‘Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance’ exclusive: Shirin Oskooi on the real reason she was voted out

Anytime that you have a season of “Survivor,” you have to anticipate the fact that there are going to be at least a small handful of things that don’t end up making it to air that are important for understanding the story. For an All-Star season, the pattern instead seems to be that there are around a million different conversations that happen that are not shown.

In the case of Shirin Oskooi, some of these missed conversations are very important in understanding what really happened to cause her elimination on “Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance” Wednesday night. As we noted in our review, it seemed like it was mostly a consequence of her not consoling Abi-Maria during a particularly vulnerable moment; as it turns out, though, there was so much more involved, with much of it centered around a singular player.

CarterMatt – This is so strange. I was just talking to Vytas last week about how great you were doing!

Shirin Oskooi –  The thing is that Jeff Varner is playing [hard], and he’s playing it rather publicly. After Vytas was voted out, Jeff told me that he wanted to vote out Spencer, so the two people who were being talked about being on the chopping block were Spencer and Abi, because nobody could stand living with Abi. And so, I just felt like my alliance was being turned on, so I tried turning it on Jeff. I went behind his back and worked on getting people to vote him out, but they all had his back and wanted to continue working with him, even though he had screwed a lot of them over in the first vote, and they ratted me out. He decided to get me out because he knew at that point I was gunning for him. He decided to take out a threat.

You’re a good person to ask this since you’ve played in the last two seasons, but when it comes to just the speed of the game, how different was it being out there versus being on ‘Worlds Apart’?

I think for our tribe in particular, the speed of the game was way faster. Like, everybody hit the beach strategizing. It was made to look like the shelter people waited to build the shelter before strategizing,but that wasn’t true. As they were building the shelter, they all nailed down an alliance. I know that because we had Spencer working with the shelter people, pretending that he was in an alliance.

Then, the beach people, the people collecting the palm fronds, we were working first of all, and we were also strategizing. That was so many conversations non-stop, all day, every day. It just never ended the whole time I was there. That was completely different from ‘Worlds Apart.’ It was like the merge; fast-forward to the merge, and that’s what it felt like playing on this season.

Do you think it’s fair at all for anyone to compare you and Spencer to you and Max Dawson?

It’s completely different. In ‘Worlds Apart’ Max was the only person on my tribe who even liked me and was willing to talk to me. The other thing is that Max and I were seen as a pair, the weirdos on the outside of the tribe. In this case, people didn’t see Spencer and me as a pair, but they saw us as strategic people on the same side. Spencer and me, Kelley, and Abi, we were the new-school players ‘together,’ and it just so happened that Spencer and I developed a very strong bond, but we did a really great job hiding it, which is why Vytas didn’t know that Spencer was on our side.

Let’s talk a little bit about this whole Abi situation. Obviously you cannot be in the right place at the right time all the time, but in the moment when she was fighting with Peih-Gee, did it ever cross your mind to go out and be there for her?

The problem was that I was so emotionally drained from dealing with Abi for the prior three days that I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Our entire tribe was in that shelter, and we told Abi to come and hang out with us. But, she ran off melodramatically crying, and it’s not like anybody was attacking her. She was just upset that we were not putting up with her attacking everybody. At one point I even said to the whole tribe, ‘I feel like she’s expecting me to go out there and save her right now, and I just can’t. I’m too worn-out.’ And that’s why Terry went and did it.

Is that what did me in? No. What did me in was Varner having all the power and gunning for me and getting me out. It certainly didn’t help, because it meant that the very people who find Abi incredibly annoying and wanted her out in Terry and Wiglesworth and Varner, they now thought that they had her more on their side than ever because I was able to steer her the first three days. They see that she is someone who will do whatever people will tell her to do, and they know that I’m not that kind of person. It’s really easy for them to say ‘let’s use her as a shield until the end, and let’s get rid of Shirin because she is much more strategic, and we can’t boss [her] around.’

Why was it that Varner was able to get so much power? Was it that people like you and Spencer had such appreciation for him thanks to him being such an old-school player, or was he just playing so hard [to get in a good situation?

If Spencer and I were nostalgic about old-school players, you’d hear me gushing about Kelly Wiglesworth. I’ll tell you, first and foremost, that she was miserable to be around. She refused to talk to anyone outside of her old-school pre-game alliance, and she’s constantly talking sh** about everything under her breath. She’s miserable.

What was great about Varner was that he was a breath of fresh air, he was clearly funny and snarky, and he was an old-school player who was willing to play strategically over just relying on pre-game alliances and old-school connections. He more so than anybody, he was a new-school player who was accepted into the ranks of the old-school players. Those old-school players were never going to turn on Jeff, because they saw him as one of their own; but, he was willing to work with the new-school people, and the other old-school people weren’t … Jeff was truly the only person there who was willing to work with everybody else.

We saw a little bit last night of you and Spencer campaigning to Woo, and he was not having any of it. What other campaigning did you do that we just didn’t get to see?

It was tough because we had such a bad reputation for over-strategizing as it was. It’s funny because me and Spencer had that reputation, but Varner also had that reputation [but] because he was the person in power, he was allowed to go have all of these conversations with all of these people, in total view of everyone, and no one really cared. Spencer and I had to really cool it on our talks with people, and we had to lay low and sit around the shelter and not scramble.

So like I said, for me it was really about Varner coming after Spencer and Abi, and I went into overdrive unnecessarily; it was dumb, I didn’t even wait to lose the immunity challenge. I went at it on day five, and so I had a talk with Terry, I tried to talk with Wiglesworth who was not willing to talk to anyone at all other than Terry and Varner. I tried talking to Terry about getting rid of Varner, and Terry instantly went and ratted me out to Varner. After that, the final thing that I did do was that talk with Woo, and it was so obvious that the old-school people were tight. They were not going to turn on each other. Woo voting with them was enabling them; he was giving the old-school people all the power, and I thought if I could paint this clear picture for him [it could work], because it was so painfully obvious [what would happen to him if he stuck with them]. I thought ‘surely this guy, who has so much to prove this time around, who had such a reputation for being Tony’s lap dog last time, maybe this time he will see what’s right in front of him.’ And he didn’t! He wanted to stay Terry’s lap-dog, and so I was voted out.

I was worried a little about this before the game, and while ‘jealousy’ may not be the right word for it, did you experience any envy because of your success in life, or the fact that you had this big story in ‘Worlds Apart’ and were in some ways one of the ‘shining stars’ of ‘Survivor’ going into this season? Did you get the sense that anyone was saying ‘now’s my time in the spotlight’?

In terms of ‘Survivor’ ‘fame,’ not at all, but in terms of my success and my intelligence and my million-dollar comment at Final Tribal [last season], yes. There was exactly one person who was incredibly uncomfortable and intimidated by all of that, and that was Woo. That’s why in spite of many conversations that he and I actually had with each other about our lives, he was unwilling to speak strategy with me. When I finally did breach that strategy barrier with him, he was having none of it because at that point, he had already brought up my million-dollar comment multiple times, he brought up other aspects about me that were incredibly condescending. He was set in his ways.

One last thing; even thought you were voted out early, did you enjoy it out there?

I did! I was glad to be able to play and have a new experience with a cast of people who have a lot more joy in their hearts when approaching the game, people who were not afraid to show their love for the game. So I’d say that this time around, it was definitely a more lighthearted experience.

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Thanks to Shirin for her candor and her honesty! This was a particular fun one to do, since she provided such perspective about individual players and what was really going on out there.

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