Crossing the Line

When it stops being “part of the game” and starts being personal

There have been some odd exit interviews in Survivor’s long history. Russell Hantz has long been the king of bitterness in his parting interviews, Dan Lembo straight-up asked to be left out of the cycle, and you had the toxicity felt towards Chrissy Hofbeck in multiple players’ Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers post-game press. It’s hard to believe that 18 years in, we would break new ground with the exit interviews but with Jeremy, Survivor: David vs Goliath’s most recent boot, we managed to do so… and it was ugly.

It all started when Dalton Ross got his exit interview with Jeremy out in the middle of Thursday, October 11th. Normally, Dalton will just ask his set of prepared questions, the player will answer them, and move on to the next media outlet. Not Jeremy, Jeremy brought in a prepared statement that he asked to read before going further in the interview. Here is the statement in all its glory:

In the same way that Dan was in a one-sided showmance with Kara, actually Angelina was in a one-sided showmance with John. The difference being that Angelina was a recent newlywed. I think she got married maybe a month or two before the show. And although it wasn’t obvious, Angelina’s feelings towards John were singularly as real as Dan’s were towards Kara. And like Kara, John seemed not to be in a showmance, but more moving towards strategy. And on our first day, day 1, first hour, Angelina told us “Oh, I told my husband about Survivor. He knows that I might have to cuddle and be in a showmance and he’s alright with it. He’s like “do whatever it takes to win the million dollars.” But as the days started to go by, she started to worry about what it might look like, because it started to look really obvious. On Survivor we go to bed at like 6 o’clock because it gets completely dark, so that cuddling time was almost 12 hours, it becomes kind of important. And during that time, that showmance started to grow. And she started to worry about it. So fast-forward to maybe day 6 after we won that fishing reward challenge. We were all sitting around the campfire- me, Kara, Nathalie, maybe Alec, maybe some others- and Angelina was talking to John or something, and the way she was looking at him, I made a comment to them like “Oh if they catch this on camera, Angelina’s going to be in trouble.” Because she was letting her guard down and it looked like a showmance. That got back to Angelina. The morning of tribal, that got back to her. And the problem was, Angelina had gone around to people and said, “don’t ever say showmance. Don’t ever say anything about me and John.” So when that got back to her she just freaked out. So at that point, the day of us going to tribal, she essentially went around and told everybody, “He’s embarrassing me. He’s trying to humiliate me. He’s going to cause problems with me and my husband.” So she told the tribe mates, “Don’t say anything on camera, but I want him gone. I want him out of here because he’s going to say that I’m on a showmance on TV and it’s going to affect me back home. But don’t you tell other people. Don’t you say anything about it on camera.” So I realized something was going on. I’ve been watching Survivor a long time. And nobody, especially with somebody who everybody likes, is able to keep a complete secret. But the fact that nobody came and told me, that’s what really solidified for me that she told people not to say it on camera. And so what you saw last night, it was interesting. And it looks like me and Natalie were the ones who had the problem, but truthfully, I don’t even know if Natalie knew how the votes were going to go. I think she was blindsided because she thought she was going home. But in a game like Survivor, we are there to put it all on the line. There are no rules, but there is a fine line before you tell people, “Vote somebody else but don’t put it on camera. Don’t say anything on camera.” Because those people feel like they’re in a catch-22, thinking, if I say anything, she’s going to think I ruined her marriage, and that’s personal. But if I don’t say anything to him, he’s going to get voted out. So she went to the people who didn’t know me as well at first: Alison, John, and such. And by the time she got to Alec and them, she was like “I already have the numbers,” because she already had six people who already vowed to not say anything on camera and just vote me out. I think that was beyond the pale, and I don’t think that’s a legitimate game move, but it is what it is.

Uh… excuse me Jeremy? Do you know what isn’t a legitimate game move? Coming out in the exit press with rumors and conjecture, taking a shot at a person’s marriage. He goes on to say in the interview that he hasn’t spoken to Natalie or, “a lot of people about the game…” but is somehow so confident about a story he made up in his head?

Seriously, he has quotes that Angelina supposedly said and everything. If he didn’t talk to her, or anyone else, then who is his source about this entire story? You can’t come up with something this big and potentially life-destroying without having absolute confirmation about the truth. Jeremy is a lawyer he knows this and he knows how irresponsible he’s being.

From his own words, Jeremy made a comment about Natalie getting in trouble with her husband for her behaviour and he doesn’t understand why she might get a little upset about this? Especially after she told the tribe that her husband knew she would play the flirt card and he would be okay with it. Jeremy is not the one to be setting boundaries on someone else’s marriage and for him to even insinuate that Angelina was doing something nefarious without having a smidge of evidence, is so far past the line of acceptable that it’s almost laughable.

And trust me, there is no evidence from Jeremy’s perspective. Apparently, when it rained, Angelina would grab John’s clothing first instead of her own. In Jeremy’s petty-ass mind, that constitutes being head over heels for somebody. In my world, I call it being a nice person on a game where being nice to people is at a premium. He claims they cuddled at night, like everybody else ever on the show. Was Jeremy in a showmance with whoever he was cuddling while sleep? Angelina and John would go looking for coconuts together too, much like the famed showmance between Tyson Apostol and Gervase Peterson in Survivor: Blood vs Water.

If Angelina did say that Jeremy was trying to humiliate her and ruin her marriage, guess what… she was right. Obviously, all of this was premeditated considering Jeremy came into that interview with Dalton Ross with a prepared statement. You don’t need a lawyer to figure out he had obvious intentions with his words.

It sounds more to me like they were close friends who happened to also be in an alliance and Jeremy was too dim-witted to figure this out. Like Richard Hatch, he was bamboozled by his tribe but unlike Rich, Jeremy couldn’t accept it. Instead of taking it on the chin and accepting his bad gameplay as the reason for his demise, he took it upon himself to take shots at a person’s marriage.

Jeremy also argued in his press with Gordon Holmes that this was the only way he would have been voted off 9 to 1 because people “didn’t want to vote him off.” Well, clearly Jeremy, they did, and that’s because you completely lost the thread of your game and came off as untrustworthy to your tribe mates, something that sure seems to be confirmed with this kind of post-game shenanigans.

In his interview with Rob Cesternino for Rob Has a Podcast, Jeremy started to hedge his words when pressed by Rob. By this point, most people had read his previous exit interviews and he may have caught wind that his words were not going over well. There are definite pauses and hesitation when Jeremy is trying to explain himself to Rob and it isn’t very clear what Jeremy was trying to say.

These claims from Jeremy are so incendiary that CBS and production allowed Angelina to release a statement of her own. This is not something that is ever allowed to players still in the game, they are not normally permitted to respond to exit interviews. But then again, this is a once in a lifetime reaction. So Angelina did not mince her words,

My husband and I are aware of Jeremy’s comments. While we do not appreciate his blatant mischaracterization of my friendship and alliance with John, I am not surprised he feels compelled to attempt to revise the narrative. I think all of this really comes down to one fundamental Survivor truth: being the first eliminated member of your tribe by a unanimous, undisclosed blindside, must really sting, especially for a supposed Goliath.

Hitting him right where it hurts. I firmly believe that Angelina is speaking the truth. Jeremy was butt-hurt over being voted off instead of a social pariah and he couldn’t handle it. He had to find another reason why they would vote him off so he fabricated one-off interactions he deemed inappropriate but no one else flagged up.

When you lose a pickup basketball game, you don’t try to get the other team’s players fired from their jobs because of it. You take the loss and you move on. Jeremy should have left his loss on the island but instead, he’s bringing it into real-life and involving people who never asked to be involved. He should be ashamed of himself. Not that I should expect too much from a man who claimed people would not show up to Natalie’s funeral if she were to die.

While playing word association with Gordon Holmes, he chose “lacks integrity” for Angelina. No bitch, you’ve proven who lacks integrity, not just on the show but in real life, and I hope you one day realize the kind of harm you’re trying to cause with your bullshit.