Survivor's [Spoiler] Names His 'Cardinal Sin' In Season 50 (And It Has Nothing To Do With Jimmy Fallon)

Spoilers ahead for Episode 9 of "Survivor 50!"

Plenty of castaways have lost their votes after trekking out on a journey or two, but never have we seen a player forced to write his own name down. Until Wednesday's episode of "Survivor 50," that is.  

It was one of those pesky journeys that would ultimately change Christian's fate in the game. After reaching a floating barge in the middle of the ocean, he was faced with a timed puzzle. If he had finished in time, he could've added an early vote to the voting urn. However, pressure got the best of him and his punishment was a biggie. Not only did he have to bring a letter back to camp and read it aloud to the class, but the "note of shame" dictated that he had to vote for himself at the next Tribal Council. (Should "Survivor" journeys be retired?) 

With his voting fate now being public knowledge, the rest of the cast saw opportunity for an easy dogpile (though pitching an Ozzy vote to Cirie didn't help), and Christian was voted out of the game by a vote of 6-3-2. (Anyone else get "J for Jenna" flashbacks from "Borneo"?)

Below, Christian talks to TVLine about that hellish twist (created by Jimmy Fallon!), Rick Devens' fake idol play, where his relationship stands with Mike White today, and more.

TVLINE | Has Jimmy Fallon apologized yet or are you guys currently in a feud?
CHRISTIAN HUBICKI | Well, look, there's so many hours left in the day, my friend. It just happened, so I remain hopeful that Jimmy and I can get together in a room with a mediator and make sure we hash this out and repair our very brief (so far) relationship.

TVLINE | You're only player in "Survivor" history to vote for himself. That, in itself, is wild, but was the fact that you then had to publicly reveal this to the tribe a death sentence?
It was very bad. The reveal element was really, truly, extremely bad for me. Ordinarily, if you come back from a journey, there's still some wiggle room to lie about what happened, right? And perhaps in this case, if I came back and, let's say everything was exactly the same except I didn't have to reveal to them that I have to vote for myself. They might say, "Oh, this was a puzzle, and Christian, he looks like he's a robot guy. He told me he didn't do the puzzle." It might have created doubt as to what happened. Now, would that have been good or bad? It's unclear, but it gives me options for how to play it, as opposed to the Jimmy Fallon thing. The way it played out, I had very few options. So I ended up really reliant upon Emily. She was already, thankfully, marshaling a vote to save me, and I gotta say, it is a beautiful thing. I put so much trust in Emily over the course of this season, and she came out swinging for me when I needed it, and I really, truly appreciate that. I knew that I'd be right to put my faith in her intentions.

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!

TVLINE | If you hadn't gone on the journey at all, how big was your target at this stage of the game?
So that's a good question. I mean, it all comes down, in my opinion, to: What did Cirie want to do? Certainly Jonathan was gunning for me based on what happened at the pairs Tribal Council. If the Coach and Chrissy pair didn't go home, that was a very large alliance of people who seemed to have close to unbreakable bonds, who would have had a straight majority of the entire tribe, and that's an incredibly precarious position. So, they had to go. Knowing Jonathan was obviously close to these people, I needed him to not be in on this plan that was going down to hopefully get rid of Coach and Chrissy instead of Rick, and as a result, he felt very betrayed. In my defense, I'm trying to protect my closest ally. I think he, in and of itself, wasn't enough to sway the vote to me. I think that if Cirie takes her crew in a different direction, it's not happening, right? In my view, there were ways to survive this vote for me for sure if I had done things differently. The only thing would be is [if] Cirie was already planning to cut me, then all this other stuff was just a face-saving reason to do it, then I would have been in trouble as well. That's the thing I don't know.

TVLINE | How did you feel about Devens going for the fake idol play at the last Tribal Council? Was it too early?
At the time, I didn't think he needed to do it, but also, there was a lot of craziness going on at [that] Tribal Council before Rick ever pulled out that crazy fake-out, which is, by the way, top-down just one of the coolest uses of a fake idol probably in the history of the show. I just want to make sure it's clear — and Rick's idea is brilliant and beautiful, and I was happy that I had even a supporting role in it — but when it comes to the use of it, I thought that we had the votes. And so him pulling it out created an awkward situation, right? But at the same time, from his perspective, he could go home and it's also a pairs Tribal Council, you get a 2-for-1 deal, and people were already getting up. Jonathan was already getting up and talking to people around Tribal Council because people were tipping him off about the plan. So it was crazy. I'm still not sure to this day if the vote would have gone the way I expected had he not played it. So yeah, if he had asked me, "Christian, should I play it?" I would have said no. Let's sit on it. But easy for me to say, I'm not being actively targeted.

TVLINE | If the fake idol had still been sitting there, would you have gone for it this week? 
Look, in the situation I was in, I was properly blindsided. I thought Emily's plan was going through, although, there were signs that I didn't pay much attention to that I really should have picked up on. Things were going sideways that I just kind of ignored. I thought it was just weird because I had to vote for myself, so who cares about what I have to do or think or say, but if I did, of course I would've gone for that fake idol, right? But the question is, what happens then? Is it just Rick who goes instead? There needed to be a greater plan in place. And I think that the way that you might go is you say, "Yes, Jimmy Fallon, [made] me vote for myself, but there's another twist. It came with an idol." I fake something about the twist, and then Rick goes and grabs the [fake idol]. We have a double idol, we have a full-on Three Amigos situation, maybe something like that, right? That's what you have to do.

TVLINE | You took Mike White out of this game pretty early after he brought up Gabby in conversation. Was getting rid of your fellow "David vs. Goliath" players always part of the plan? 
Well, it went down so early because of the threat of the merge. The threat that we posed as a trio together... I did not plan to go in and target Mike White. I wanted to work with Mike. Angelina, I was more skeptical of. The issue was we were all swapped into this tribe together, the three of us. If I marched into the merge having seemingly protected the other two, everyone would just assume we're a tight trio, right? And who's gonna take the bullet from that? Probably me. People like Mike. Show and celebrity aside, he's a magnetic personality. People like working with him. Angelina, once she's at the merge, I've seen her just kind of take off to the end, right? I'm the one who takes the bullet. So, I was thinking maybe Angelina would go. That would make a lot of sense. But once Mike started pitching Emily, I was like, why? Why did she have to go now? I mean, I understand being wary of her later, but why now? Why couldn't it be Stephenie we're targeting?

It didn't make sense, but I was trusting his judgment because he's got a great read on people. And to the point where I actually went to Stephenie and said, "Yeah, Stephanie, let's vote Emily." I was convinced. I was convinced by Mike. But when I talked to Mike again, I was like, "But Mike, what are we gonna do about this target at the merge? I'm gonna have a big target on me. What are we gonna do? What's the plan if we march in the three of us together?" And my memory was that he said, "We'll figure it out. We'll find a way." And I was just like, "Oh, this is my life." I'm sitting on a time bomb that goes off at the merge. This is it. And I realized at that point, no, he is just trying to save Angelina however he can. He's trying to get me to ignore a real threat to me down the line. At that point, OK, I gotta start considering Mike because Mike is the glue connecting Angelina and Ozzy. They didn't get along, and they ultimately did not coalesce together. And ultimately that works, and saves Emily in the process. She's the person who came out swinging for me at this last vote. She tried to target Ozzy, and she could have easily tossed me under the bus, like, "Oh, Christian, he went on a journey, he's voting for himself, he's toast, he's done. I'm throwing him under the bus," and she didn't. So I feel vindicated in who I decided to trust there.

TVLINE | Mike seemed like he was still hurt in some of his exit press. Does a friendship still exist there? Have you spoken with him since?
I certainly understand why he was hurt. I reached out to him as soon as I got back from the island back in early July with a long message explaining why, and I haven't heard back yet. But I hope at some point he will listen to my message, if he hasn't already, and I'm hopeful that we'll find a way to talk in the future, whenever he's ready to do it. My doors are always open to him.