Survivor’s [Spoiler] Says Watching the Season Back Has Been ‘Eye-Opening’
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Survivor 47.
Former Gata member Sam said it all: “They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, but your game sure was destroyed in one.” How… apropos.
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In Wednesday’s episode of Survivor, e-sports commentator Rome’s game fell like the Roman empire after shared information was quickly fact-checked, turning almost every player against him at the first merge vote. The wild gameplay that served him well in the season’s first half rubbed almost everyone the wrong way and after informally applying to be Jeff Probst’s future replacement, his torch was swiftly snuffed.
Below, Rome reacts to his manic TV edit, while detailing his rivalry with Sol and how finding an early idol gave him the freedom to play harder.
TVLINE | You seemed pretty confident about everything that happened once the tribes were united, but then you were completely blindsided. What was it like revisiting that on TV?
ROME COONEY | It was pretty interesting. I played a really hard pre-merge [game] and then I hit the merge and I kept playing hard. It was interesting to see it backfire in one way and work out in another way. Watching it all back was definitely a little bit eye-opening. Obviously you aren’t able to see everything that happens, all the conversations that get talked about behind your back and things like that. People say how they’re actually feeling in confessionals versus [what] they’re telling you in the game and things like that. It’s just really interesting seeing it back and seeing the differences.
TVLINE | Did finding the idol in the early days of the game give you extra confidence to play full-throttle, or is that how you planned on playing from Day 1?
That’s the interesting thing about Survivor. When you start getting these advantages, especially so early, it sends your confidence level high. But also, I had an idol that was good for one Tribal in my back pocket. So it allows you to play a little bit harder because you’re not going home that night. You can throw out names and you can have a little bit more say in what goes down. It definitely gave me a little bit more freedom to play harder, but it didn’t change the fact of how I was going to play. I told myself I was gonna play a super loyal game. I had my alliance of four people.
From the second that the game started before Aysha even got back from the journey, we had a four-person alliance and that’s why when I showed Teeny the box, the only reason I showed Teeny the box first is because she woke up first. That was the only reason. I was going to tell literally everyone about the idol — including Kishan, including Genevieve — because I didn’t want to walk into a Tribal, play an idol and then my alliance be like, “What the heck? What are you doing?” So I knew that I had to tell all of them. That’s why I didn’t really trip about it when T told Kishan about my idol because I was planning on telling him anyway that morning, so it wasn’t exactly the biggest deal. That’s why I didn’t have some big blow up at her or wasn’t super mad about it. It wasn’t a situation where I was gonna rock the boat and break up my alliance over them sharing information that I had technically withheld from my alliance in the first place.
TVLINE | You and Sol had it out for each other out there. Why couldn’t you two ever get on the same page, and where did that all go wrong?
It obviously wasn’t shown, but there was a lot of animosity between myself and Sol, [but] also [between] Genevieve and Sol. It wasn’t just me who had issues with Sol out there. I’m sure you remember Bruce from 45. It was more just those type of dad vibes, like he’s trying to tell me how to think. I remember we won the first immunity challenge. Then the morning before the second immunity challenge I’m like, “Man, we should probably think about who we have to sit out just in case we don’t get the full walkthrough of the challenge before we have to decide. Sol literally just straight up was like, “Don’t think about the challenge tomorrow. Don’t think about who we have to sit out. Stop worrying about tomorrow.” And I’m like, “Bro, that’s a pretty important thing to talk about as a tribe,” because then you look at us at the challenge, Jeff’s like, “Alright, who’s sitting out?” and we’re like, “Jeff, we don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.” We should have talked about these things, Sol! So it was just a lot of dad vibes. Just a lot of trying to tell me how to think and how to play and it’s like, “Bro, you’re not in my alliance and you’re telling me how to think and play? I’m good. I was over it. So yeah, we were kind of over each other but yeah, outside of the game, me and him are great, man. I absolutely love that dude.
TVLINE | It’s never been done before but Jeff let you sit in his hosting seat to break down the amulet situation. How’d that moment feel and what was going through your head?
It was surreal. Honestly, I didn’t expect it but [when] I said, “Hey, you wanna trade spots? We can trade,” I didn’t expect him to be like, “Yeah!” but when he did it, I was like, “Hey, awesome. This is my time to do what I do.” At the end of the day, I’m a host, I’m a commentator. It was just all off the top. And so I just sat down, “[Jeff Probst voice] Alright!” and I was able to break it down without stuttering, so that felt really good. I was able to go into my hosting role. I talk into a microphone for a living, so I was able to talk in front of that little crowd of 13 for a little bit. It was pretty awesome that he was able to give me that opportunity. I’m super grateful for it.
TVLINE | Pre-merge, your tribemates thought you were cocky. What are your thoughts on how those clips looked edited together and the way that your story was told?
It might sound very cliche, but they’re gonna edit it however they want to edit it. Whatever story they wanna tell with whatever I gave them is gonna be shown. It’s not my job to trip on that or worry about that. My job is to go out there and play as hard as possible and have an absolute blast, so that’s exactly what I did. If I get painted as cocky or a villain, it is what it is. At the end of the day, I played hard and I had fun and everything I did was in the context of the game. I never took something out of the context of the game, even with Sol, following him around and making sure he didn’t look for an idol. We’ve seen babysitting before in Survivor. It’s nothing new. It’s just that people blow it out of proportion because they haven’t seen it in a while. It’s really just about being fine with knowing how I actually played the game, and the people that were out there that played the game with me also know everything that happened that didn’t get shown. So just being content in the game that I played because you can’t control what’s shown.
TVLINE | I’ve gotta ask, Rome: The fire puzzle! What went wrong?
Nobody wanted to do the puzzle. We had just utterly failed at this type of puzzle on Day 7, when we voted out Aysha. So literally, we wake up the next morning, walk into the challenge and it’s the exact same type of puzzle that none of us were confident in doing yesterday. We got smoked in it yesterday. So we literally see the puzzle and all of us look at each other and we’re just like, “Oh, it’s over. We already lost.” It was over before the challenge even started. None of us wanted to do it, so there was just me and Genevieve. I said straight up, “I suck at puzzles, but I’ll do it.” Genevieve was like, “OK, I sat out yesterday. I’ll try it.” So we were like, “Alright, we’ll hope for the best.” So we knew we were both bad at puzzles, so it was like, “What’s the best strategy?” We’re like, “Well, if we do a piece at a time, we’ll get a piece eventually.” So that was our thought process going into it. It ended up being a terrible strategy. I tried as best I could.
TVLINE | What’s something that happened out there that we didn’t see on TV?
I think that a big thing was the fishing. I know that the second fishing scenario got put in a secret scene, but I really feel like that was a really good secret scene to put in the show to show the two sides of me. Not just that I’m some super hardcore person. Like, no, I’m actually providing for my tribe. [The edit] kind of clowned on me a little bit with the fishing and things like that, but fishing is hard to do on Survivor! There’s a reason that nobody else caught a fish with the fishing gear. I wasn’t the only one who tried to use the Hawaiian sling on my tribe. I was the only one shown to use the Hawaiian sling because I was the only one who caught something with the Hawaiian sling. So it’s interesting the edit shows me being commandeering over all this stuff and that wasn’t the case at all. Also my social game completely got Purple’d. It seemed like I didn’t do any type of social game out there whatsoever, but I definitely did. I had a really strong alliance.
TVLINE | If you got the chance to play again, would you change anything about your game? If so, what?
That’s an interesting question. I would definitely say that you have to read the room. I rubbed a few people the wrong way. I took a lot of information that I had and I shared it with people who I thought I was going to be able to work with, at least at the merge, and it ended up backfiring on me. It worked pre-merge, but post-merge, it didn’t work at all. There was a lot of people that wanted to work with me post-merge. It doesn’t show it in the edit, but aside from Kyle pretty much rallying the troops to get me out, there was a lot of people that wanted to keep me around as a shield or whatever, and heard that I’d been causing chaos and were like, “That’s perfect for my game. I want to keep you around.” But because of the situation where so many people can go home, nobody wanted to make a big move. Nobody wanted to stick their neck out. Jeff even said it in his “On Fire” podcast, he was like, “This is why I’m not a fan of this many people being able to go home because it makes cagey gameplay,” and that’s exactly what happened. So it was interesting that even Jeff noticed it and said that that’s the reason it hasn’t happened in the new era yet.
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