fluidity in terms of positional play amongst the tribe and i felt that if i could get shona and kalani under a bit of momentum that we could then swing it against dino and i decided to go for dino because he was also fairly notably connected in the sense that he had a relationship with everyone and it wasn't as clear and cut as say shona and kalani or felix and phil so the idea to rally the girls against dino was obviously reckless i mean i think back and i watched that episode and i see you know i was i was delusional in thinking that really but you know what other what other choice did i have you know i was going to target who kalani or krona and then pray for a tribe swap and then see things happen the next day we don't know when that swap's coming we could have lost the challenge the following day and then i still would have been on the bottom with kalani or with sona depending on who was targeted so it was a rock and a hard place and i figured hell if i'm gonna go i'm gonna travel of something epic and it does seem that

14:23 Those conversations were you know out of the blue but shona and i did have a relationship in the background it was you know something quite solid and was building from the beginning you know there's hours and hours of content that you know the producers have to extract and tell a beautiful narrative which they do and it's a phenomenal job but yeah the relationships that i had with the people i was working were i think a lot deeper seated and i felt hey if i'm going out i'm going on a swing but i wasn't confident in it at all i really felt that sure if i do pull this off it'll be a miracle so shot in the dark with a bad raffle as we said so shona on the other side of this obviously you have sheamus coming up to you and making this pitch to vote dino out and you know that he's going to come for the girls you know you say that you can see sheamus is playing for himself where dino potentially is playing for everyone or he's a little bit more open that's kind of what it sounded like on that was that the main reason on that or was there things that happened in the back end that we as viewers weren't privy to oh my gosh there's so much happening in the back end i mean as sheamus said he and i we were working together it actually killed me because i felt aligned to seamus and tatino but i felt like i could trust dino a lot more sheamus you know he was not into me

15:43 Saying yes he says all the time but i could sense that he didn't a hundred percent mean it all the time he's like gonna do what he's gonna do and so i thought aye if he's after dino now i have to choose because i've got two people that i feel like very strongly aligned to kalani and i worked a lot together on the cooking and stuff but i don't i don't know how strong our alliance was to be honest with you like we were working together but i felt more aligned to the guys on our tribe and they were going for each other it was not ideal but i thought oh well you know i don't i've been told okay so no you're on the bottom because you were left out of the tavern vote but i didn't feel like i was on the bottom because i felt like i'd built quite good relationships with the people on our tribe i was left out of the tavern vote because i 100 would have told kevin i really liked and dude your asses on the line we're going to get you out of this so i they were never going to tell me that because it wouldn't i wouldn't have let it happen or i would have like blown it up somehow i even tried to warn tevan before i said who did i hear speaking i think i heard sheamus you speaking to teresa yeah and i'm like something's going on people are counting votes here it's very suspicious and then shame is trying to

17:03 Say i know you on the bottom because you left out of the thing and i didn't agree with that i mean he's trying to go for my other lines members i thought okay look now's my chance to really start having a impact in this game i need to you know choose here it doesn't look like this is going to be something that seamus and dino are going to be able to work together so i need to choose my side and i felt i could i felt i could trust you know in like in the game in a long term more than i could shamers i was also very scared of sheamus and cerrizo's potential bun because they went to the outpost together and i didn't feel i felt like teresa wanted me out so i was like you know i don't know if i'm going to give sheamus and teresa numbers and then be really on the bottom of that so that was my motivation then now what's quite interesting is that both yourself shona and sheamus you both had the same idea this season to plant an idol at tribal council was that something that you spoke about beforehand did you know that the other one did it as well was it just pure coincidence and tell me a little bit about your decision you know process in doing this was this something that you had planned coming into the season or did this sort of just you know organically happen when you were on the show

18:23 So chris this is something yeah i think sheamus has dropped off but i'm sure he'll come back on i'd actually really like to hear if he knew about my idol because i didn't know about him planting one at all we i don't think we chatted about it i told tevin and i told dino but i had planned this since before coming on to the show i it's survivor there's always this theme of strengths right and the definition of what is what is the strength you've got physical strength you've got social strength you've got you know survival strength i wanted to introduce the strength of creativity and show you know my more creative arts and craftsy side so i learnt macrame which is a skill of tying simple knots pretty consistently and i learned how to make necklaces and stuff using macrame and i decided i was i was going to just turn out fake idols like a factory you know and just get people you've gone for too long and i know she's making these idols we have this thing because the bag obviously that shona uses to place it is the bag from our outpost items so we managed to put that together and these are the small things you don't see but yeah we

19:43 Had we had some plans for those others we were going to do some crazy things oh gosh i'm so disappointed but you know everything happens for a reason right so i really i have a very strong intuition and my intuition was telling me to use this idol to use this idol but i had a conversation with dino before and he said to me no theatrics before this tribal council we don't need to draw unnecessary attention we've got the numbers just stick to the plan and we'll get dante out and then we'll still have this idol and i was sitting there my intuition's like use this idol use this idol and it didn't do it and i kicked myself so much but in hindsight it's actually a good thing that i didn't because i was very injured and i think that had i gone on to play more games in the in the show i would have been very seriously injured i needed that time to actually rest my body and recover and i was also accepted to this accelerator program for my startup but that i wouldn't have been able to accept the position had i still been on the show so everything works out as it should be i feel like you know i'm very blessed in life i learnt my lessons in the game rather than in real

21:03 Life which is you know a lot of consequences because it's you know public tv that everyone watches and can ridicule you and your silly mistakes but i'd rather learn them in a game than in life and to take this and just grow from it i'm definitely going to come back to the injury in that challenge because i do have a few questions for you on that but i want to go over to sheamus first because sheamus has just joined us again shame as you and shona both had idols that you heard at tribal council were you aware at any point that shona did that before you and how did that idea come about like was this something that you sort of thought about prior to going into the game or was it something that you just thought of on the spot tell us a little bit about your decision-making process yes i had no idea that shona had also made an idol and hid a net at tribal you know there's two ways to convince people of a fake community article one is it looks great and two is how you find it so i figured finding it publicly at a place like tribal when the pressure's on last minute right before people vote is i could walk up to it you know face east or whatever it was take two deliberate steps and reach down as if i'd had a clue or something that would lead me to it and in that case i wouldn't have to open it up and read it on the spot i could walk back to the seating area and make it seem like okay i've got this idol and i'm going to play it but you

22:23 Know even looking at how those votes were split playing that fake ardor wouldn't have done anything for me because they were well covered with two votes on kalani so again shot in the dark with a bad raffle i found with losing tev you know my days were numbered and i did i had knee jerk reactions to things that didn't require such drastic plays you know it's all it's hard to watch but you know i also remember the state of being in that game and you know the paranoia the desperation the lack of food and sleep you know sitting on your couch you can think yeah no i would have done this or that but it's a whole different situation when you're there man it's completely different listen i appreciate it i thought there's a reason i call my channel the nullify take until i play the game you know i'm definitely not the qualified take so i'm okay with that you know but it's still fun to criticize and look and think hypothetically what would you have done in certain situations but i fully appreciate it's a tough game now shamers the ghost of sheamus and shona might still be in the game because they made a point of showing both those idols so you know i'm thinking that it's still going to play a role this season and we may have someone picking up your idol shamers and thinking it's an idol and then playing it and then being voted out in any case which would probably be immensely fun to see that something that you placed in the game still has an

23:43 Impact even though you're not there necessarily to speak through exactly yeah i had to put it in a place where everyone could see me reach for it and pick it up i couldn't be too far away so it is definitely out there it's very close to the walkway on the way to the voting station so you guys will have to see yeah shona i want to come back to you that challenge is a challenge that i think when we do our recap this week i know for a fact my co-host zoe will have a lot to say about what went on in that specific challenge she's not the biggest fan of pinty now i've always been i've always been one of those people that have said you know you give everybody the benefit of the doubt no matter what but you know nico was pretty clear in their challenge a few times that she shouldn't be as physical as she was do you feel like she should have been pulled from that challenge after that happened because that's my opinion personally watching it as a viewer what was your thoughts i mean this is something that could have taken you out of the game how physical was it and what is your thoughts about you know fair play you know you can play heart but you've got to be play fair within the rules and follow the rules of the host yeah so first of all i have no ill wishes towards pine tea at all i do think she should have been pulled from the game she was playing dirty consistently and it was quite obvious that she was playing really dirty but it's pointy she plays dirty she was cast because she creates drama

25:03 And all of this like she is that player in the game that is great for tv so i don't think that should really come across in a in a challenge when she has like hurt someone and especially that she continues to play and she continued to play dirty afterwards i was quite upset to hear that i know she didn't plan to hurt me on purpose it's just how she plays she is a lot stronger than i am she's a lot more physical than i am but she definitely body slammed me i mean i remember thinking like holy crap i've been body slammed like i've never been body slammed in my life but that's what happened and i realized because it all happened in slow motion i was like this girl i should do this is completely on purpose but you know she's a firecracker pine tea like i think it's been really tough for her to watch this and the reactions and everything so i do want people to be kinder to her everyone is just a human being and it's not nice to see yourself sometimes in a negative light and i think we all have lessons to learn from this and growth to have but it's not nice to be nasty to one another you know yeah no i agree i think we criticize the game player the person in the game not the

26:23 Person outside of the game and even on my podcast last week when we did our live and we did our recap i continue to say if we criticize pinty please don't go and tweet at her or bully or wrestle yeah because i think there is a limit to it and these are all human beings with family members outside of the game and you know there's a lot of us that have never played the game that would love to play the game one day but we also would love to either be a villain or a hero and feel like we're not going to have all these consequences if we go out there and we're a villain you know what i mean wouldn't be the same without the villains right it wouldn't be the same game it's what makes it survivor it's what makes it so entertaining pinks is hilarious she's she reminds me a lot of david in my season so tough to live with like really just to challenge you like oh come on yeah she lives on and lives on and you're like come on you're killing me there's so many more questions i want to ask you especially around david and everything as well but we'll try and see if we can get both of you back on for a deeper dive when the season is done because i'd love to have a proper chat with you guys there's one more very important question i want to ask before you know because we only got a limited amount of time on this interview sadly shona you made a decision to go without the numbers here in this last episode i was pulling my hair out of my head explain to me why you did that now someone that counts the numbers counts the votes all the time like merrell

27:43 Said in the episode why did you do it tell us so i'm a risk taker by nature it's just who i am and i really did feel aligned to dino and phil from our tribe i felt the closest line to the amount of the people that were left and i thought that they were really going to be in trouble being so far off of the numbers they were going to have to pull out miracles it would help a lot to have another number on their side and i thought in the i was always thinking long term in this game and about the story that i would tell at the final tribal council and this is a big move you know to go there turn things up get the numbers for your tribe and switch things around and it would have happened if phil didn't switch and he stuck to the plan or if i played this fake community idol that i spent so much time making it didn't go the way that i'd planned it to the way that i wanted it to but i stick by my choice i think it would have been easier for me on the masu tribe but i didn't come to survivor to play an easy game i wanted to play a great game i don't think it really necessarily came across that way on tv because everyone was playing such big games and you don't really see much of my strategy but that was really where my thinking was that i wanted to

29:04 To help my alliance but also make a big move and did you realize going into that tribe you know having some of those rules that you said around the camp and you know the wood and you know who can look in anybody's bags all those things did you realize that it was going to come across the way it did to some of these players that kind of felt like this is not the way that players play that have made them merge before and some of those comments being made were you aware that was going to come across in such a way no not at all that put me in the bum it seems so we've had these discussions with the original yantau tribe and they went very well actually we had a very unified tribe and that unity is what caused us to work together so well and respect each other and actually win challenges in the beginning of this game we had a massive physical disadvantage against masu yet we were beating them and that victory came from our ability to work together as a tribe and that stemmed from these unity chats that essentially i led like they became a bit of a theme everyone picked it up and started saying it was actually quite revered in our original tribe the way it comes across and i don't i think i was speaking to a different crowd you know i misread the fact that they had now the numbers even though it was out camp and there's also egos a play and people don't

30:24 Like to be told what to do and i didn't feel like i was telling people what to do i felt like i was just like hey let's just be nice because that was the vibe we had but it's survivor you know i'm a bit naive and thinking that everyone is going to be nice for both of you know survivor calls again third time's the charm do you guys go back is this one of those things where it's done now or tevin you know are you hanging up the torch no never i'll go back to any time if they call me enough on my deathbed i'll wake up hold on i'll rise from the dead to reignite that flame my torch is never fully snuffed it's gonna only be snuffed one survivor's cancelled completely well let's hope that never happened shona how about you would you go back for third time's a charm absolutely i think that as a super fan you really want to play this game until you win it at least or you know otherwise you just left wondering and aching you're like ah why did i do this and there's always so many opportunities to grow and to do better so 100 i would i would do it again i think i would have my eyes a lot more wide open this time i

31:44 Mean i don't think i learned enough from my last season of scenes sometimes you learn from your first experience i mean when you do it again you get so much more perspective as well i often still think i was 24 when i first played and in this season i was the youngest cast member and i had to re actually read that on the wiki fan page i had no idea i was the youngest cast so i was learning things about myself from like reading things online and i feel like yeah i should have probably behaved a little younger should have probably acted like the young boy for quite a little bit more so you learn things i think some maturity is needed from my side to play this game a bit better shona tiffan thank you so much for talking to me today and sheamus as well thank you i know he had to go a little bit early i would love to have both of you guys back on the podcast at some point i feel like i could do a proper deep dive with you but for now thank you so much and all the best of luck with the rest of the interviews for the rest of the day