‘Survivor: San Juan del Sur’ interview: John Rocker on gameplay, surprises, more
We’re a little later getting this “Survivor” exit interview up than we are most others, but let’s just say that it has been quite the crazy week!
Nonetheless, this one may be worth the wait given that we’re talking about John Rocker here. This is one of the most notorious people to play the game, and we know that everyone out there is going to have an opinion on him. The biggest irony in his game, at least to us, is that his undoing seemed to actually be trying too hard to save Val Collins, making a deal with Jeremy, and then admitting it to the rest of the tribe. Even if he had continued to run his mouth at the challenge, maybe things would have been different if Coyopa all felt John still had their back.
There are a variety of other topics that we discussed with John last week in a conference call, so let’s go ahead and dive into those.
CarterMatt – So I want to go back to a specific moment in the game, where you were talking to Wes and you claimed that you were John Wetteland…
John Rocker – I don’t know where Wetteland came from. I don’t know why one baseball [player] would pretend to be another one. Wes just caught me off-guard … I just said the first offball thing that came in my head. I have no idea why.
Did you really think that you were going to able to keep it secret? You’re such a big, athletic guy. You were prepared to be [found out], right?
Yeah, I bulls**t thought that I could just go through that, stick my chin down, and be able to escape through incognito. But I think when Wes [said something] it was only day one, two hours [in] … I foolishly thought that I could escape under the radar, but I didn’t come close to that.
Both you and many other people have said on the show that Josh was the closest person to you. What was he doing to make you feel like you could trust him so much?
He was playing a good game. First of all, he’s likable. Second, he just played a good game. Early on, we saw the numbers that we had in five guys and four girls. We anticipated doing better in physical challenges, but we still thought we could keep the guys intact and stay strong during challenges. I remember having a conversation with me, Josh, and Wes, and I think that the girls were assuming that because Josh was gay that Josh would could to their side … Josh [told us about some of the girls saying that], and he said ‘that pisses me off.’ I don’t know if Josh was just saying that, trying to set us up for future blindsides … He was definitely doing a good job of staying under the radar, and being able to play both sides of the fence. He was able to take advantage advantage of opportunities when he saw them.
Was there ever any moment at tribal council that you felt like you should use your idol, such as when Jaclyn was talking?
Well I did a little bit, and I had the devil on my left shoulder, and the angel on my right shoulder. At some points [I thought about it], and Baylor made a comment that I don’t think made the edit.
It just went back to our tribe being bad in challenges, and [while] I like Dale, if there are challenges, he’s not that strong, not that fast, and he’s [the oldest one on the tribe]. If we’re doing bad in challenges, I thought, are they really going to get rid of me before Dale? Is that really the play here?
Finally, what was it like for you watching Julie go off alone on the show [after seeing what was happening to you]? Was that hard to watch?
At this point not really, because Julie and I had talked about it, that after she got back to camp, she went off by herself and didn’t think anyone would follow her. I already knew what the edit was going to be like.
Of course, you don’t want to see your girlfriend of three-plus years, and the loved one that you’re going off with, you don’t want to see them hurt in any way, especially when it’s not so much for themselves, but for you. It kind of makes you feel good that someone cares that much about you when they see others treating you badly.