Survivor's [Spoiler] Details The 'Whiplash' Of Her Blindside: 'I Was Quite Shocked'

The following contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of "Survivor 49"!

"Survivor 49" may be full of multiple alliances and tight-knit duos, but in Wednesday's episode, the vote was unanimous. 

Jawan's exit from the game left Sage feeling hurt and betrayed by Yellow Sophie, who opted to vote with Savannah and Rizo despite her growing relationship with Sage. But all the drama left Sage on a quest of revenge, as she shifted her target away from Savannah and on to Sophie. With Steven immune and empowered with a new advantage after a hard-fought journey, Rizo worked hard to shrink his ally Savannah's target and get everyone on the same page, selling the story that Sophie was a challenge beast who was loyal to no one, a story that Kristina and Steven ultimately agreed with. When it came time for Tribal Council, Sophie thought Savannah would be leaving the game, and instead was blindsided when all the votes came back with her name on them.

Below, Sophie talks to TVLine about her epic blindside, why she decided to vote out Jawan instead of Savannah, and what she would do differently a second time around. 

TVLINE | Even though the vote appeared to be between you and Savannah, you seemed surprised when the votes were read. What was that moment like for you?
SOPHIE SEGRETI | I was definitely super confident that Savannah was gonna get the boot. I was banking on both Sage and Kristina's dislike of Savannah, and the fact that she is a legitimate threat in this game. She's not a waste to be voted out. And I was definitely overconfident. I feel like I read something before I came on the show that the second you start to feel comfortable, that's when you're in trouble, and that is exactly what happened last night. It makes more sense to go [for] me than I think the other vote that Rizo and Savannah were feeding me, Kristina, which didn't really make as much sense for their game as voting me out. But when I saw it, two and then three, I was like, "Oh, OK, they've all been talking behind my back! This was a unanimous thing. It's over for me." But yeah, I was truly surprised and it's kind of crazy because it is such a quick whiplash from like, "Oh my God, I'm in this game," to, "I am standing in front of Jeff Probst and he is snuffing my torch, and I'm walking away. That happened so fast and to be truly blindsided, I was really quite shocked.

TVLINE | It's wild to me that the group still didn't try to split up Savannah and Rizo, or at least flush Rizo's idol! What's up with that?
So this is where it gets interesting because I actually think that aside from Rizo's idol, he's not really a challenge threat. I agree, it would have been great to flush it, but I'm not very good at finding idols, so someone else is gonna find it, and not a lot of people are telling me that they have these idols. So there is something to be said for knowing where the idol is. Yes, I feel like there were opportunities where we could have flushed it, but then it's back in the game and you don't know who's gonna have it. So the fact that Rizo hasn't played it, and hasn't really been using it offensively either, I was kind of OK with sitting and letting him have it. Continue to play your games and stand up with your fake idol every Tribal Council, but as far as I'm concerned, I know that Rizo has the idol. My thought was the idol is only going to be good for X number of Tribal Councils, and I know I could always beat him in a challenge. That was a gamble I was willing to take, especially when I then switched and became allied with him with Savannah.

TVLINE | Last week, you sided with Savannah and Rizo in order to get Jawan out. Why keep Savannah around?
Savannah and I were cut from the same cloth. I needed her as a challenge shield. The second Savannah goes, I would be next. The second I lose a challenge, I'm going to go, and that's kind of what you saw. I won a lot, and the second I didn't get first or second, I was gone. So for me, yes, Savannah is a challenge threat, but also, you will never have trouble finding people who want to vote her out. Yes, last night, none of them did it, but it's not beyond the pale. Sage genuinely wants her out at some point. Kristina definitely wants her out at some point. Her name has been thrown out so often. In my head, I was like, it will never be hard to gather people to vote against her.

TVLINE | Sage wanted revenge on you for the Jawan vote. How emotional of a player was Sage out there?
It's funny because I actually think up until this point, she was not that emotional a player watching it back. On the island, she and Jawan were doing a great job of giving off these kind of goofy, silly personas, and actually, Sage was really an amazing strategic thinker, so that's been super fun to watch back. But I do agree that this particular vote was a lot of emotion. I'm so curious to watch how it unfolds, but I think Savannah would have been a better move for her game because anytime it's a unanimous vote, is that a smart strategic move? That means that next Tribal Council, there are now five people who could all unanimously vote against me. It will be harder to get out somebody like a Savannah, who's a little bit more divisive than me, with less numbers, because now there are six people left, and Rizo, Savannah, and Soph are gonna stick together. Sage, if you want Savannah out, you have to pray she doesn't win immunity or you have something up your sleeve because that's gonna be a tie. Seven is the time to get out somebody who's not a unanimous vote. You could have easily gotten me out at six or five.

TVLINE | You seemed to be a very fluid player. A total free agent out there. Who would you say were your closest allies in this game, and how much did these tight-knit cliques around you worry you?
I think the biggest critique I have of my game is that I didn't really have a ride-or-die No. 1. I originally thought I was super close with MC. They don't show a ton of our time back on Hina, but I thought we were tight and she clued me in that there was another alliance going against me. But then at the merge, she didn't tell me about her idol, and I actually found out about her idol at Tribal Council. I think I was the only one, because Savannah encountered her in that wonderful standoff. Then Savannah told her alliance, and MC told Steven, who then told Sage, so I was the only person who didn't know. So in that moment, I was like, "Oh no, I have misread this game. MC and I are not that tight."

Then after the MC vote, which really crystallized to me, like, "Alright, she knows where her bread is buttered and apparently it's not me," then I really started getting close with Sage actually. Sage was the one who clued me in that Jawan was ready to flip. Sage and I had built a close personal relationship. The reason I wanted Jawan out and not Sage was because of the relationship we had built. I had a stronger connection with her. I feel like she had trusted me and shared information with me where I just wasn't as close with Jawan. So I was like, "OK, he can go." In retrospect, it really worked against me because, oh boy, did I piss off Sage by voting out Jawan. She was not happy with that, but agreed, there are a lot of really tight alliances out there, and I was not really in any of them. That was a tough position to be in, but when I realized that, I was like, "I have to make myself valuable as a very fluid player," and I did for the time I could.

TVLINE | Why didn't anyone want to go on the "strenuous" journey, and once you saw it on TV, were you glad you didn't volunteer?
If you analyze all the other treemails, that was the only one where it was like, "strenuous journey." When MC and Nate went on their journey, MC got back — who's one of the baddest athletes in the game. Girl is just so strong, so physically fit — she was absolutely gassed. And when she described carrying those sandbags, and that treemail did not say "strenuous." So using that as my barometer, I was like, "Oh no, this is gonna be that times 10, and I am not MC." Yes, you're going to get an advantage, but what's better than advantage? Individual immunity. So my thought was, I need to save my strength, because at this point in the game, we're at like 20 or something days. Everything matters. I was like, I need to save my strength for the immunity challenge because I think that's a better payoff than risking it for this reward, maybe not getting a vote, and maybe being so gassed that I do horribly in the immunity challenge. As it turns out, I didn't do well in the immunity challenge either, but watching Steven do that journey? That was brutal. I don't know how big that island was. He ran around an entire island! When he was reading the advantage at the end, he was struggling for breath still. So, I think I was right in not doing it, from a physical exertion perspective. Of course, he then goes on to win individual immunity, so he recovered quite well. Good for him. The other thing is, if I had a Steal-a-Vote or a Block-a-Vote, it wouldn't have made a difference when everybody is voting for you. I'm still going home.

TVLINE | We didn't see a lot of you in the early days of the game. You had a bit of a Purple edit to start, but was there anything from those early days that you wish had made the edit?
I was worried about a purple edit, but now I'm like, "I think the producers wanted to just keep the audience on their toes, leave them wanting more from me." [Laughs] But I think early on, what I wish they would have shown was a little bit more of my alliance-making early in the game. I'll admit I did not have a No. 1, but the way it plays out, you would think that I don't have any friends. I remember somebody being like, "Oh, are you and MC close? Why did she clue you into this other alliance?" And I feel like, just in the limited screen time that I had before the merge, you rarely see me talking strategy or making alliances with people, and I just think it would have shown that I've got a little bit more to me than just a challenge jock. I'm a little bit more well-rounded.

TVLINE | If you played again, how would you change your game to try to get to the end?
Oh, I would get a No. 1 in blood. We would prick our fingers or do whatever the hell that is. I would be like, "We're tattooing this! Don't you dare betray me." But I would really work hard to make sure I had somebody to have my back, because when you are competitive in the challenges, you really need that... not bodyguard, but you need somebody watching your back because you're always kind of going to be a threat and you're always gonna be catching strays. So that's what I would do. I would ensure that I actually had a ride-or-die, Or I would attempt to ensure.