‘Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X’ exclusive: Michaela Bradshaw on blindside, Jay’s idol, and game philosophy

There is no “Survivor” elimination we’ve been upset about all season as that of Michaela Bradshaw. She was basically everything you’d want from a player on any given season: Tremendously entertaining, dominant in challenges, and someone interested in playing the strategic game. She was willing to think several moves ahead, and seemed on paper to be in a great spot on the Ikabula tribe.

Then, Jay happened. The decision from him to blindside her with Will on his side still feels controversial the morning after, especially since we never got the sense that Michaela was going to be coming after him anytime soon. That was one of many things we were interested in talking with her about in an exit interview today — and it’s a good one! Check out all of her responses below.

CarterMatt – While you were waiting for the show to air, did you have any expectations for what the reaction to you would be? Does [all of the love you’re getting] surpass your expectations?

Michaela Bradshaw – I didn’t know what to expect, honestly. I looked at it like I was going for a goal, and that goal was a million dollars. I knew that I didn’t meet it, so in my mind I lost. I was like ‘dang, I’m going to look like a loser.’ But, as it starts airing, I was like ‘oh yeah, we won that and we won that.’ I realized that the journey that I had, even though I never got to the end, that journey was amazing. It was really cool to step back from it and realize that, even though I didn’t when a million dollars, man Michaela, you were a beast out there.

CarterMatt – Upon reflection, is there anything that you could have done to protect yourself from the unexpected? I mean, it was obviously a blindside, so how can you prepare for that?

If I wouldn’t have been so trusting, there were tons of signs [it was coming]. One sign was that no one ever talked to me about who Bret and Sunday were voting for. Another sign was that I was about to go to Sunday and have a conversation, and Jay was like ‘don’t go to Sunday.’ Another sign was that Sunday couldn’t look at me at all during Tribal Council, which was not normal for Sunday. Another sign was that Jay was super-paranoid and kept asking me if I was going to send him home with the idol. There were so many signs, but I was like ‘calm down. Jay, you’re not going home. I’m not gonna vote for you. We’re in agreement that it’s these four until the end.’

If I had my antennas up a little more, I would have realized that ‘Michaela, votes are never this easy in Survivor. You need to make some type of move.’ But, I didn’t, and that’s what sent me home.

Was a certain part of that due to inexperience, given that you’d only went to one Tribal Council before that? In that way did your dominance in challenges hurt you?

Absolutely. In the first Tribal Council I went to I was 100% sure I wasn’t getting any votes. It was [bad] never having the experience, but it’s also easy to flip into the normal version of yourself when everything that is normal to you is gone. You become more of who you are. For whatever reason, it was like part of my brain forgot that ‘Survivor’ is a game of deception and deceit, and me being so forthright about everything that I got going on, I forgot to realize that nobody [else] is going to be that open.

That’s what it was — only going to Tribal Council once, and then me wanting to trust people like I do back home.

How far in the game did you want to go with Jay and Will? Did you want to go with them to the final four?

I wanted to go to the final four with anybody, and I felt like I had developed a rapport with Jay, Well, and Hannah, and I felt like I could beat all of them at the end so I was fine going to the end with them. Were they fine going to the end with me? No (laughs). That’s what I should’ve been thinking about instead of who I was cool going to the end with. I should’ve asked who was cool going to the end with me. I told Jay when I was going out ‘you just made the dumbest move,’ because at least being with me, if it had stuck together and it had worked, that would’ve been a guaranteed four. I wasn’t going to flip on anybody.

Let’s see how his plan works now. I know it looked good in his mind at the time.

I gotta be honest: I would’ve been real tempted to say something like ‘Jay’s got the idol’ under my breath at Tribal Council after being voted out. How did you keep it together and not do that?

I can definitely say I was tempted, because when somebody rips your dream away, you’re angry! It’s just the way I am as a person. I respect competition. He got me when I was least expecting it. Just like in real life, if I lose a battle I’m not going to mess it up for somebody else. In the game of ‘Survivor’ if I get voted out, my game is over if I get the majority of the votes. I don’t need to be messing up somebody else’s game just because I got voted out.

To me that would’ve been salty and immature to do. I just took my anger out on a tree and went to Ponderosa.

Back after ‘Worlds Apart’ I asked something similar to this to Joe Anglim, someone who came across as really likable, amazing in challenges, and someone thinking about the game. How can you minimize the target on you? There’s obviously a part of you that is very good at ‘Survivor.’ Is there any way to mask that?

You know, you can only mask who you are so much. One thing I thought to myself was that at the end of the day, while there are certain skills that I have that make me a threat to win ‘Survivor’ and make it harder for me to win it, the rest of my life is life. ‘Survivor’ is only 39 days at a time. I’d rather have qualities that are going to put me ahead in life than can put me ahead one time.

People are going to start to realize who you are [over time], but there are some things that I could’ve done better. That’s what I focus on.

What was your relationship like with Hannah? You were hard on her during one of the challenges, but at the same time she seemed to really like you and respect you.

I love Hannah. I would imagine that Hannah is the sort of person who gets talked about at school or people blow a spitball at her or something. She’s the smart, goofy kid who is a little socially awkward. In school, I was the person who befriended that person because I’m like ‘man, even though you don’t look like this or act like this, you still got value.’ Hannah and I started having a tight bond. Yeah, sometimes when I’m trying to win I don’t need you talking (laughs), but outside of that on the island, I loved having conversations with Hannah. She’s super-smart, super-funny, and she’s a super-genuine person. Talking to her was like a little taste of home.

Going back to the second episode, why did you decide to keep Figgy over Mari? We saw with your ‘bye Felicia’ moment that you weren’t that sad to see her go.

The reason I went Mari instead of Figgy — there are quite a bit of reasons, actually.

For one, Figgy was putting a target on her own back by being with Taylor. That’s something that would get more attention on you as you go, whereas Mari didn’t have a target on her back. She just kind of blended in, and she had her own alliance with the nerd crew.

The second reason I voted for Mari is that when you look at her as a player versus Figgy as a player, I think Mari had a chance to emerge as a really strong player. Mari, having seen her after the game during the whole pre-jury [trip], she is a dancer with great balance, she is a swimmer who scuba-dives, she is super-duper smart. She has all these qualities. If these qualities had a chance to mature in the game and if she had been against me, that would’ve been a horrible situation. I’d rather Mari go and be left with someone who does more talking than anything else and someone who’s bound to get on other people’s nerves. I’d rather have that person in the game than somebody who’s going to do better than me at sliding under the radar.

Do you regret at all making it clear to Jay that you knew about his idol? Since Tony Vlachos was mentioned last night, couldn’t you have just made a spy shack, found out about the idol, and never mentioned it?

I think that I should’ve done more. I shouldn’t have thought it would be okay to have that kind of information when that information, had I not walked up on it, would never have shared with me. I should’ve took that information and done something with it. I did not take action with it and that was a bad move on my part. I should’ve done something — I should’ve told Hannah, or I should’ve made a plan to get rid of Jay. That’s one thing where, if I could go back, it could have saved me for at least one more day in the game.