Survivor's [Spoiler] On How Trusting Someone Else's Gut Led To Her Downfall
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of Survivor.
The "Lulu Losers" may have cinched their first dub, but it still didn't make them immune from the vote.
Sabiyah, Emily, Kaleb and Sean were on a sugar high after winning a large basket of fruit in Wednesday's reward challenge, prompting Sabiyah to pitch a possible Kaleb vote to her tribemates. When the tribe lost its third immunity challenge in a row, the stage was set for a massive Kaleb blindside... until Emily spilled the beans to her No. 1 confidant and flipped the script on Sabiyah. (Read our recap here.)
Below, we talk with the 28-year-old truck driver from Jacksonville, N.C. to break down that shocking vote, why she was leery about Kaleb, and what she wishes fans got to see in the edit.
TVLINE | You were a player I thought would go deep into the game! How disappointing was it to leave so early?
SABIYAH BRODERICK | Oh, super disappointing. But once you get to Ponderosa, you're really reflecting. I crossed off a lot more things on my bucket list than I thought I did and I had only played seven days. Finding an idol, being in a power position, orchestrating votes without having a vote, building a shelter. It's been amazing to be able to experience such a one-of-a-kind process with all of these people that I probably never would have met outside of this. I'm honestly just grateful.
TVLINE | Can you tell me a little bit about those early days of dealing with Emily. How did she get ostracized so soon and was there anything we didn't see there?
I feel like it was just at the forefront. She led with negativity instead of like leading with what you normally see where everybody has this can-do attitude and everybody wants to build shelters and everybody's trying to make positive relationships and good first impressions. Emily didn't really care about that. I feel like she's one of the first people to do that, outside of some of the other people on the villain-side of things, but even they put their best foot forward on Day 1.
While Kaleb and I are over here killing ourselves in the Sweat vs. Savvy challenge, Emily's trying to plant seeds already, and wow, what a move to do that. It ended up working out in her favor because it put her at the bottom. Now she has the time to cry to Brandon and Sean. Now she has the time to get sympathy from Kaleb. Otherwise if she was stronger or more bubbly, maybe our personalities just don't mix and she's out anyway, you know? So it actually ended up working in her favor, which was kind of interesting.
TVLINE | Kaleb put in a lot of work and secured Emily's loyalty early on. Were you privy to any of that?
I can honestly say, no, not at first because of course, I'm searching for an idol. I'm out here trying to find papayas and other things to eat. That was my main role in the tribe. My dad is Jamaican, so that wasn't my first time [on an island]. The fruit trees, their leaves are smoother. I knew how to find things in the wild. So I spent a lot of time off-path. I spent a lot of time making the shelter and I missed those key moments. Honestly, even saying it out loud is like, "Duh, this is what everybody says." If you're the shelter-builder, if you're the provider, you miss out on the social game.
I was kind of a victim of that, but we started to pick up on it when it was too late. That was why you see me throw Kaleb's name out. He'd been spending a lot of time with Emily. He went to Reba and got them to tell all of their business. He got one-on-ones with everybody in Reba and they didn't show how detailed the conversation was when he came back from the raid. He literally was like, "OK, so Dee's with this person. Julie, she's this." He had an entire checklist to the point where by the end of the conversation, we were just in awe of the man. I start looking at everybody else's face and I'm like, "Oh, this is a big red flag. Big! And he's in bed with me, I'm the first one to get stabbed!" That's how I'm thinking. Proximity in Survivor is not always great.
TVLINE | It was so great watching Lulu win its first challenge, but the look of defeat on your faces after you lost that immunity challenge was so hard to watch. Tell me a little bit about what you were feeling in that moment?
Oh my goodness. And watching [the show] play that sad music behind us and everything! It was such a moment. After everything is said and done, you are out there huddled with these people for warmth because you don't have a fire. You're making sure that everybody's drinking water. You're encouraging people. If it's only one extra slice of papaya, it means the world, and that had been our world for a week. And honestly, the core was Sean, Kaleb and I, but Emily had been around the whole time. So we're close and the realization that somebody is going home, whether it is Emily or it's me, is rough. The other teams, none of them have actually played the full game yet. Nobody's had to go home from their tribes. The strategy is really pointless [for them] right now. It's good to get yourself in a good position, but unless you have the imminent threat of trouble, you don't need it. It's just kind of hearsay until you have to put pen to paper. So it was kind of just like bitterness, sadness and ultimately, just knowing that as soon as we get off those boats and get back to camp, we've got to put the game face back on.
I didn't have my vote yet. I was hoping that burning the candle works because that's something we didn't even know was going to work. We didn't even know what was inside of the casing. Of course, they're like, "Do you think that it's the idol?" I was like, "It better be the idol, we've been looking for days!" So there's so much mental exhaustion on top of the physical exhaustion. Those puzzle pieces were not light, the wagon... it's very real. None of that stuff is props. We are beat to death and back, so it was just a really low low.
TVLINE | I absolutely loved that you melted the wax figurine at Tribal Council! Did you have any concerns in pulling that off, maybe that production might not let you try it?
I love that question, but a lot of people think that that was my first time trying to burn it there. It wasn't. I wanted to burn it with my torch, but if the wax melts it puts the fire out. And then there are other portions of [the] Tribal [set] that have fire, but not all of them are big enough to get to the temperature needed to melt it all the way because this thing, it was about a water bottle's thickness. It's solid wax. Ultimately, we didn't know what the melting temperature of this thing was. How hot is the Tribal Council fire in the middle? I needed this thing to melt and be gone. Most of my afternoon was just constructing these tools and that's why I had to tell Emily because if we were gonna go further in the game, her first time knowing about my idol can't be when I'm barbecuing it on national TV.
TVLINE | Was there anything from Episode 3 that happened that we didn't get to see in the edit?
I would say Sean and I talking about me playing my idol if Kaleb was really in with Emily. They left that out for sure. But it made sense. Of course, you wanna build it up, but I feel like that might have added more [tension], like, "Oh, is she gonna play it?" But, we started to pick up on the vibes between Emily and Kaleb, and Sean and I were sitting in the shelter and I'm just like, "Are they playing me?" and Sean's like, "Oh, Lord. Don't get paranoid now."
Emily had told Kaleb that I said his name. She came back and told Sean and I that. Part of the plan! But she said that his reaction was, "Oh my God. Yes!" and he was jumping up and down. And I'm like, "Well, if Kaleb is with me, it would have been a lot more calm, cool, collected like, 'Oh, thanks for telling me.'" But Emily told us that they were damn near dancing on my grave. So that put up a red flag for me where I'm like, "Is he really with me going in there?" I should have bought more into my gut than I did into Sean's.
It's easy to think everybody's against you. Kaleb admitted to me that he felt very paranoid the entire time. He started seeing me and Sean getting closer because, of course, we're both LGBTQ. He's a principal. Both of my parents are educators. So he starts seeing me get closer with Sean. He feels threatened, which I didn't see in him, so that is what he says prompted him to have his insurance policy with Emily, which not a bad move. It puts him in the middle and gives him more options.
So I would say that out of everything, I wish the viewers would've seen my thought process of that. They showed my thought process when I was in the booth (I was there a lot longer), but they didn't show me at camp. Like, "Am I gonna have to play this thing tonight?" When you play Survivor, your dream and your nightmare is a blindside. If you're gonna go out early, you want it to be a blind side. You don't wanna just be a lamb led to the slaughter. You don't wanna see it coming because it's respect, you know what I mean? It's so much. I'm still processing now, the morning after, now that I've had everything come to light. There are so many things that I missed. Even though I felt like I was in a good position, I really wasn't in the best position I could have made for myself, and ultimately that's what I take from it.