Exclusive: 'Survivor: San Juan del Sur -- Blood vs. Water' eliminee Dale Wentworth talks (Part 2)

Survivor: San Juan del Sur -- Blood vs. Water eliminated Dale Wentworth during Wednesday night's sixth episode of the CBS reality competition's 29th season.
 
Dale, a 55-year-old farmer from Ephrata, WA, was voted out of his Coyopa tribe at the season's sixth Tribal Council session. At this point in the season, his daughter Kelley Wentworth is also out of the game.


In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Dale talked about his Survivor experience. Below is the concluding portion. Click here to read the first half.

Reality TV World: So between Jon Misch and Jaclyn Schultz, whom did you consider the bigger threat and the one that was kind of the brains of the operation?

Dale Wentworth: [Missy Payne] (laughs). I think Jon was taking the orders from Missy. I don't think -- I think Jaclyn's probably a little bit more strategic player than what Jon is, because Jon was just taking his orders from Missy, just like [Keith Nale] was. Jaclyn was kind of subtle in the way she played the game, so we'll see.

Reality TV World: Did anyone else come up to you after you told Jon you had a hidden Immunity Idol and ask you to see it or anything about it, or did everyone just believe Jon was capable of telling apart a fake idol from a real one? Because we did see Jaclyn asking Jon if he really thought it was an idol and expressing some skepticism.


Dale Wentworth: Yeah, the only person who saw was Jon. It just happened to be at that moment where he was walking and I had it in my pocket and I showed it to him a couple different times. I knew the word would get around pretty dang quick. Like I said, it was the ultimate "Hail Mary," or in this case, "Fail Mary." (Laughs) It just didn't happen to work.

Reality TV World: Jeff Probst came to negotiate giving the Hunahpu tribe more rice last night and he was shown admitting that he thought the fact they had blown through an entire game's worth of rice in the first couple weeks was in a big factor in why they had been dominating challenges. Do you agree with that?

Dale Wentworth: Well, absolutely. Because not only did they go through 25 pounds of rice, they got 10 pounds of beans in their first challenge. So they went through 35 pounds of food. We went through, maybe, eight to nine pounds of food in that time.

We still had at least 15 pounds of rice left. I was down -- I lost 31 pounds in 15 days, and I couldn't believe -- because I didn't know he was bartering with rice until I actually saw it on the show last night. That just floored me.

Reality TV World: I was going to ask about that. Did you think it was fair that even though they had to give up their luxuries, like the tarp, they were still able to get more rice? All they seemed to lose was the stuff they had won during the game already, which means they were just basically back at the point that your tribe had been at all along and they still got to maintain their nutritional and strength advantage.


Dale Wentworth: Yeah, the only ones who really suffered were the guys who came over from Coyopa -- [Josh Canfield] and [Wes Nale] and [Alec Christy] -- because we were on starvation rations on our side, trying to save it, knowing we had to take 25 pounds for 39 days, especially when they got that bag of rice.

And just knowing there was a food challenge coming up the next day, I would've at least let them go another 24 hours to see if they won a food challenge. I would've gone without food for another three days if I knew it was going to keep me in the game.

I wish I could've complained to Jeff about the alliance Kelley and I got straddled with at the tribe swap. That was a lot more detrimental than food because due to just the way the alliances formed against Kelley and I, it got us voted out. Those guys just went hungry. That's part of Survivor! I mean, it's not "Let's Make a Deal," it's Survivor.

Reality TV World: You were shown telling Jeff you thought you had only slept about three hours since Kelley got voted out of the tribe. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Why was that and how had that compared to how much sleep you got when Kelley was on the other tribe and then the few days you spent with your daughter on the same tribe?

Dale Wentworth: Well, what they didn't show is, Kelley got voted off on Father's Day. That was the thing they didn't show, so that was -- we went back to the tribe and I didn't sleep all that night. I didn't sleep all the next day.


It took me about until noon, and that's when I -- probably Saturday night -- it was noon Sunday before I calmed down enough to talk to anybody else on Coyopa. One time, Jon and I did have a conversation. He came up and apologized for voting Kelley out, and I had a very impolite response to him at that time.

So they left me alone for about 12 hours. But then your mind is just going in hyperdrive, trying to save your life. I really didn't get a lot of sleep on the island anyhow, so that was -- but it was probably 36 hours of no sleep from the time Kelley got voted off before I actually got sleep again.

Reality TV World: So it sounds like you think you still would've been in the game -- or at least had gone further in the game -- if there hadn't been a tribal swap? And if that had been the case, how had you seen the next couple of Tribal Council sessions playing out?

Dale Wentworth: If we would've stayed, course, if Coyopa could've split one of the tribes or split one of the Immunity Challenges, I was building alliances -- I know everybody said I was the next to go -- but I think there are some alliances, people I was talking to on my tribe, that were getting pretty tired of the antics of [Baylor Wilson] and stuff.

So, we probably could've gotten her out if there had been another challenge. And then we would've split one and Coyopa would've had their -- the blue tribe would've had a Tribal and then Kelley and I could've been sitting there after the merge.


It looks like Jon was the next to go if Kelley's tribe would've had to go to Tribal, so there were people easily more on the chopping block than Kelley and I were when we got voted out.

Reality TV World: Last week's episode showed the other tribe initially complaining to Jeff about how poorly their rice had been managed after that Immunity Challenge. I guess it's my understanding you didn't get to see that, but what was it like to watch that after knowing you were so close to getting in a big argument with Missy about her doing the same thing on your tribe after the swap? Did you feel any vindication at all when you saw that? (Laughs)

Dale Wentworth: (Laughs) Well, it didn't do me any good, I'll put it that way. But before I talked to Missy about the rice thing in last week's episode -- and that was just a couple conversations, as I was trying to make a point. And it was very subtle; It wasn't as dramatic as they had showed it.

But I was trying to make a point that, "Being how you guys have eaten all your rice, the 15 pounds or so of rice we have left has got to last through the merge, which is 13 people joining up and it's got to last us another 24 or 25 days."

But these guys, once they got to the tribe, Jon and Missy and Keith and Kelley, all they could talk about was how they were out of food, how they were out of food. They were starving and had no food left. They were going to last one day. And they saw our tribe and it was like a bunch of vultures landing on a bag of rice.


And nobody would stand up to Missy. You got all these big guys over there and they let Missy just walk all over and on top of them. I'm sorry, I was trying to save rice to last us through the end of the game.

I mean, I was playing a long-term game. How long could I make this rice last? We got to keep eating every day, but apparently the guys on the blue tribe were willing to let Missy tell them what to do. No one stood up to her.

Reality TV World: When I talked to Kelley last week, she said she was really frustrated it seemed like most people out there this season weren't gamers and had only seen like five episodes of Survivor. Did you feel that way while you were out there? And if so, whom did you feel might be the exceptions?

Dale Wentworth: I think Josh and [Reed Kelly] were both -- I got along with Josh pretty good. We had an alliance working. He was a Survivor fanatic. I didn't get too much of Alec or Wes that much. They had watched some, but nowhere near what Kelley and I had watched. Going into the game, I missed one season.

And since then, I've ordered Borneo and we've caught up on the first season. So now, Kelley and I have watched every season. So we could be classified as "super fans" I guess. That was a frustrating point because (laughs) you couldn't really pick up anybody's game or anything like that. They were just bouncing all over the damn place. It was like "Island of the Misfit Castaways."

Reality TV World: How were you cast on Survivor? Did you or Kelley apply first and how did you come to appear on the show together?


Dale Wentworth: Actually, the funny part of it is, Kelley and I never applied for Survivor. We applied for The Amazing Race in 2009 and we talked to the casting and that sort of stuff, but we reminded them too much of a father and daughter who had been on a previous season.

And then, in March this year -- on my birthday of all things -- I got an email from Survivor that said, "Team Wentworth, would you like to be -- we know you tried for The Amazing Race -- would you like to be on Survivor?"

And the next morning, I talked to Kelley about why we never thought of it, and two weeks later, we're in California being interviewed. So they just kind of kept our names on file and presto! There we were!

Click here to read the first half of Dale's exclusive interview with Reality TV World.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski