Survivor 47′s Sam Phalen Details His Role in Operation Italy and Finale’s ‘Whirlwind of Emotions’
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s season finale of Survivor 47.
A new Sole Survivor has been crowned! Unfortunately for Sam Phalen, he was four votes shy of winning that title and million bucks.
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In Wednesday’s episode, Rachel LaMont won the game’s last immunity challenge, securing her spot in the Final 3 and earning the chance to face a jury of her peers. Despite having a lack of confidence in fire building, Sam pulled it together and won the fire challenge against Teeny after struggling to spark a flame during his daytime practice sessions. Even though he tried to convince the jury that Rachel’s game was buoyed by advantages and idols, they still opted to hand her the cash by a vote of 7-1-0. (Read our full recap and interview with Rachel.)
Below, Sam talks to TVLine about what we didn’t see at Final Tribal Council, the difficulty of participating in the After Show following such a huge loss, and yes, that whole watermelon business.
TVLINE | It felt like a tight Final Tribal showdown. After the votes were cast, what did you think your chances were?
SAM PHALEN | Very up in the air. I had some doubt only because, as I was doing math in my head, my inclination was that it was either going to be a 5-3 or a 4-4 [vote], but yeah, I knew that if it was a 4-4, I didn’t have Sue. So I was really trying to look at the jury and say, “Where are five votes coming from?.” There was a couple permutations, I suppose, where I could see five, but even as the votes were coming in, it felt tight. I still kind of knew it might be somewhat of a long-shot, just with knowing I had to flip everybody that was on the fence. That’s a tall order.
TVLINE | Were you surprised to only get one vote, and was there anyone you were surprised to not get?
Yeah, I was, to be honest. It really did feel very close. I did feel throughout the entire game, if I was sitting next to Rachel at the end, I had a compelling argument to make, and that it was going to be very tightly fought, but also very a tight battle in the votes. I expected to get Sierra’s vote. I think I expected to get Gabe as well, but definitely Sierra for sure. So, Kyle and Sierra felt like two votes that I was relying on. Then I was pretty confident that I’d be able to sway Gabe over my way over the course of Final Tribal. There was a couple people I didn’t really know how to read.
TVLINE | Was there anything from that Final Tribal Council that we didn’t see on TV?
There was definitely one big moment where I was able to really explain in further detail Operation Italy through my eyes and my lens, and why I felt like it was such a pivotal moment for me in the game. One thing that I don’t think is necessarily shown on the show is just the intentionality that I had between reward choices and interactions with people in the days building up to it. That the idea of doing a split vote at the Final 7 with a fake idol was one that I had been wanting to do well before the reward was a thing. It was something that I told Genevieve about the day before the reward challenge like, “Hey, our best chance here is to try and find the crack in the five, pull somebody over and pull an elaborate ruse with a fake idol scheme.” So I was really able to explain that and that my choices were very deliberate, and that without winning this challenge, without picking these people, it doesn’t allow the biggest move of the season to happen.
Additionally, I was very pleased with the level of power and insulation that it gave me, where my threat level had just been raised to a point where there was no real turning back from it. You were just stamped and labeled as a threat at that point, and I knew I needed to get my threat level down as quickly and efficiently as possible. The best way I knew to do that was by putting other people above myself, not just talking up Rachel to the other players in the game, [but] aligning with somebody like Genevieve that I knew people were terrified of and would always want out. Andy makes this move and he’s the one flipping on the majority alliance. He plays the most pivotal role in the whole thing, and because of that, he elevates his threat level. But I felt like I was in the one spot, not the flipper, not the one with the fake idol, but the one with all of the information to decide the fate of my co-conspirators at my own convenience, decide what information should or should not get out to the rest of the people in the game, and sort of control that narrative. In doing so, I was really able to make sure that I was not ever going to be the tallest poppy in the field.
TVLINE | There are many people who criticize the After Show for a variety of reasons. What’s it like to suffer that big of a loss and then have to sit there and immediately jump into it without having a moment to decompress?
It’s very hard, especially because you don’t get a ton of answers. You’re sitting there and trying to do the math, right? Whose vote did I get? Who did I not get and why? And you’re trying to find those answers in your brain in real time as Jeff is passing out champagne and asking all kinds of questions. You want to be a gracious loser and make sure that your winner — especially when you’ve got a badass winner like Rachel Lamont — is getting celebrated appropriately. I was definitely wanting to do that while also… you’re grieving in your own way, in real time. It’s a whirlwind of emotions. It’s a very difficult spot, not one that I would wish on anybody, for sure.
TVLINE | What was your reaction to Sue’s age reveal?
I was stunned. I was actually very surprised. I’m the only one on the entire cast that was actually like, “Damn, Sue, OK!” I did not believe Sue was 45, [but] I thought she looked really good for 59. She performed like a beast in those challenges for 59! She was crushing it. I think I maybe had Sue at like 52, 53, somewhere in that range. When she started her age reveal, she goes, “I’m not actually 45,” I’m like, “Yeah, she’s gonna say she’s 52. Here we go.” Fifty-nine was extreme to me, where I was like, “Wow, that’s kick ass. You’ve got a lot to be proud of here.”
TVLINE | In the fire-making challenge, how much of a factor was the wind out there?
It’s crazy because all my reference in the moment about the wind was what I was hearing Jeff say. Jeff is saying, “the wind is moving Teeny’s flame. The wind is really starting to pick up now.” I was never really trying to look over or pay much attention to what Teeny was doing or what exactly was going wrong. I just knew somehow that rope hasn’t burned yet. I don’t know how ’cause I see this big inferno right next to me. That means I just gotta keep building. So it wasn’t really until watching the episode that I saw how big of a flame Teeny had, and how much the location of the flame on the fire-making rock, the positioning of our fire-making places, the wind and all of that stuff played such a big factor. I could not believe it in the moment. It was a total out of body experience. I don’t even know how I got a flame going. That was wild to watch back.
TVLINE | Teeny called you arrogant, but were you really not confident going into that challenge or was it all a ruse?
Oh no, I was terrified. I had never made fire before, ever. I knew that I was kind of doomed, and I think the arrogance that I show in the water was sort of a last-ditch effort to get Rachel to maybe change her mind and either I get dragged to the end with Rachel, or Rachel needs to come in and beat me in fire herself. Anything to try and make Rachel make a mistake is what I was trying to do. I think the right move was absolutely to bring Sue to the end and have Teeny and I make fire. I was trying to make Rachel doubt that, and I was trying to get in Teeny’s head a little bit. So I was trying to just keep a positive attitude, but I was terrified and could not have been less confident.
TVLINE | Sam, this food thing. How did you go 24 years of life without eating things like watermelon or pineapple?
I don’t go off of what I know that I like all that often. It’s not that I wouldn’t eat watermelon. It’s not that I’m afraid of watermelon. If it was there and you were like, “Hey, eat this watermelon,” I probably would. But if you put it on a spread next to fruits that I know I like, I’m just gonna eat the ones that I know I like. I’m not a fruit hater by any means, but I’m definitely a creature of habit in my everyday life. I eat for purpose, not for pleasure, and so for me, it was a way of being goofy at Gata, to kind of disarm my tribe and be like, “Oh, here’s like this goofy dude who we can’t believe has never had pineapple before,” and get people laughing, and then it apparently turned into this massive thing on the show that I didn’t expect.
TVLINE | Is there anything you wish you did that could’ve won you the game? Or do you have any big regrets that you’d fix a second time out?
I think I’m fortunate enough to come out and say that I have no regrets. I do I wish I would have won an immunity challenge and had been able to take Rachel out. But I don’t beat myself up over that specifically. I think I positioned myself in the game exactly where I wanted to be, which was at the Final 6 with a list of people that were still gonna go above me, but [I’d] still having win equity. And if Rachel doesn’t have that idol, I think I’m actually positioned to win the game very well, because I think [if] she goes out at six and everybody’s still looking at Genevieve, I feel confident sitting next to any of the other three at the end. That was my vision for how the game was going to unfold. You can only operate off of having information, and obviously the idol was information that I didn’t have. Because of that, I don’t think I have any major regrets with how I positioned myself in the game.
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