[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Survivor Season 49 Episode 4, “Go Kick Rocks, Bro.”]
The fifth boot of Survivor 49 went out trying to stage a blindside, but they didn’t have the social capital to make it happen on the first day of a tribe swap, leading to their elimination in Episode 4 on Wednesday, October 15, on CBS. (Read our Episode 4 recap here.)
The tribe swap dissolved the Uli tribe and left Hina and Kele remaining with seven players each. Matt Williams and Jason Treul were the only original Hina players left on their team. They were joined by Uli’s Moore, Pitts, Savannah Louie, and Rizo Velovic, plus Kele’s Sophi Balderi, who they welcomed into their fold in this episode. That left Williams and Treul out, and Treul’s strategy of offering to work with players but saying that he would play his Shot in the Dark to protect himself turned out to be the winning plan.
Williams wanted to make a big swing to get Moore, whom he viewed as Uli’s leader, voted out. Viewers saw Williams pitch the idea to Pitts, with whom he went on a journey earlier this season. Jawan gave him a suspiciously quick yes, but then he turned around and immediately told his Uli alums what Williams said. That was all they needed to choose him in the elimination.
Williams tells TV Insider that he actually started this episode by laying the groundwork for a Moore blindside with Balderi and Treul, and he says they expressed interest. The next part of their supposed plan was for Matt to go out on the tribe boat with Jawan to loop him in. In the last minutes before Tribal, Williams says he tried another Hail Mary by asking Moore to tell him who to vote for. Williams was ready to ditch his blindside plan, which he admits was pretty flimsy to begin with, and follow Moore’s directions to save his skin. Moore’s response, according to Williams, was, “Write who you want. I don’t care.”
“I was like, uh oh,” Williams says.
Here, he breaks down his elimination.
Did watching this episode help you better understand your elimination?
Matt Williams: Well, it’s always interesting to watch the side conversation. I was there and I have no idea what’s really going on. So I kind of had already puzzled everything out. There were little details about Savannah using my past as ammunition. I don’t know how you get [from] I was a stockbroker [to] I must be a sociopath. I don’t understand how those dots connect, but it’s interesting to think, well, any information they have, they’re going to use to direct the game the way they want it to go. And maybe I should have just kind of kept my mouth shut on my past in the white collar world. And so yeah, there are things after watching the episode that I’m like, oh, OK. That’s how that played out. But my one path forward with Jawan, trying to get him to flip on Nate, I knew that was a long shot.
If we pulled it off, I think it would’ve been really, really cool. But I kind of thought it’s a little early in the game for Jawan to be making a big move. He’s sitting in a really good position. If he really, really feels like he’s on the bottom and he really feels like he needs to make a move and mix things up, I’m going to give him the target. I’m going to go, Let’s do it, Jawan. This will be your big move. But I didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the plan, so it wasn’t a shock to me that he had flipped and had gone and told Nate the whole thing. And so I just saw it play out, and I was like, OK. Yeah, that’s kind of how I had assumed things played out when I was there.
Robert Voets / CBS
Do you think they targeted you for elimination because you shared your past about your career, or because of what they found out about Nate?
I honestly think my white collar past was just a detail, a side note. At that point, when Savannah and I had that conversation, and it was out in the open in front of everybody, we were only three hours away from tribal. And at that point, Nate already knew that I was throwing his name out. And Nate was like, well, we’ve got Matt and Jason to choose from. Jason is willing to work with us. Matt is throwing my name out, so I think he had enough pull with the tribe to say, That’s all the reason I need right there, and I want it to be Matt. And everyone’s like, you know what? Matt, it is. There we go. We have a reason.
I really don’t think talking about my past experience and my professional experience had anything to do with me leaving. It may have been a contributing factor if I had stayed there, if Jason had been the one to go. How Savannah was spinning it was, this guy’s smarter than he’s leading on. We’ve got to look out for him. I can see the thought process there. Maybe I should’ve told him I didn’t do nothing. I’m a day laborer. I’ve dropped out of high school. I can’t spell my own name. Probably would’ve been a better approach, but at the time, I’m like, yeah, let’s talk about it. I got nothing to hide. I’m kind of proud of the things I’ve done, and of course, they’re going to use it against me. I should have kept my mouth shut.
In hindsight, do you think you trusted Jawan’s easy yes to the Nate blindside idea too easily?
Well, so much happens out there that doesn’t make the final cut. Jawan and I had a little bit of history on the journey we went on. We got friendly there. We talked a lot. Jake, Jawan, and I actually formed a quasi alliance, kind of an impromptu, Hey, let’s get together at the merge, and we’ll work together, and nobody’s going to know that we’re working together. And so I felt comfortable talking with Jawan [about] gameplay. Jawan and I went out on the boat and caught fish for, we were out there for two hours, just talking, and none of that actually made the final cut. So what the viewer sees is like, Why would you trust this guy? But what you don’t see is we really built some rapport, and we got along famously, and I thought, you know what? There’s a chance. In the back of my head, I was thinking, it doesn’t make sense for him to do this, but if he really feels he’s on the bottom and he is really willing to make a move and put himself on the map, let’s do it, Jawan.
Running on what I saw at the immunity challenges, and then the information Jawan was feeding me, I’m thinking, well, Nate’s running the show over there, Nate, if you’re on the bottom, Nate’s on the top. Let’s remove the top, and that’ll be your big move. So I thought that the strategy had some merit, even though it was a Hail Mary; it was a long shot. I thought if we pull it off, if it does happen, it’ll be really, really cool. So I just kind of put all my eggs in that basket and ran that direction. And at the end, here I am at home, and everyone else on the island. So it didn’t work, but it could have. It could have been really, really cool.
Robert Voets / CBS
At least you made a swing, right? But I also wonder who else you talked to about this plan, because we didn’t see you talk to anyone else but Jawan in the episode, but I imagine you tried to convince other people.
How it got started, we woke up on the beach and Jason, Sophi, and I said, What are we going to do? We’ve got a bad mix here on this tribe swap. We got four Ulis. We need to do something. And I said, Look, I was friendly with Jawan at the journey. I might be able to get him to flip. You guys got any plans? And they’re like, oh, let’s try it. So I took Jawan out on the boat. We talked, we fished, and I really thought this might work. So, what you didn’t make the edit is, Jason, Sophi, Jawan, and myself were all going to write down Nate. But little did I know Jawan and Sophi were still, well, Jawan was still Uli strong, and Sophi had been taken in by them. And that’s just where we were. That was what made sense. I mean, the obvious move was to get rid of a Hina. We got Jason. We got Matt. Pick one. That was the obvious move, so to get anything other than that to happen was going to be crazy, but it would’ve been fun. And it didn’t happen. They played it safe. They played it smart. And I went home.
What’s so wrong about Sandra Diaz-Twine‘s “anyone but me” strategy? It did help her win twice. Was that just a line you said as you were trying to stage a Nate blindside?
As a fan of the show, watching, I’m like, how can you go in there and that’s your strategy? But it obviously worked. It worked twice, as Jeff [Probst] pointed out to me in Tribal.
But I never thought in a million years I would go on Survivor and those words would come out of my mouth. But I thought, I really don’t have a whole lot of options. I toyed around with trying to make a fake idol and trying to cause some sort of confusion. I thought momentarily about, Hey, let’s write down Jason. This is why you need to get rid of Jason. I thought, you know what? No. I love Jason. That’s not going to be my play. I’m not going to be the guy that’s flipping on my buddy.
I thought, There’s a possibility that this works. And so I went the direction of, Hey, let’s all write down Nate’s name. But when Nate said, “Dude, you were throwing people under the bus,” I said, “How so, Nate?” I didn’t throw anybody. He said, “You said anyone but me.” I was like, I absolutely did. And I don’t consider that throwing Jason or Sophi under the bus. You got options. Pick one of them. I’m not campaigning against them, but this is why you should keep me, was my argument. And anybody but me, it became my strategy. So, Sandra, I apologize for thinking that what you were doing was not playing Survivor. When you’re there in the moment, sometimes that’s absolutely playing Survivor. I did it. I’m Sandra’s little minion, following in her footsteps.
Did you see her Instagram post about it?
No, I did not. What did she say?
She basically said, “Here I am having a blast in Hawaii. And then I learned that someone was talking about me on Survivor. “My strategy worked twice” is essentially what she said.
[Nods]
But I still question whether, at the point when you were talking to Nate before Tribal, saying anyone but me, had you already been planning the blindside? Or was that before that idea came to you? Where in the timeline did that conversation fall?
The timeline you saw last night is accurate. That’s how it happened. I was already trying to get Sophi, Jason, and Jawan to write down Nate’s name, so I was trying to play smokescreen. And even when Tribal was imminent, when we knew that in the next 10 or 20 minutes, they’re going to tell us, get your stuff, we’re going to Tribal, I actually whispered to Nate, “Hey, whose name should I write? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to write Jason or Sophi?” And he wasn’t good at hiding the fact that he kind of knew that I was talking. He was a little bit abrasive. I started thinking, this isn’t going to end well for me because Nate’s like, “Write who you want. I don’t care.” I was like, uh oh. Because I was trying to talk to him. Who do you want me to write? I’m with you. I’m a number. Tell me whose name to write. And he got a little bit abrasive immediately before Tribal. And I thought, he knows that I’m throwing his name out there.
CBS
Understandable that he might feel a certain way about that if he heard that you were trying to stage a blindside against him, right? It’s the game.
Yeah. It’s a hard game. The truth is, I would’ve loved to have worked with Nate. I can imagine a world where Nate, Annie, and myself, the three old people out on that island, somehow came together on the initial tribe or after a swap or a merge. I think it would’ve been an interesting dynamic, and I think it would’ve really changed things because there is a generational gap there when all these young guys, it’s hard to assimilate into the group. In a different universe, if things had played out differently, I would’ve loved to have worked with Nate, gone far with Nate, partnered with Nate. Great guy. I got nothing against him. It was just Jawan says, I’m on the bottom, I need to mix things up. Well, Nate’s on the top. This is how we’re going to mix things up. It was what I could come up with, and it didn’t work. But it could have been really cool if Jawan had said, “You know what? I think I will go ahead and make my big move right now.” But it was too early. I get it. My Survivor career was cut short, and here I am. But it was a fantastic experience, and I had a great time out there.
And like I said, at least you tried to make a big swing. You didn’t play it safe while you were out there. You made good use of your time.
Right. And “anyone but me” was kind of part of a bigger strategy. Even though it was a Hail Mary, it was part of trying to make something else happen.
And now you understand Sandra’s game a little bit better.
I do [laughs]. Respect, Sandra.
Survivor, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS