Exclusive: Garrett Adelstein discusses 'Survivor: Cagayan -- Brawn vs. Brains vs. Beauty' (Part 1)

Survivor: Cagayan -- Brawn vs. Brains vs. Beauty's premiere concluded with the Brains tribe eliminating Garrett Adelstein and David Samson from their tribe at two separate Tribal Council sessions during Wednesday night's episode of the CBS reality series' 28th edition.


Garrett, a 27-year-old pro poker player from Santa Monica, CA, was voted out of his Brains tribe at the second Tribal Council session because Kassandra "Kass" McQuillen chose to flip on him and Spencer Bledsoe and work with the two other women in the tribe instead. Garrett was blindsided and eliminated with a buried hidden Immunity Idol waiting for him back at camp.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Garrett talked about his short-lived Survivor experience. Below is the first half of his interview. Check back with us on Friday for the concluding portion.

Reality TV World: You were obviously pretty confident you weren't going home and blindsided to be voted off at Tribal Council. What had made you so confident, was it J'Tia Taylor dumping the rice out? Because up until then, you seemed worried enough that you had been babysitting Kass and Latasha "Tasha" Fox to the beach.

Garrett Adelstein: Right, yeah. I mean, there are so many different things. I guess I can tell you a couple things that weren't shown on-camera. After J'Tia dumped all the rice in the fire, you know, what you don't see is Kass and J'Tia getting into a huge verbal altercation, yelling, screaming at each other. They came really close to fist-fighting each other.


It was clear that Kass really hated J'Tia and, you know, it's really unfortunate actually the way it plays out. Because in reality, that whole sequence happening made me feel so much more comfortable with the situation, so I didn't feel the need to play the [hidden] Immunity Idol.

I didn't feel the need to leverage the idol and show Kass before Tribal and say like, "Listen, I haven't told anyone about this, but you and I can use this together to get to the late stages of the game."

Because of all these things, I didn't feel the need to [worry] based upon what happened. Now clearly, the way it played out, I probably should have anyway! But yeah, it was definitely very unfortunate. There were several things out of my control that didn't go my way on the show, but I'm going to be the first one to tell you that there were several things that I was in control of that I certainly could've done better out there.

Reality TV World: What do you think happened that you were not in control of?

Garrett Adelstein: I mean, there's a laundry list of things. We can start right at the beginning, being put on the Brains tribe. My strategy coming in was to, you know, be the workhorse and be the guy who helped around camp a bunch, be the guy who was a key asset in challenges, and someone who to others -- at least on the surface -- would seem like I would just kind of let you take the lead strategically.


But once I was put on the Brains tribe, people were immediately suspicious of me, you know? They wanted to know why. And sort of playing that angle wasn't going to work. That's for one. But the other thing is like, we just have way more capable players on our tribe than anyone else, you know, specifically Spencer and [Latasha "Tasha" Fox]. They're really good Survivor strategists. That makes it really tough.

We had at least three [capable players], if not arguably four -- in David, who unfortunately went home first. On another tribe, [they might have] somewhere between zero and one, or zero and two. It really makes for an aggressive, hyper-competitive environment -- one that's much higher than [normal].

Reality TV World: Do you think Kass had already gone into Tribal Council planning to vote for you even though J'Tia had dumped the rice out and they had argued, or do you think she had planned to vote for J'Tia and your Tribal Council comments -- which obviously didn't seem to play very well with the rest of your tribe -- made her decide to change her mind?

Garrett Adelstein: Yeah, I mean, I guess we'll never really know. One thing I can say for sure is my performance during Tribal was very poor. It's something I'm very frustrated with and regretful of and it was definitely tough to see that go down on TV. I played really poorly, you know, like for instance, a couple of things I said don't actually matter.

Like so when I say, "Oh, well our initial alliance -- I mean, tribe of four," well it doesn't matter. That doesn't negatively impact me with Kass, right? Or at least it shouldn't in the sense that, I mean, there were actions behind that. I mean, Kass saw four of us write David's name down and she wasn't included in that.


So of course, initially, the four of us weren't an alliance. But for me having that Freudian slip or bumbling my words or however you want to phrase it, it definitely doesn't play well on TV at all. And then in terms of me, right after, being like, "Well the new alliance is me, Kass and Spencer," again, it sounds awful but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter specifically in the sense that there's only five of us. We only need three votes, you know? And everything that went down with Tasha freaking out, like, "He's not letting us play Survivor! He's not letting us play the game," that was all just the root.

That's Tasha playing the game well, right? Tasha, just like Spencer and I, were trying to pull in Kass to flip on the other two. So this was Tasha's way of trying to open up the dialogue again, trying to give her another shot.

Because if she just agrees to this, what's happening? You know? She's a good player. She knows. She's four of four at that point and she's going to be next to go home. So I give Tasha a lot of credit in that respect in convincing Kass to flip, and it's the opposite with Kass. I think her strategy was very unfounded in flipping against us. But I'm clearly biased there.

Reality TV World: You seemed to underestimate how physically demanding Survivor is, especially in your case with the nutritional deprivation that's involved. But you were shown a couple times saying you thought you were still 100 percent mentally. However at Tribal Council, do you think in hindsight maybe you weren't really as sharp mentally as you'd usually be because of the conditions?


Garrett Adelstein: I think that's very reasonable. I think that's a very reasonable analysis and I would certainly agree with you on that. It did take a very big toll on me mentally, you know? And if you think it would've made sense to be five, 10 pounds heavier going in, again, I would agree with you 100 percent. It's another thing that I think if I could do it again, I would probably do it a bit differently.

With that said, at no point was I ever considering quitting the game or anything like that. I wasn't relieved in any way when I was voted out -- quite the contrary. You know, I did my best to be on my A-game at all times in front of my tribemates.

I think maybe the viewing audience, they don't understand that in the sense it's so brutal out there and the producers are so good at their jobs. They're very good at convincing you that they are your therapists, you know?

So I used that confessional time to sort of whine, just sort of air out my frustrations. I was never doing that in front of my tribemates. You never saw me say anything like that. In fact, you know, in retrospect, all of them are like, "Wow, you were not happy out there?! I never would have seen that."

But of course, then you watch it air, and they show three different or 50 different -- I have no idea, really, too many -- confessionals of me complaining on one level or another about life out there. And it just makes you look like a spoiled brat, you know?


And I know that thousands of people would give anything to be out there, and I knew the moment I got recruited that I was very fortunate and never took that for granted. That's why I worked so hard in preparation. So at no point did I ever, you know, quit or anything like that. It's one thing I think is worth mentioning at least.

Reality TV World: What made you to decide to leave the hidden Immunity Idol at camp and not even bring it to Tribal, and where did you actually leave it?

Garrett Adelstein: So that's definitely one of the million-dollar questions. So I find the idol and I hide it near where our Tree Mail is, and you know, I buried it or whatever the case. I think that's also another thing worth mentioning, is, you run a real risk when you go get your idol right before Tribal. You have to try to hide it in your swimsuit or whatever.

It's a risk. There's no question, especially when you have very capable players like Spencer and Tasha out there, who are already a bit suspicious because I was isolated from the group in the beginning. So you know, if I get caught digging that idol up, that could have very detrimental effects to my game. So there is a risk there.

If the question specifically is, "Do you think you should have dug it up and brought it in?" I'm going to say, "Hell yes." It's definitely worth the risk, so that was at least my thought process at the time. There were just so many different variables that made me feel, you know, nearly 100 percent confident that J'Tia was going to go home.

We saw Kass in the first half of the premiere just go up to J'Tia to her face and say, "Yeah, I'm voting for you." Kass plays with her emotions, and in this specific case, it was both an emotionally clear and logically clear -- from a strategic perspective -- decision for her to vote J'Tia out and she didn't.


And unfortunately J'Tia's actions don't really have any strategic implications on her end, like she wasn't involved strategically at all. But her sociopathic behavior, you know, is another thing that really worked against me. Because it made me feel so much more confident that I was okay, right?

So not only did I not bring the idol, but if I had any doubts about what Kass was going to do, I would've just shown her my idol. I would've used that as leverage to ensure that she would be with Spencer and I and the three of us would progress further in the game.

I could go on and on about reasons why I was confident about Kass voting for J'Tia, but in the end, clearly there were some logical inconsistencies on my part, because that's just not what happened. 

Above is the first half of Garrett's exclusive interview with Reality TV World. Check back with us on Friday for the concluding portion.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski