‘Survivor: Worlds Apart’ exclusive: Lindsey Cascaddan on Blue Collar tribe, idol hunting, alliance plans
Was it the right move for the Blue Collar tribe on “Survivor: Worlds Apart” to get rid of Lindsey Cascaddan? At the moment, we are really not quite sure … especially after speaking with her in an exit interview early Thursday. While no one knows how the game is going to unfold for certain, she appeared on the surface to be far more interested in playing a loyal game than Rodney, who spent the bulk of his own time getting into arguments and not really professing much loyalty at all.
Of course, Rodney’s actions were a big subject of conversation in our exclusive chat, with also included talk about the rest of the players on her tribe, whether or not she searched for an immunity idol out there on the beach, and a variety of other topics. We really covered quite a bit of ground here in a short amount of time.
CarterMatt – What has the past 12 or so hours for you been like? Is it hard seeing yourself voted off TV, and then having to come on here and regurgitate everything that happened months ago?
Lindsey Cascaddan – You know, for some people it might me, but for me it’s not. I am really proud for the fight that I went out for, and the person that I was, who I feel was pretty much myself. It’s been empowering seeing a lot of women reach out to me that I don’t even know and will never meet saying ‘oh my God, you’re such an inspiration, you’re so cool, I can’t wait to show my daughter this.’ I’ve really felt a lot of love from America, so it hasn’t been a bad right.
Since you bring [the fight] up, let’s just dive in here and talk about Rodney. What’s going on there? Was he better or worse than how he came across on TV?
Oh he’s 100% worse. Most of what comes out of Rodney’s mouth is not even airable, so I think it’s hard to depict him as a human being on TV. In life, you have these people, and it’s really about how you react to them versus how they treat you.
Really, what I was confused about was that you said that ‘someone from this tribe is going to win,’ and it felt like you would have been very loyal to your tribe had you stayed. Do you feel like that is the case?
I was 100% with Blue Collar. It’s easy to say that because I didn’t get the chance to swap and meet other people, but I’m an extremely loyal person. My word is my word, and I stick by it, which is why I stuck with it day 1 or day 11 or after tribal or now. That was my tribe, and I think that in ‘Survivor’ when you can play with the numbers and you can play with your tribe, it doesn’t mean you are getting along. Unity is powerful in this game.
In speaking a little more about this, let’s go back to some of the earlier parts of the game, since we really didn’t get a sense on TV as to when the alliance with you and Sierra started. Can you give us an indication of that?
Sierra and I bonded from the moment we met each other. I would say that if my personality had a body, it would be Sierra. She is just a tall, beautiful, threatening-looking woman. She’s powerful, but when you get to know her she is very quiet. She has strong opinions, but she doesn’t really voice them the way that I do. We were sort of a dynamic duo from day one. We meshed and worked really well together. It came really naturally for both of us.
Let’s talk about Dan, since I go a little back and forth on this guy. There are times I think he’s a lovable goofball, and then times I think he’s out of his mind. What is your take on this guy, because in the early days, it felt like he was a dead man walking.
Dan’s a showman, and the thing about ‘Survivor’ is that you get beaten down. You [days] go on and you get exhausted and you can’t really put on a show anymore after a while. So I think Dan was obnoxious was a loud and obnoxious and wild character in the beginning nobody could stand, and he came in with this attitude, and he even said that on the first episode: ‘I just want to be remembered. Trust me, you’ll remember me.’ I think that as he starts to wither away, that showman starts to wither away and he becomes much more tolerable.
Dan at the end of the day is a great guy, he’s annoying but he has a good heart. I think that the more tired and the hungrier he becomes, the more you’ll like him. (Laughs.)
This goes into an interesting subject in a way, given what we saw with Max out there. Did you consider how much someone knew about ‘Survivor’ to be particularly threatening?
I don’t think that knowing a lot about ‘Survivor’ is an advantage or a disadvantage. Every player is different, and every player makes the season. ‘Survivor’ is a game of casting, it’s a game of luck, it’s a game of strategy. The point is that unless it is the exact same people on the season, you’re not going to have a similar situation to be educated about.
If you brought all of us back from season 30 and replayed it, we would all have advantages and disadvantages having played it and knowing so much about each other, the game, and Nicaragua. Realistically, you are seeing this happen where you have someone who knew nothing about the game, myself, and someone with all the knowledge about the game, Max, can get voted out at the same time. It really doesn’t matter.
One other thing I’m curious about is if you or some other people on your tribe were looking for the immunity idol. We didn’t see much of it.
I was relentlessly looking for me. I wouldn’t say that there was a lot of idol-searching on others’ behalves unless they were with me. I was determined to find that idol. I never did. Had I had a clue, I feel I probably could have. I know I got close, but I just could never close the deal. They were smart to think to have it [by splitting the vote], because I really was relentless.
Early on in the game, we saw Mike and Dan shirk the clue and bring back [the large bag of beans], but we saw in the premiere there was some doubt over whether or not they did the right thing. Did that stigma stay with them?
No, not really. I think Sierra was mostly just paranoid and she got into the girls’ ears and said ‘I think that’s not a big bag of beans; that’s a small bag of beans.’ After a couple of days, we really didn’t care about it anymore. I think we just talked themselves out of that theory and decided that they made the right choice. We had to talk Sierra out of that theory.
In continuing along with Mike, it seems that unless he is eating random animals, he seemed to be always working and bothering other players. Was that something that was continually going on?
It was continuously annoying, but the thing with Mike is that everyone has their thing that they go to, and because he’s an oil worker, he lives and works on those rigs for 90% of his life with no social life, family, or contact with the real world. So working has become his life. So on camp, that did become his crutch. At the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mike was working smart; he was working hard. A lot of the time, me, Sierra, Kelly, and Dan could get a lot more productive work done in a shorter amount of time, but for Mike, he couldn’t wrap his head around that. I think they came up with ‘work smarter, not harder’ for people like Mike, because at some point, you just have to say ‘when is enough enough? This is Survivor, and at some point we have to conserve energy. We’re not eating, we’re not sleeping.’ So we sat Mike down and said ‘you gotta chill, you can’t always be on our backs when in reality our camp everything is running flawlessly.’
The only other person we haven’t talked to on your tribe is Kelly, and I think everyone just assumed she was with you and Sierra, only to figure out that she was with Mike. Was Kelly close with you guys early and she drifted [away]?
Kelly’s a drifter. She’s Switzerland. She was always in the middle. She came in not wanting to gameplay. She wanted to not have opinions and not speak up, kind of be the wallflower. It was extremely hard to get a pure read on Kelly, because talking with her she was like ‘okay, mm-hmm.” I’m like ‘not okay, who are you voting for.’ It was like pulling teeth getting answers out of her.
Watching it back, she was working with Mike and Mike seems to be getting more answers from her than anyone. She was in Sierra and I’s alliance, and Mike somehow got into her ear and said ‘these are two girls who are so close, do you really want to be their third wheel?’ Kelly decided that she didn’t want to be the third wheel, which any girl can understand. Three is kind of a tricky number with girls because two pair off and one feels left out and then the one who is left out causes trouble. That is what happened.
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Thanks to Lindsey for the great answers! Even though this is only one point of view, we feel like we got a lot of information out of this that was not on the show. Anytime we can have that, we tend to find ourselves very happy as a result.
We’re going to have our interview with Max Dawson and more soon at the link here. Also, sign up now if you want to score some other TV updates on all we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)