‘Survivor: Cagayan’ exit interview: Tasha Fox on Kass flipping, challenge victories

We picked Tasha Fox before “Survivor: Cagayan” to win the whole thing, and while she did not achieve that victory, we feel pretty good about why we picked her after the fact. She was a strong player physically and socially, and the only reason that she is out of the game right now is because she would have easily won at the final tribal council against almost anyone.

Late last week, we talked a little bit with Tasha in a conference call with reporters about possible regrets, the Kass move that completely destroyed much of her alliance and her game, and also how she managed to dominate so many immunity challenges despite going up against the Brawn tribe.

CarterMatt – A lot of times here I like to ask people what they could have done, but it feels here like your back was against the wall and there wasn’t a whole lot you could do.

I agree. I ask myself for future reference what could I have done, but I think I did the best I could with what I had, which was pretty much nothing from the beginning of the game. I had to draw on my owner inner strength and skills to make my way through the game as far as I could. It’s kind of hard without a strong alliance to make it all the way to the end and I didn’t have that.

I want to ask about these immunity challenge wins, because I don’t think anyone would have guessed before the season that the Brains tribe would dominate them. Is there anything special you did to prepare for these?

I’ve been a competitive person since I’ve been like two. I grew up on a street with all boys and competition is something that I was comfortable with all my life. In the game of ‘Survivor’ I knew that I was going to be a strong physical person. But the thing about ‘Survivor’ challenges is that they are not your typical challenges. They are not like softball or basketball. They are different, and what it takes is a will to win, a desire to mentally stay focused, and I just hate losing. When you hate losing, you’ll do whatever it takes for as long as you need to in order to ensure [a win].

The other thing is that I didn’t have anyone other than myself. Sometimes you’ll see people accept temptations, and they’ll say [I’m out] because they have the comfort of an alliance … I didn’t have that comfort, so I knew that the only thing I had keeping me in the game was my physical abilities because I didn’t have an alliance to back me up.

In this past episode you and Spencer did a really good job of riling Tony up and making him really paranoid, but [despite was happened with Kass this week] he decided to keep her. Do you think Tony just realized that you and Spencer would be much harder to beat at the end?

I think Tony would be much smarter to keep Kass around, because she is the only person in this game that does not have a chance to win. I would definitely not expect Tony to target Kass.

So in going back to early after the merge, is there anything that you could have done to keep Kass from voting out Sarah?

I don’t think that there’s anything we could have done. For Kass to say ‘I felt I was on the bottom’ was just her trying to use us as a scapegoat for her really bad, million-dollar-loss decision. Spencer and Kass and I would talk every day. There was a tree that we would go to and we would sit on the stump and talk strategy. There was no way she could have thought she was on the bottom.

I think it was just an emotional decision. Sarah was getting a lot of attention and she was jealous, and to make herself feel better, she [got rid of her] at the expense of a million-dollar game. So I’m not going to even say that there is anything that I could have done to prevent Kass from making a dumb, emotional decision.

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Strong words, but a great interview!