Survivor: Worlds Apart eliminated Nina Poersch during the third episode of the CBS reality competition's 30th season on Wednesday night. 
 
Nina, a 51-year-old hearing advocate from Palmdale, CA, was voted out of her No Collar tribe, called the "Nargarote" tribe, on Night 8 at the season's third Tribal Council session.

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Nina's tribemates thought she was a weak player and had trouble getting along with her. Nina seemed to feel they purposely excluded her simply because she's deaf. Her tribe insisted that wasn't the case. In the end, Nina and Hali Ford voted for Will. Jenn Brown, Joe Anglim and Will Sims II voted for Nina.

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

Reality TV World: Do you think Will will definitely be the next castaway to go out of your tribe, if you were to guess? Do you think he has any hope of splitting up Joe, Jenn and Hali?

Nina Poersch: I think that definitely, if a No Collar goes to Tribal Council again, he will definitely be the next one off. Because those three, you're not going to be able to break them up now.

Reality TV World: I was going to ask you to what extent you did trust Will and Vincy Sly going into the Tribal when Vince got voted out, but is it safe to say you were pretty confident in what you had with them at the time?

Nina Poersch: Yes, I was very confident. When Vince was voted off, I was completely shocked that Will had changed his mind. I was 99% sure that Jenn was going home that night.

Reality TV World: If you were still in the game and thinking long-term towards the merge and stuff, would you have stuck with Will and Vince, you think?

Nina Poersch: I would've stuck with Will and Vince. I was very confident in our three-person alliance, and yeah, I mean, I just did not trust Joe, Jenn or Hali at all. You know, there were some things that happened out there. There was no way I was going to trust them.

Reality TV World: Do you think Joe is definitely the leader of your tribe right now?

Nina Poersch: I think Joe is the leader.

Reality TV World: Your tribemates got frustrated how you seemed to relate everything back to you being deaf, like if someone excluded you, you'd automatically attribute it to your disability. But your tribemates insisted that was never the case. So looking back, do you believe them and maybe now you feel you were a little oversensitive, or do you stand by the fact they made you an outsider because of your hearing?

Nina Poersch: No, I don't believe them at all. I do believe they made me an outsider because of my disability. You know, there's a lot of things that you don't see on TV that happened behind the scenes and, when we first got to the beach, the first thing Joe said to me was, "Nina, are you going to be able to do the challenges?" And I'm like, "Well, Joe, yes. Why would you ask me that?"

And he's like, "Because you're deaf. You're not going to be able to hear." And I'm like, "Okay, that's not going to affect how I perform in challenges." And he said, "Well, what if we have a calling challenge?" And I said, "Well, if we have a calling challenge, then I'm the caller!"

And he was like, "Well, what if in challenges we're yelling at you to do something and you can't hear us?" And I said, "Joe, it's not going to make a difference. I can do the challenges. There's no doubt in my mind I will do well in challenges."

So, right off the bat, Joe singled me out because I was deaf. Then, I had Vince constantly telling me, "Hey, those girls want to vote you out because you're deaf. They don't like you because you're deaf. Those three are going to vote you out because you're deaf."

So, you know, that just reinforced what Joe planted in my mind on that first day on the beach. And so, it just stuck with me. Jenn didn't make any attempts to talk to me. She couldn't look me in the eye.

It was really tough, and I know that the audience sees a lot of me going back and saying that they're excluding me because I was deaf, but that's how I felt out there. That's what was being told to me by Vince. That's what Joe told to me in the beginning of the game, and you know, that's just how I took it.

Reality TV World: In reference to you saying the viewers didn't see much of that happen, what did you think of your own edit on the show this season? Do you think they focused on the times you were upset or angry and so it seemed like that happened all the time, when in reality, it didn't?

Nina Poersch: Yes! Absolutely. I do feel like they concentrated too much on all of that and yeah. I wasn't completely happy with that.

Reality TV World: When I talked to Vince last week, he had a similar story in that he thought his portrayal on the show was way off. He said he wasn't jealous of Joe at all and he also didn't have a crush on Jenn. From your perspective, is that how you saw things unfold?

Nina Poersch: Well, yeah, I didn't think he had a crush on Jenn at all. You know, that's just how Vince is. As far as what was going on between him and Joe, yeah, there might have been some jealousy in there.

Joe was, you know, the all-American guy and everybody was looking up to him. He built the fire and all of that, and Joe and Vince butted heads a lot on how to do the shelter and how to do certain things around camp. And Joe rolled his eyes a lot at Vince, and maybe Vince could feel it. And it did, it caused a lot of animosity between the two of them.

Reality TV World: When you got to the Immunity Challenges, were you checking out other castaways from the other tribes at all in trying to determine who might be a threat down the road or who you might even like to work with come the merge?

Nina Poersch: Oh gosh. Well, a little bit I did. And, you know, when you get to those Immunity Challenges, you only have a few seconds to really look at the other members because you're concentrating so hard on how you're going to win this challenge. And that's what I was focused on: "We need to win the challenge!"

I knew that I was not, you know, at the top of the ladder in my tribe. I knew that the only way to make it further in the game was winning those challenges. So I was really major focused on winning challenges and maybe just somewhat looking at some of the other players.

Reality TV World: How were you cast on Survivor and end up on the No Collar tribe, especially since you have history as a White Collar worker? And was it your first time applying for the show?

Nina Poersch: It was my first time and how did I end up on the No Collar? Well, right now, I'm a housewife and a hearing advocate and I do a lot of volunteer work for the cochlear implant industry. So, I guess in that sense, I'm not working in an office anymore. I'm not wearing suits to the office anymore. So I think they just saw me in my current life not being a White Collar.

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


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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