Survivor Gabon: Interview with Charlie - “It’s a recipe for disaster.” - Fans Of Reality TV

November 16th, 2008 | by cwalton |

Charlie gave a conference call Exit Interview last Friday, which I got to be a part of. There was definitely some surprising information and the whole interview is worth reading or listening to. Fans of Reality TV got the interview posted first and I’ve been busy with another project, so I’ll point you to their post. Here’s the first part of it and a link to their site.

Download the audio here: Survivor Gabon - Charlie Exit Interview Audio File 28MB

Survivor Gabon: Interview with Charlie - “It’s a recipe for disaster.” - Fans Of Reality TV

On Friday we spoke with Charlie Herschel as part of a conference call interview. The recently eliminated Survivor contestant proved to be gracious and insightful. The 29 year old lawyer and marathoner from New York City was thrilled by his time in Africa, shared his thoughts on the game, and offered some surprising information.

Is Kenny really the one holding the power at this point?

I’m not sure who in that alliance is holding the power. It’s hard for me to tell as a player because I played with Kenny for three hours by the time I got voted out. We merged that day so I really had no insight into his and Crystal’s game besides what Matty and Sugar told us. I clearly think there’s a clear divide between the five people in Kenny’s alliance and then the three people left from my alliance. So, I think that fivesome’s holding the power. Where the chips fall, who knows?

So what had Sugar shared with you up to that point?

In what way?

We didn’t want to be too transparent in our strategy

In how that tribe was operating? How that whole alliance was coming together?

We didn’t want to be too transparent in our strategy so we were never like tell us the strategy, give us a power point presentation on exactly where everything stands. So we kind of like just asked what do you think of blah blah. And it was clear that she had very good things to say about everyone in that tribe. I think she found and so did Matty Crystal overwhelming and overpowering. I think Matty really likes Susie. We knew that. Matty loved Kenny. You knew he was really close to Kenny. He’d always talk about the walks they’d go on so Matty seemed kind of like unmoveable and Sugar seemed like a little more easily swayed because she’d been on Exile so much she didn’t develop as strong of relationships but she didn’t know what had happened with the whole voting fiascos of their last tribals so we were not clued in on any of that.

Did you and Corinne feel that it was going to be pretty easy to sway Sugar up ‘til last night?

No. We knew it was an uphill battle. Sugar hated Randy. Hated Randy! And, I tried to knock sense into Randy and Corinne, and I said we can’t be mean to Sugar. My strategy all along individually was to not be mean to people because you never know when you needed them but they didn’t play that way and I tried to make them play that way because that was affecting my game at a certain point. And, Randy never really took note of that strategy but Corinne really did try to become girly friends with Sugar. They’d go to the stream. They talked. They gossiped a lot. I think Sugar bought that they were becoming a little bit friends but in no way was she ever going to trust Randy and she hated Randy and she never really trusted or liked a lot of the stuff Corinne said. We thought maybe we had a chance with Bob if we could use Bob to get Sugar on our side because she recently lost her father, Bob was kind of a father figure for her, Bob was in our alliance so I tried desperately in those three hours to enlist Bob to convince Sugar to stay with us because I knew the three of us just yap, yap, yapping wasn’t gonna make much movement but I thought Bob was our golden ticket.

The thing that I saw in Randy out there was intelligence

Your personal experience with Randy, what did you think of him and what did Corinne say about him when he wasn’t around?

Randy’s a great guy. He’s interesting. His home life is very unique. He’s a loner. Not a very emotional person so being in a group like this is a new experience for him but the thing that I saw in Randy which I didn’t see in a lot of people out there was intelligence. I was really searching hard for that in the people I was aligned with because I wanted to be aligned with someone who if they had to make a move on my behalf. If they had to do something strategic for the alliance I want to be able to trust that that was a logically sound thing to do. If I were aligned with Sugar, I just wouldn’t have been able to put that trust in her. I don’t think that Ace should have put that trust in her. And, Randy, whether you like or hate him, whether you find his abrasive nature nice or not he’s an intelligent guy and I could trust the things he said to a certain degree unless he got really hot-headed. So that’s where I sit with Randy. I was very frustrated a lot of times when he did get hot-headed but at the same time I was like maybe this will be to my advantage if we get really to the end of it and he’s really alienated everyone.

Read the entire article at Survivor Gabon: Interview with Charlie - “It’s a recipe for disaster.” - Fans Of Reality TV

  Tags: ace, africa, bob, charlie, crystal, ken, matty, randy, reality tv, sugar, susie, tv