‘Survivor: San Juan del Sur’ interview: Nadiya Anderson on Dale’s move, blindside, and more

Sometimes, this is what happens when you build up a resume of reality TV shows: It makes you into an easy target. While Nadiya Anderson brought some physical strength to the table on “Survivor: San Juan del Sur,” her history of being very cutthroat on “The Amazing Race” made her a target for Dale and others.

In turn, we saw Dale Wentworth in particular target her, and she was the first person sent home from the game Wednesday night. What does she think about her short time on the show? We had a chance to find out via a conference call interview.

CarterMatt – Is it fair that your history on ‘The Amazing Race’ played a role in this game?

Nadiya Anderson – It’s not fair, [though] this is ‘Survivor’ [and things often aren’t]. It just sucked for me because coming in and me having no control over that information, and being voted off ‘Survivor’ because of something that had nothing to do with ‘Survivor.’

If there were other reality freaks out here like me, maybe that wouldn’t have put such a huge target on me and Natalie’s backs. But the fact that we were the only ones who had been on a show before totally put me out there, and everyone was like ‘she had two shots at a million bucks.’

Was Dale the only person on the tribe who knew who you were, or were there others?

We were introduced to the camp as ‘hey, so you guys have been on ‘Amazing Race’ twice,’ so Dale was not the first person to put it out there. But, he was the person who was the biggest ‘Amazing Race’ fan, and he had applied to be on ‘The Amazing Race’ with his daughter. So I feel like it was a combination of him being a total HATER, and then me and Natalie being good at the game and using that to phone in on the fact that he was vulnerable on our tribe.

So there was a lot of factors, but it just sucked having a huge target on my back out of the gate.

So what happened with the gender divide on your tribe? Did the guys all just go and ‘bro down’ early, and that caused the women’s alliance to form?

When I came, I didn’t want an all-girl alliance because I knew [what happens with them]. But when I got to camp, the guys were such bros … After Dale made that fire … and I guess the guys found out about John being a professional baseball player, the young guys were obsessed with Dale and John. That made it impossible for me to really communicate with the guys about anything. They were so confident with the guys they were with, so I had to go with this all-girls alliance based on that. It was obvious at camp that it was a huge divide between girls and boys.

Were you blindsided, and did you think that Josh was with you?

It was a total blindside. I thought I had Josh in the bag. I remember walking with Val and Jaclyn, who were the only two who voted [with me] and with the plan, and she asked me ‘are you sure you got Josh?’. And I was like ‘trust me, I got the gay, I got the gay. Like listen.’

All right, so one more quick question for you here. You weren’t there too long and this is obviously different than ‘Amazing Race’; did ‘Survivor’ test you in ways you weren’t expecting?

Yeah, it tested me, even though I wasn’t out there as long as I wanted to be. I was looking forward to thugging it out, and really living this island girl thug life. I was hoping to be with Natalie so we could rock out together, but it was a total blindside in all aspects. I remember walking onto [camp] and being like ‘where are they wet wipes?’. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into!

—

Were you sad to see Nadiya go, or do you think it was a bad move for “Survivor” to cast them in the first place? Share in the comments.