“I think that the jury was just out on me.
I don’t think that there’s a scenario in which I win.”
How confident was Xander heading into that final Tribal Council?
‘Survivor 41’ player Xander Hastings.Robert Voets/CBS
Regardless of what happens at the end, that’s an amazing accomplishment.
XANDER HASTINGS: I was surprised at no votes.
I wasn’t surprised at the loss.
Ricard Foye, Heather Aldret, and Xander Hastings on ‘Survivor 41’.Robert Voets/CBS
Ricard’s been the closest person out there.
And Ricard knows me inside and out.
He knows the game I’ve been playing.
Xander Hastings on ‘Survivor 41’.Robert Voets/CBS
We’ve talked to each other about it.
And he’s the person that I love.
He’s the biggest threat, so it makes sense to take him out.
And in doing so, I could also put him [on to work the jury].
And he just gives me the coldest glare.
And I knew it was going to be an uphill battle from there on out.
When I saw his face, I was like, “Oh, okay.
So he’s going to be campaigning against me.”
And then it’s easy to justify everyone else’s game by latching onto that narrative.
Like, “Oh no, like he is just a bad person,” or whatever it is.
I wasn’t at Ponderosa, so I don’t know what the talk was.
Ricard and I both talked about our insecurities.
When I was younger, I was very insecure.
It was a very real moment.
And when I was growing up, I never thought I would be in this place.
And so, to hear that and to share that him….
But I think everybody knew that he was guaranteed a win if he got there.
Were you surprised you didn’t get any of the Yase votes?
It’s really hard with the small numbers and all these crazy advantages, losing your vote.
And at least from my perspective, my life was on the line so much that it was like.
And by not playing my advantages, I essentially voted them out.
I send myself home in that case.
So I was a little bit more grim trigger strategy of like, “Oh, okay.
You’re rolling your eyes behind my back.
Of course, I’m going to try and save myself.
I trained Heather all that day.
I was making sure that she knew exactly how to make fire.
You could do it in under six seconds.
Every single day, wake up, make fire, go to bed, make fire.”
I was always making fire.
And then you see the scene where I just strike it once and it lights up.
I’m like, “Oh, my God, this could be it.
I could just step in and do it.”
But I was so afraid.
I won the challenge.
But I couldn’t help but think, “What if I step in and lose?”
And then I’m pulling out my hair.
People are saying, “You could have won!”
I wanted there to be no question.
I wanted to get to the end.
And I needed to know whether or not I was going to win.
And honestly, I’m really, really glad.
Would you have been better off not winning the last challenge?
I thought about that too.
It would’ve been really cool on TV, but I’m not sure.
I think the jury had been out on me for a long time.
Yeah, I think that the jury was just out on me.
I don’t think that there’s a scenario in which I win.
The one thing that they seemed to react pretty negatively to was your take on the Deshawn truth bomb.
What led you to believe that the jury was anti-Erika when that went down?
All you have to work with is facial expressions.
And you’re looking at the jury.
I was always checking to confirm how people were reacting.
I’m sure that I just mistook their scoffs for Heather as scoffs for Erika.
It’s funny because, I knew.
So I knew that I didn’t want her getting something else on her resume.
I just didn’t know what the jury was thinking in terms of her game.
Because even she said it: She played a very similar game to Heather.
And the jury really didn’t like Heather, which I think was also a bad read.
Like me, I reallylikedHeather.
I just broke into tears because I was running all the simulations.
I’m thinking “What can I do from here?”
And she just hits me with this human thing to say, and it brought me back home.
And I was like, “Oh, my God.
Heather’s such a motherly figure out here.”
I hated how people were so down on her.
I really wanted her to have that fire moment.
And I practiced with her all day, and I thought she could do it.
You saw how I played the game.
I gambled every time, and I always went all in, balls to the wall.
So for me, it was like, it’s all or nothing.
It was a poor jury read on my end because I thought that Erika played a good game.
This is the hardest thing about the final Tribal setup.
There’s no intro speech.
There’s no outro speech.
It’s just question and answer.
I woke up that morning, and I said, “You know what?
I’m going to rain hell on camp.
I’m going to do whatever I can to shake things up and just spread chaos.”
So I went out and made a fake idol.
I’d torn up my actual letter because Naseer had me do it.
He was like, “Oh no, they don’t know about the idol.
So tear it up.”
And so I did, to placate him.
So I put some of the old tree mails in there, and I planted it.
And I grabbed the camera guys and like, “Hey, get ready for this!”
Everybody knows I’m on the bottom.
They want me gone.
What’s he doing now?"
Liana and Deshawn are chasing me, and it’s just rained.
It was storming all night, and I slip, I wipe out, and I check my pockets.
And I’m like, “Oh, my God, I lost my fake idol!”
So now I couldn’t stop cracking up.
The camera guys knew what was going on.
They couldn’t stop cracking up.
So I’m doing all this, and then I’m looking for it.
And then that’s when Liana and I are shoving around.
It’s like the brother, sister pushing each other around because I’m looking for a fake idol.
But Ricard actually found it!
And Ricard comes up to me, and he’s like, “What are you doing?”
And I’m like, “I’m looking for the idol that I found.”
And he’s like, “Oh, don’t worry about it.
It’s a fake.
Here you go.”
And he hands me the fake idol that I had made!
So I was like, “Wow, not what I intended.”
But it ended up being great because I knew I had to stir the pot somehow.
And this crazy charade happens.
And everyone on the cast still thinks that was just a real idol hunt and I never had anything.
Speaking of those secret scenes, do you still have a bit of a crush on Liana?
Oh, she’s great.
I was just spiting truth there.
She’s so athletic and intelligent.
This is the new era.
We could be the new legends or whatever.
And so, obviously, we both recognized that in each other.
And she saw through my bulls— the best on Yase.
She knew that I was downplaying myself, and I knew that she was playing herself.
So it’s a very like, “Oh man, I see her as a threat.”
She sees me as a threat.
Of course, I definitely think very highly of her.
So, no crush.
