Survivor’s [Spoiler] Wants The Rock to Prep Him for Round 2: ‘Please Help Me!’
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Survivor.
He may not be a challenge beast or a puzzle whiz, but if you ever need a ride to the airport or a buddy to stroll the aisles of Target with, Brandon Donlon is your man!
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On Wednesday’s episode of Survivor, Lulu continued its losing streak when Brandon and Sabiyah failed to complete a quite horrifying coral puzzle. Despite finding a beware advantage and going on a journey, Brandon ultimately lost his vote at Tribal, making him a sitting duck for his tribe to cut him loose. (Read our recap here.)
But the second player out has a great attitude about his Survivor struggles, calling himself the “personality hire” of Season 45. Below, Brandon details what went wrong on challenge No. 1, his thoughts on the abrasive Emily and why he decided to hand over that valuable beware advantage to Sabiyah.
TVLINE | You had a rough time on the barge during the marooning challenge. How soon did you know something was going very wrong for you there?
BRANDON DONLON | We did so well! The swimming went fine. The paddling went super fine. What tripped me up? The home improvement piece heard all around the world: the ladder. That was not ideal. I’ve watched it now 100 times. I grabbed the rung that everybody stepped on. I just didn’t have that, whatever that thing is to be like, “Oh, step on this!” I just don’t have that thing. It was a split-second decision to grab that. And then where I was stepping, I was stepping lower than the boat, which was just awkward to step on and my weight was distributed weirdly. Then I fell and I’m telling you… impossible to climb that thing without assistance. You know, especially for a normal person. If you’re jacked out of control, you can do it, for sure. But I’m just the guy who got off the couch is now suddenly trying to get on a ladder, which is not the most ideal situation, but I’m very thankful to Sean for helping me out. The shot of us grabbing hands? Beautiful shot. Love that that made the intro. Maybe the worst start in the history of the program, but we worked through it.
TVLINE | We saw a big shift in attitude from Emily this episode. What was your opinion of her out there?
She is exactly what you see on the show. She is so lovable. I feel very much a sibling energy with her. We have that back and forth bantering where we’re just jabbing at each other. But you could see after Hannah leaves, Kaleb says he’s giving her PR training. He’s really making sure that she is gonna be somebody who the tribe finds valuable because Kaleb wanted to scoop her up. So you could definitely see a change in her attitude after that day. She’s the absolute best in the world.
TVLINE | Did the fact that Emily was socially on the outs give you hope that you could survive a second Tribal Council?
For sure. It was not 100% that I was going home. In fact, I believe it was much less than that. I was 60% sure it was probably me, but there was that 40%, you know? I was banking on Emily tanking. I didn’t mean to Dr. Seuss, but I was banking on Emily saying something at Tribal Council that was uncouth. People didn’t want to work with her at the first Tribal Council. It just so happens that Hannah left.
But even going into that Tribal Council, I wouldn’t say it was 100% Emily. I still had some percentage on the table, but I feel like Emily’s performance that night, calling out Kaleb and Sabiyah, calling it how she sees it, that’s what she does. At my Tribal Council where I leave, Emily’s not doing anything of the sort. She’s very much reading off a teleprompter, which, I mean, she’s great at. She did exactly what she needed to do to stick around there. So, all the credit in the world to her.
TVLINE | You found an advantage on Survivor, though, which is pretty great! Tell me a bit about your decision to not open the beware advantage and give it to Sabiyah instead.
How cool was that? I had said in pregame interviews if I found [a beware advantage], I was gonna give it away. I’ve seen people theorize online like, “You should give it to a player that you don’t like to get them to lose their vote and then tell everybody about it.” That was not what this decision was. At that point, I had the closest bond with Sabiyah, for sure. After Hannah leaves, on Day 4, I needed a new person. Sabiyah was great at making you think that she’s your No. 1. I could not commend her enough for how she played that. And I knew I wanted to give it away, so as soon as I found it, I’m like, “Listen, I don’t want it.” I was a little bit more risk-averse until an hour and a half later when I risked my vote on the journey. But at that point, at like 11 a.m. that day, I was super risk-averse and results-oriented.
TVLINE | Let’s talk about that. Why take the risk at the journey, but not with the beware advantage? You wanted to protect your vote, but ultimately lost it anyway.
It was impossible not to! How do you fail that? I read it like, “Oh, this is weird. This is too easy.” Then I did it and I was tragically bad at it. I don’t do well under pressure. Under pressure is not my scene. I think Survivor should have less pressure. [Laughs] Maybe you [should] get three hours to do it. It was the time limit of it all. And what I did that was a mistake was I tried all of the combinations — you have three numbers there, so you have six combinations — I tried all six, none of them worked. Instead of going back and checking my work, I just kept doing them again because I figured maybe I missed one. Numbers are not my strong suit. What is my strong suit, Nick Caruso? I don’t know what my strong suit is. That didn’t work and then I looked over and there was no more sand in the hourglass. We were batting a thousand at 11 a.m. and then later on in the day, we took a tragic turn.
TVLINE | That puzzle in the immunity challenge looked incredibly hard. I ask this with no judgment at all, but are puzzles your thing?
Puzzles are more my thing than physical stuff. I have no idea what my thing is. I think my thing is just… if Survivor was just like, “Hey, go on an island and just kind of hang out,” that’s my thing. I love chatting. I love mixing it up. The sentiment that I’ve seen is like, “He didn’t prepare.” It is comical how much I prepared. I literally prepared so much. It just didn’t happen for your boy.
I did everything that they tell you to do before you go. I practiced the puzzles. I was working out every day. Zach Wurtenberger [from Survivor 42] said on a podcast, “If you’re not working out at like 4 a.m. in the gym every day, then you’re not doing it right.” I did that for months and it just didn’t work out. So my strong suit, I think, is I’ll bring you to the airport if you need an airport ride! I’m good at that stuff. If the challenge was like, “Hey, you know, maybe you go to Target for a little bit and walk around.” I’m batting a thousand at that. But in terms of survival skills, we don’t have a ton, but we’re funny. And that’s in life, too. If you’re not good at stuff, you should be funny.
TVLINE | I always need airport rides and no one ever wants to take me, so I would’ve kept you around!
Listen, I’ll take you tomorrow! Tell me where you’re flying. I’ve got nothing going on. I’m off the program.
TVLINE | What was your take on Probst more or less calling you the tribe’s water boy?
If the streaming goes up for the 1998 Adam Sandler film The Waterboy this week, then I think we all did our jobs correctly. And it really is a correct read. I was so excited to watch the challenge last night because I loved how much Sabiyah and I were cheering for everybody. If you want a guy who’s just gonna cheer — Emily was so good in that challenge — we were cheering like it was nobody’s business. I love to support. I’m like the Survivor 45 personality hire. I’m good at meetings, I’m good for morale, hard skills? You know, pre-jury is out on those. TBD. Maybe the next evolution of this is just me finding out what I’m really good at.
TVLINE | You had a rough go of it out there, but would you ever play again?
I need to do a lot of work. Let me make it clear, I am in 100%. There’s no way that I say no, but I gotta talk to [Survivor 42‘s] Jonathan Young. If The Rock is available, if he’s reading this and is a TVLine fan, please help me. I need to start tomorrow if I’m going back. But the answer is it’s 100% and it’s not close. I’ll buff up whenever they need me to buff up. It was the best five days of my life and I would do it again in two seconds.
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