Julie Rosenberg finished Survivor: Edge of Extinction in third place behind runner-up Gavin Whitson and winner Chris Underwood during Wednesday night's three-hour finale event of Survivor Season 38 on CBS.

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Chris, a 25-year-old district sales manager from Myrtle Beach, SC, who currently resides in Greenville, SC, won in a 9-4 jury vote against Gavin, a 23-year-old YMCA program director from Erwin, TN, after he had returned from the Edge of Extinction.

Chris received the following jury votes to win: Reem Daly, Julia Carter, Eric Hafemann, Aubry Bracco, David Wright, Joe Anglim, Dan "The Wardog" DaSilva, Victoria Baamonde, and Ron Clark.

Gavin earned votes from Aurora McCreary, Lauren O'Connell, Kelley Wentworth, and Rick Devens. But Julie did not receive a single vote.

Rick finished in fourth place, Lauren O'Connell placed fifth, and Victoria claimed sixth place.

During an exclusive interview with Reality TV World following the finale broadcast on Thursday, Julie talked about her Survivor experience. Below is the first portion of what she had to say.

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Reality TV World: Were you surprised to not receive a single vote from the jury? Which players were you thinking might vote for you when the game was still going on?

Julie Rosenberg: You know, I feel like I was pretty realistic about my game and I knew going into that Final Tribal Council that I was not going to win the game, but it's always a little disappointing to think that I couldn't even get one vote.

I'm not totally surprised. I guess if I thought anyone was going to vote for me it would've been Ron. We were very close in the game and never turned on each other, and it really was a true friendship that I had out there.

But I kind of, you know, got the sense that at Ponderosa, the jury, they talk, and he knew I wasn't probably getting many votes -- or getting any votes. (Laughs)

And I think he wanted to have an influence on the game and vote for somebody who did have a shot at winning, and that's probably why he didn't give me a vote, which I'm fine with. I get it. It's okay, you know? There's no hard feelings there at all.

Reality TV World: So after jury questioning, when you finally left the Final Tribal Council, it sounds like you had a pretty good idea you had lost?

Julie Rosenberg: Yeah. Yeah... Looking back, I know that jurors reward very aggressive gameplay and they don't like subtle players, and there's so many moves I should have made that were flashier and bigger.

But it's not necessarily my nature, and now it's easy to look back on the 39 days I spent out there and see that a lot of my game -- I kind of maybe sort of played out of fear, not necessarily to win.

I so feared people voting me out, especially on Day 1. I was the oldest, smallest and probably the weakest player on my tribe. Being so small compared to everybody else, I thought I was going to be a target right away.

And it took 18 years to get there and play this game from when I first applied, and I didn't want to do anything to risk being voted out or jeopardize [my chance to stay].

And I think in the end, that was my downfall because I tried to build, and I did, all of these social relationships, but I wasn't being aggressive in my actual gameplay.

And that's something obviously the jury doesn't really reward. So going into that Final Tribal and leaving it, I was proud of how I did.

That Final Tribal Council was hours long and it gets edited into a very short bit, so there's so much more I said that I felt I did a really good job on. I pleaded my case to the jury, but even after it was over, it was pretty obvious to me I was not winning the game.

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Reality TV World: Everyone seemed to want to keep you in the game because they felt you were a good person to take to the end because they thought you wouldn't get any jury votes. Were you aware of that while you were out there, and how do you respond to that criticism? Because you did win Individual Immunity Challenges and such.

Julie Rosenberg: Right. I think everyone sees portions of the game and not everyone is in on every conversation. A lot of people didn't know the things I was doing or the strategic conversations I was having with others.

So what they saw was my emotional breakdown at Tribal. That really, I think, put this stereotype in people's heads that all I was was an emotional player and I wasn't being strategic.

That was an easy thing to keep in their minds, and while they knew I had won that first Immunity Challenge at the merge, they really hadn't seen me win anything since or do much in challenges since.

So I do think it was hard to get that idea out of their heads that I was the goat and I was someone that was very beatable. But I didn't totally see myself that way, you know, for a while in the game. And I viewed some other people that way.

So everybody has their own impression of what's going on in the game and they're not always right. But it is what it is, and I have no regrets. I

'm thrilled with how I did, and everybody is telling me it's fine. I know what I did and how proud I am of myself, and that's what I take away from it.

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Be sure to check back with Reality TV World soon for more from our exclusive interview with Survivor: Edge of Extinction finalist Julie Rosenberg, as well as for more interviews with the rest of the Final 6 castaways.


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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