Survivor: Game Changers – JT Thomas exit interview: Behind the decisions

JT Thomas entered Survivor: Game Changers, at least from our vantage point, as a guy with serious winner potential — and we say that with the knowledge of him being a former winner and having that target on his back. He’s just someone with a good understanding of how to play the social game, how to charm people, and be an asset both around camp and in challenges. It’d also been some time since he last played, so we figured there was time for people to forget about him.

Unfortunately, his downfall this season seemed to start with him cluing Brad Culpepper in on the plan to vote for Sierra last week, which in turn led to Malcolm getting voted out. Then, this week he didn’t bring his immunity idol to Tribal Council, thinking that Michaela was getting sent out in a slam-dunk vote.

Earlier today, we spoke with JT about his experiences this season, how he’s handling the exit from the game, and his thoughts about Sandra as a whole.

CarterMatt – Are you someone who’s able to let things go from the game easily? Are you haunted by various things you wish you would’ve done differently?

JT Thomas – It’s tough, man. It really is. But I do my best to stay busy — I work seven days a week and I love what I do. That helps. Still I’m such a competitor and I love to win and I play with all my heart, so it’s tough to lose at any point.

But, it’s tougher to lose when there are so many things that could’ve worked for you but didn’t.

Do you put further pressure on yourself because you’re a winner and you have this elevated expectation of yourself to do well?

No doubt. I know there’s always going to be judging every move you make and judging certain things that you do. There’s so much that goes into making every decision that I often end up overthinking more often than not. But, you have to trust someone in the game and you have to guess what other people are going to base their decisions on. Like, if I were Sandra, what would I do to get myself further in this game? That’s what I base my decisions on — what would I do if I were them, provided that they’re fairly competent and trying to win the game.

With Sandra, I though ‘well, Sandra’s gotta make the best move for herself moving forward in this game.’ Her best move, to me, would be to take me to the merge or the swap because I have so many connections. I’ve played with all of these different people out here other than Hali and Troyzan, so I know what’s going on and the alliances. Then, you’ve got Michaela, who’s played with [almost] no one other than Sandra, Varner, and Aubry. You would think that Sandra was thinking about herself getting further in this game, and that was the start of what led me to believe that she would vote Michaela out and not me.

What was your relationship with her coming out of Heroes vs. Villains? I know you guys spent a little bit of time together out there.

I mean, I voted for her to win! She was different than when I played with her. I feel like winning twice may have gotten to her head a little bit, I don’t know. She definitely played with a different air about her that I hadn’t seen before. It was kind of reckless. If she didn’t like someone or didn’t like [what they did], she was ready to vote them out regardless of the consequences. I think that was different than the normal Sandra we’ve seen.

Were you bothered at all by Michaela bringing the coffee cup and Sandra saying what she said to you about Malcolm? At that point, you were already out of the game.

A little bit, yeah. With Sandra, much of it [before the vote] made sense to me because she was really instigating everything at camp. I realize that it was a part of her pitch so that if I had an idol, I wouldn’t play it. Good for her, since it helped to convince me to not play the idol.

We were all tired of Michaela. We were ready for her to go even before Malcolm went. It was a known thing that she was tough to deal with. We always had to start our challenges with Michaela telling us what exactly she was going to do, and we positioned ourselves around that to best help the team. It was tough to work around, and I knew that people wanted her gone. I didn’t think that the payback to get me out would surpass the logical reasoning to vote her out.

Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Aubry? She did seem to be on your side last night.

We didn’t spend a ton of time together, but once we [got to the Tribe Swap], we were working together within a few minutes. Allegedly she was on the outs of the tribe, and they wanted her gone after they got me gone. I was the easy vote. After two or three days of being around me, Aubry and Malcolm were on my side 100% — provided we had the numbers.

We just needed one more person gone out of Sandra, Varner, or Michaela. Then, we had the votes the rest of the way. If we didn’t need that we wouldn’t have needed the help from Culpepper that I reached out for. All I was trying to do [with Brad] was take advantage of the situation to get the numbers on my side and make a move. That’s where the whole idea of using Culpepper to get out Sandra came from — to help me, Aubry, and Malcolm get the numbers.

I gotta talk about you abandoning the tribe when they were out on the water. At a certain point, did you even care that they knew you were looking for the idol?

Exactly. Well, I knew it and they knew it, too. The only way to ensure myself free time was to make it where they physically couldn’t sneak up on me. My biggest fear was someone sneaking up on me when I found the idol like in Heroes vs. Villains. That is a huge liability. I didn’t want to be caught finding the idol — I wanted to find it in secret!

At that point in the game, I knew I was in trouble and those were five people from the other tribe who would love nothing more than to see me go home. They may know what I’m doing, but they can’t prove it. I took them out far enough that I bought myself a good fifteen minutes. I was trying to save myself.

I spoke with Malcolm last week, and he talked about wanting to go far in the game with other threats — other big, strong guys — to try to minimize the target on his back. Was that your own plan, as well?

That’s how I felt, too. I would LOVE to go to the end with Malcolm and fight it out with him in the challenges. He deserves it and he may beat me, but I could beat him, too. For me, I’m never scared to fight it out in the end. I don’t think about who I can beat, I think about who I can get to the end with. I play to win, but I also think about people wanting to vote for me in the end. You can stab everyone in the back to make it to the end, but you want to do the least amount of that as possible. That’s what everybody forgets about.

It’s like Coach said — you really are the Warrior!

(Laughs) that’s right.

Didn’t think I would conjure up his name today. Let’s go back to Tribal Council last night. When did you realize that you should’ve brought the idol?

Right before the vote. Michaela’s attitude gave me a [inkling] right before the vote. It was too late at that point.

You’ve done this three times — are you still itching to go back and do this again?

Man, I’d live out there if I could. It’s tough, it’s hard, but I live for it. I respect the game a lot and I’d do it anytime they asked me.