Jonny Fairplay, born Jon Dalton, is mourning the loss of life of his grandmother twenty years years after mendacity to Survivor: Pearl Islands opponents about her passing.
“I’ll miss her each day,” Fairplay mentioned of his grandmother in a brand new Leisure Weekly interview. “It’s straightforward to suppose she was simply a part of one of many greatest lies in TV historical past, which made me well-known, however I take a look at her place in my life as a loving grandparent who solely wished the very best for me in my life and would do something to assist me get it. Which she did.”
Whereas Fairplay’s Survivor lie might have appalled viewers who watched his first run on the CBS actuality present in 2003, his grandmother apparently loved the ruse, even adorning her automotive with a “DEAD GMA” self-importance license plate.
“She liked the publicity and a spotlight from Survivor,” Fairplay recalled. “It didn’t damage that she thought [Survivor host] Jeff Probst was one of the good-looking males on the planet.”
That grandmother was Ellen Jean Hauser, who was born in 1934 and died on Friday, February 7, at Embrace Hospice Home in Myrtle Seashore, South Carolina.
Hauser dated Grand Ole Opry host Faron Younger and Grammy-winning singer Robert Goulet, Fairplay mentioned. She died on Friday, February 7.
Fairplay, who went on to compete on 2008’s Survivor: Micronesia and the E! actuality present Home of Villains in 2020, beforehand advised Leisure Weekly he had no regrets about his dead-grandma lie. “There had been ‘unhealthy guys’ previous to me on actuality TV, however they by no means sought out that personification. They claimed unhealthy modifying or artistic storytelling,” he defined to the journal in 2020. “I embraced the position and reveled in it.”
And to listen to Fairplay inform it within the new interview, his grandmother was selling his actuality TV profession even in her last moments.
“Her dying phrases had been one thing like, ‘Jonny, I need to see you on Survivor 50, The Traitors, and Deal or No Deal Island,’” he advised EW. “I had no concept she had so many streaming companies.”
Survivor, Season 48 Premiere, Wednesday, February 26, 8/7c, CBS