Survivor 50 Christian Hubicki Exit Interview Episode 9 — Jimmy Fallon Twist

TVLINE | What was worse for your game: Jimmy Fallon’s meddling, or pitching an Ozzy vote to Cirie?
The original sin was pitching an Ozzy vote to Cirie. So those are the two key elements. Certainly, pitching the Ozzy vote was the most obvious, by a country mile I think, the biggest error I made in the game. And I think that for obvious reasons, that’s how it played out. I was aware that there was a relationship there. I think I just lost sight of it. I should have grounded myself like, “OK, who is together?” Because I was starting to detect [that] Ozzy’s playing the middle here, but clearly he wasn’t the only person playing the middle. And I think I should have traced that back further. Who is he talking to? Who would those people be? I don’t think Ozzy was even the right target. I think that I just noticed that he was playing the middle. He was one of the people who tipped off the Jonathans about that vote going into the vote, and it started to create a lot of the chaos at the pairs vote. So I was like, “OK, why is he doing that?” What is the motivation behind that if he just wanted to get rid of Coach and Chrissy, unless he’s trying to play both sides?

But I should have traced it back to what his group was. So that was the cardinal sin, and yes, that could have gotten me sent home anyway. That combination, with the fact that I vote for myself made sure I was the target and not Emily, is the way I read it. But also, if I’d never done the Cirie thing, but I came back with this having to vote for yourself thing, that also would have been dangerous. People might just say, “Well, at some point, we’ve got to get rid of Christian. He’s literally marked himself. It’s an easy narrative to sell. Why not go for him now?” So I think either of those things was potentially deadly, but together they were fatal.

TVLINE | Week after week, Cirie has people flocking to her like a bug to light. She works real magic socially, so why isn’t anyone trying to get rid of her?
Well, I can only speak for myself and maybe speculate on some of the people. I offered Cirie a Final 3 deal on the first day, right? When I’m coming into this season, I went through the experience of people saying, “You can’t let Christian get to the end! You can’t let that happen. If you do, you will lose.” And again, whether that’s true or not, that’s not the point. That’s the narrative that people saw, and that can certainly happen again. Yes, it’s “Survivor 50,” but the beauty of “Survivor 50” is that there is one person that people will be saying, “Man, if you let Cirie, a five-time [player] who many people feel should have won all this time, you let her get to the end, that’s deadly,” right?

Everyone wants that someone else to take that metaphorical bullet, and so I told Cirie on Day 1, “Look, we have a similar problem to vastly different degrees. It’s hard for us to get to the end. You much more than me, to be clear, I’m not you, but what if we had each other? There will be times where people will want to target you, and I’m happy to protect you. There will be times where people want to target me, especially around the merge. I hope you’ll protect me. But at the end, we’ll protect each other.” And whether I would’ve taken her to the end, I don’t think I would have, but there were echoes of what Cirie said [about] me in that episode. She said, “Christian protected me, and then I protected him, but Ozzy’s my No. 1. [Christian’s] my No. 3.” That’s fine, right? So that’s why I didn’t target Cirie. I think there’s a lot of people who have a similar view of Cirie that, unless she starts winning immunities down the stretch, she will be a person who will get targeted as a shield and therefore be a shield. That’s what I think is happening. And not to take anything… she’s really good! I’m gonna go on record. I think Cirie’s very good at “Survivor,” to be clear!