The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of “Survivor.”
Serious injuries threatened to remove two players from the game Wednesday, but it was Ana’s gift of the gab that wound up sealing her fate.
After Brady sliced a portion of his thumb off and Kristin sprained her foot during a blindfolded challenge, Savu lost the immunity challenge and immediately went into strategy-mode. While Eric was seen as an annoyance to the tribe (a “layup,” if you ask Ori), Ana’s decision to throw names around willy-nilly rubbed her tribemates the wrong way. When supposed ally Alexis overheard Ana recapping their previous conversation to others, all trust went out the window and the game was on. Alexis then shared some keen intel to Sharonda and Linnea — that Ana wanted Sharonda out — setting the stage for another classic “Survivor” blindside (despite Rob doing the most to try and get himself voted out of the game — read our recap for all of those details).
So what was Ana thinking and what didn’t we see in the episode? TVLine caught up with the latest “Survivor” boot to break down all of that and more.
TVLINE | That second vote came in, and it seems like you knew right away what was coming. What was going through your head when the votes started piling up?
ANA SANI | These expletives! No, I was really shocked. And look, I’m not gonna lie, I clocked the moment that I made the comment about the decoy vote. I clocked their reactions. During the popcorn conversation, I was like, “Oh, I think I’m in trouble here,” and it was a lot of spiraling out of control. It’s such a long story, but basically, I went into Tribal thinking, “OK, I feel like I’ve made enough ground in trying to fix these relationships and hopefully I’ve built enough trust with people.” I also had Carter and Rob who I trusted 100%, and they were like, “We’re good, we have the numbers,” and they were very adamant on that.
And Christian, who they didn’t show, he also was very adamant that he was gonna be on the Eric vote, so I felt like even if these other people aren’t particularly trusting of me, I thought I had the numbers or the majority to get out Eric. So when I saw that first [vote], I was like, “Oh, something’s off here,” and then when the names kept coming, I was like, “Oh, I’m done. I can’t believe this is happening. What the f**k?”
TVLINE | We saw you throwing a lot of names left and right…
No! No, no, no. Nick, that is not true!
TVLINE | Explain yourself!
If you rewatch the episode, Alexis was the one who brought up Sharonda’s name. She’s the one who says, “Hey, Sharonda’s a threat,” and I said, “Sharonda’s really smart.” And I was like, OK, it’s clear that Alexis is trusting me enough to tell me that. She wants to work with me. Then Alexis asked me about Linnea, and I was like, “Linnea is very strategic,” but the whole popcorn conversation? If you also rewatch that, it was me trying to save Carter because Carter was the one talking about Alexis. Carter was like, “I don’t trust Alexis, I want her gone.” And then Alexis walked in and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to say something. So I talked about popcorn trying to save Carter, which was really stupid, and that’s when Alexis didn’t trust me and she went and spun the story and was like, “Ana’s targeting you and Linnea” to Sharonda, but I wasn’t exactly targeting them. The name was thrown, so I went with the name to cause a little bit of chaos. Alexis was the one who threw out the names, but you know what, good on her. She spun it to make the story work for her, and for some reason, the girls believed her hook, line, and sinker.
This story originally appeared on TVLine
