Meet the 'Survivor 44' Cast! NASA Engineering Student Carson Garrett Wants to Work Entirely Behind the Scenes

The 20-year-old is hoping age works in a favor so his competition will never see him coming.

Winning Survivor is a literal lifelong goal for Carson Garrett, considering the 20-year-old is younger than the show itself. But don't let his age count him out. The NASA engineering student's clinical plan for the game is simple: Be Mission Control. Carson hopes his age and inexperience will help him become one of the smallest planets in the solar system of threats. And he can use that to control moves behind the scenes in the hopes of making one small step in the game, but one giant leap to a million dollars.

Read on for my interview with Carson, and make sure to check in with Parade.com every day for interviews with this season's contestants and other tidbits. Survivor 44 premieres on March 1 with a special two-hour premiere on CBS.

Related: Meet the Full Cast of Survivor 44

Interview with Carson from Survivor 44

Why are you here on Survivor?
I am here on Survivor to fulfill a lifelong goal of beating this game. I'm here to be the Sole Survivor winner. I really value the title. I have just been obsessed with this game ever since I started watching. This game means so much to me because it involves so many different elements of the real world and also applies it in some sort of game theory mechanism that is so entertaining to watch. It's funny, it's interesting. It's captivating. And so I think for me, it's just something that I've always wanted to do. I never thought I would be at this point. I remember when I started watching the show, I was like, "I don't think Jeff will still be doing it when I'm old enough." And so now that I'm here, I'm so thrilled that I'm going to be living my dream come true. And I think that will prepare me to win the game.

What's your history with watching Survivor?
I started watching Survivor six years ago. My cousins and my aunt were like, "You have to watch this show." And at the time, I really wasn't into watching T.V. So I started watching the second episode of Millennials vs. Gen X with them, and almost instantly, when they were in Fiji, and it was a real-life game with real people, I was just hooked. I mean, I couldn't stop watching. I've loved the end of the season. And over time, I've gradually become more and more of a superfan, to the point that now I feel like I'm a uber super duper fan, the highest point you can get in terms of Survivor fandom. (Laughs.)

Give me one Survivor winner and one non-winner who you identify with the most.
I think the winner I identify with most would have to be Cochran. He is someone that was naturally out of his element. But he was able to use his quirkiness and his nerdiness as some sort of weapon. And people didn't really recognize that he was such a threat because he downplayed his strategy and focused more on just maneuvering the game, being kind of behind the scenes. And I really respected the way that he was able to get to the end, present his case so well to the jury, and ultimately secure the million dollars.

The player I probably identify most that didn't win the game, I have several. But I would say most recently, it would probably be Omar from season 42. He was very perceptive of his threat level. And he really tried to manage it throughout the game. He didn't focus on trying to say, "Hey, guys, look, I made this big move." No, he sat he sat through the game and made sure that he was still involved with every single vote, almost moving the puzzle pieces as he saw fit. But he didn't need the ego boost to say, "Hey, that was me running the game." In fact, he did the opposite. He was very comfortable being the person that everyone thought was not running the show. And I think that's that that's how I want to play the game, really building social bonds with people, and behind the scenes, really working people strategically to best position myself to win the game.

What's your favorite moment in Survivor history?
My favorite moment in the history of Survivor is definitely when Sandra ate all of the sugar in Game Changers and made a big chaotic moment between J.T. and Michaela. It was one of my favorite moments because Sandra recognized in the moment that J.T. was getting annoyed with Michaela for wanting a bunch of scoops of sugar and a drip of coffee. (Laughs.) And to him, that was wasting it. So Sandra, seeing what was going on, played on that. She caused more chaos than there was and actually caused more of a rift between them. And ultimately, when they went to Tribal, It was between Michaela and J.T. And in effect, she took the target off of her and put the bullseye between those two. They were going at it, and she just sat in the background and laughed. (Laughs.) So that was probably one of my favorite moments.

What's one life experience you feel has prepared you most for the game?
I would say the life experience that prepared me most for this game would probably be my project management track over my two years in college. I started out in college not really knowing where I wanted to go. I applied for astrophysics, switched majors to chemical engineering, and then ended up in aerospace engineering. And throughout that process, since I really didn't know what I wanted to get involved with or what I was interested in. So I joined a consulting organization, which just was working on developing strategies for nonprofit organizations, and I found a lot of meaning in it.

Eventually, I worked my way up to being a project leader. My first year, I was working on huge projects with clients that were way older than me. I was a first-year leading teams with MBA students. And so I had to be able to take myself back and say, "I'm not the smartest person in the room. I'm going to work with you. There's not going to be a hierarchy on the team. I am here to just position ourselves and get us to the point that we're supposed to help our client and not really focus on trying to be in charge." And so I've continued to work my way up through the organization. And it's very off track from what a typical engineer would be involved in.

But I just love working with people, collaborating, being a good listener, and not necessarily someone who's talking down to people. And so I think in Survivor, it's really going to help me because I can use these similar strategies to work with people and not over them. Especially with my age and being younger than people, as long as I show them that I'm more interested in learning about them than them listening to my stories, and I think it will work well for me.

What excites you the most about the new era of Survivor?
The thing that excites me the most about being on Survivor is potentially being able to be put in a position where I've never seen this advantage before, and I have no inkling of what's going to happen. I don't know what anyone else knows. And being able to make that split-second decision of what I want to do at the moment only knowing a limited amount of information. I think from a viewer's point of view, you know everything that's happening. You see all of those small alliances, and you see what people say about each other.

But what excites me as a superfan is being in a position where I have to assess the best decision for me based off of the information I know. And a lot of times, that will be lies; that will be things that are not true. So I can't wait to try to maneuver through the game, knowing the limited amount of information and making the best decisions on advantages and how I want to vote based on that limited information and seeing what it's really like in the moment. And I think it will ultimately give me a lot more respect from the players that are able to do so well in this game. Because regardless of whether you're actually playing or you're just watching from afar, it's a hard game, and you can visually see that.

What do you think people will perceive you as?
I think people will perceive me as someone who's really friendly and nice and just here for the experience. They probably will kind of view me as a superfan, given my age and the typical archetype that I might be in. And I have glasses. (Laughs.) But in most of my life, people initially perceive me as just really nice, kind of to myself, and really interested in them. And in high school, I was voted the friendliest for senior superlatives. And I think, in general, just from what people tell me, they're always like, "Oh, my gosh, I just see you as such a nice person. And then I get to know you, and you're much more devious and strategic. You're ambitious, and you're competitive." (Laughs.)

So I want to play onto that. Whatever people perceive me as, whether it's inexperienced because of my age, or nice and young. Whatever that may be, I'll assess that as I go throughout the game. I want to play into that. I want people to continue to view me in a less threatening light. And if that means I'm viewed as inexperienced and young, that's fine; I will go for that all day. That's great. And I think for me, as I go throughout the game, I might show more elements of the strategy behind my game. But again, I want to stay as behind the scenes as possible.

What type of player are you looking for in an alliance?
The type of player I'm looking for in an alliance is someone who is kind of just there for the ride and is very loyal. I'm not necessarily a loyal player. I'm honestly always going to make the most optimal move to get me further in this game. But people that don't play like that and are playing more of an emotional, less strategic game, those are great people to work with because they're very predictable. If you present something to them as, "Hey, you told me this. You've got to be loyal, whatever it may be," and you play up to the loyalty or whatever they perceive is important, I think that those are people that I can predict what they're going to do so I can better assess how I need to tell them something about myself or what I'm planning to vote. Almost, in a sense, manipulate them so that they can be one of my numbers, chess pieces that I can move around however I need. The more strategic people like myself, I want to get out as soon as possible. (Laughs.)

How eager will you be to look for advantages in the game?
I won't be eager to look for advantages at the beginning of the game. In fact, I will kind of try to avoid it. I think at the beginning of the game, people can become very antsy, and they can go off from the tribe. We saw Tori look for an idol on Day 1. And I think that that is a really bad thing to do, especially at the beginning of the game where those first impressions are so important. And so, really, at the beginning of the game, I'll just be focusing on being in the majority of the group at all times, never really leaving the camp, building the shelter, and never even looking like I'm looking for an idol.

Now when I get further into the game, probably like merge or right up to the merge, that's when I'll start probably leaving in the middle of the night, going looking for idols, and making it very, very unknown that I'm doing that in the process. I think we saw with Tony, he looked for a bunch of idols in Game Changers right in the beginning and immediately got voted out. And Tori had such a bad first impression from looking for an idol with season 42. We've just seen so many instances where it doesn't work out for people. And then you see Tony comes back, and he waits, and he waits. And even though it's against his very nature, he finally waits until the middle part of the game, and then he goes crazy and looks for an idol. So I'll probably limit that in a sense.

What is the one thing you told yourself you wouldn't do in this game?
I told myself I wouldn't try to be revengeful and be mean to people for the sole purpose of being mean. I think that sometimes people get upset with each other. And yes, it's a game. But I think that it's important to realize that these are real people. And I don't want people to be upset with me postgame because of something that I did that was unnecessary. So even though I won't be playing a cutthroat game, I won't be making moves just for the sole purpose of hurting someone.

What's the best advice you received before coming out to play?
The best advice I received before coming out to play was from a lot of my family members, and that it was just to be myself and have fun. And I think that that really put the focus of how I wanted to play the game into light. Because I wasn't really sure what type of game I specifically wanted to play, whether I wanted to be the villain or try to be the hero. And I think for me, it just came down to I want to be myself. I want to have fun. I want to play this game as best as possible, and I want to win, and my sole purpose of being here is to win. But I also want to have fun in the process. And if that means that I can cause a little bit of chaos and it affects my game in a positive light, then I'm totally going to take that option. I want to be able to watch the show back and be like, "I had fun out there. This was a great experience."

Can you come up with your own weird phrase that could be said at a challenge to unlock an idol?
"For me, Jeff, I think that some of the smartest people in the world are really challenging the perceptions that we all might have are Flat Earthers. Because they know everything about the Earth, and they've studied it, and they want to try to figure out more than just what we're told." I don't know, that was bad. (Laughs.) Something about Flat Earthers I would love to incorporate. I think that would be funny because I think it's absolutely ludicrous. (Laughs.)

What celebrity or fictional character would you want to come out for a Loved Ones visit?
It's, in my mind, a celebrity: Sandra Diaz-Twine. I absolutely adore her. I think she's funny. I think she would make me laugh and also actually provide me with some great strategic advice. So I'd love to meet Sandra, the queen. She is amazing. (Laughs.)

Next, check out our interview with Survivor 44 contestant Carolyn Wiger.