'Survivor 43's' Cody Assenmacher Reveals Why He Gave His Idol Back to Jesse

The Hawaii resident and elevator salesman also breaks down his immediate reactions to his blindside at the hands of his closest ally.

At long last, Survivor 43 has arrived! Every week, Parade.com's Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the castaway most recently voted off of the island.

Out of the entire Survivor 43 cast, it's safe to say Cody Assenmacher had the most life out on the island. After all, he came to the game with a version of the word tattooed on his butt, and he was ready to play with both the fieriness of a big-time player with the coolness of the waves that grace the shores of Hawaii. But while Cody was already gearing up to face the final Tribal Council, he didn't see the tsunami building against him. And so, after an afternoon of concocting a "proposterous" plan to blindside Karla Cruz Godoy with an idol, it was Cody who would be the most shocked of all, as his own idol was used against him in a devastating betrayal.

Cody came into Survivor eager to make leaps, whether they were off of tall rocks or into a large number of alliances. But the one person he stayed loyal to from his first to last day in the game was his "loaloha" Jesse Lopez. He was the first person Cody went to when he found the Beware Advantage that put his vote in danger, and the two worked in overdrive that afternoon to collect enough beads to not only pull off their first of many betrayals on Justine Brennan, but also give Cody an idol to boot. After going hard the first week and booting his fellow salesperson, the trill-seeker took his foot off the gas, comfortable in his idol and a rock-solid partnership with Jesse. When the tribes came together, the two found themselves yet again in the swing position at basically every vote. They used that opportunity to hop back and forth between various factions, and allowed them to take out their former Vesi enemies Dwight Moore and Noelle Lambert. What's more, Cody's idol remained silent and unused, tucked away in Jesse's bag.

That all changed, though, in an eventful couple of days. Nearly everyone at the Final Six wanted Karla out, but knew that she had an idol. So Cody made the pitch of his Survivor life, offering to Karla that they say they'll play their idols, then not. She was all aboard, and it seemed like she was soon to be eviscerated and Cody was looking at Day 37 with an idol, a tight ally, and a spot in the Final Three. But it all came apart when Jesse contemplated how electric a man with lightning bolts shaved into his head would be at Final Tribal Council. Fearing their games would not be separated, Jesse made the biggest betrayal of the season. That night, Cody confidently said he'd play his idol, using his ever-reliable number of 9 to rate his confidence. But Jesse said "nein" to that rating. With Cody's idol in his possession, he used it on Owen Knight, and joined nearly everyone else in blindsiding him. The elevator salesman was floored, but not enough to give the man who just cut his throat a hug on the way out.

Now out of the game, Cody talks with Parade.com about the lie from Jesse that got him to give his idol back, his reaction to his brutal blindside, and some unseen projects he made for the tribe.

Related: Read our Survivor 43 pre-game interview with Cody Assenmacher

First off, how are you holding up? Must have been a heck of an episode to watch back.
Good, Mike. Thanks for asking, bro. I'm hung over. We partied last night. We had a good celebration. And it's early here in Hawaii. So I'm just getting heated up, man. Just getting warmed up.

Well what better way to get warmed up than with such a heated blindside. What was it like watching it back last night?
It's a relief, to be honest with you. I've known this outcome for a long time. I've been a competitor my whole life. And having someone come up and wish you good luck before a football game is fun, it's exciting. You don't know the outcome. Knowing the outcome and having people ask you for the last 11 weeks or six months and you're like, "Thanks, thanks." You just wanna be like, "I didn't win!" And now the cat's out of the bag. The monkey's off my back. And I can breathe and really share the experience with my loved ones. 

Allow me to aggravate the monkey for a little bit longer. I have to start with the obvious. What was the timeline from when you get your idol back to show to Karla to Jesse playing it on Owen at Tribal Council?
So I'm gonna dial it back to when I won the reward, the coffee. A million-dollar freaking coffee and million-dollar danishes, because I got so jacked up. I didn't sleep the whole night. My head was kind of messed up the whole next day. I couldn't quite get there because I didn't sleep. And that day when after the challenge, Karla and I had talked and she said, "Hey, let's walk into Tribal Council wearing the immunities and show everybody that we're gonna play him.

And, unknowingly, Jesse also says, "Hey, bro, I think she may have Knowledge is Power." So in my mind, it was really a perfect storm. And in my mind, I'm going,"[expletive]. I've been playing with this guy for 20-plus days. She keeps wanting me to have this thing in my hand at Tribal Council. She's just trying to swap it out for me." And that was in my head that whole day before Tribal. And then Jesse never asked for back. I was like, "Okay, you know what? This has been my token of trust. If I take this from him now, then things may go haywire." And that's how it went down, man.

Well it went pretty haywire at any rate. You had such a complicated reaction to your vote-off, from visual anger at Jesse to eventually bringing him in for a hug. Talk me through your emotions as everything came together for you.
I've never had that emotion come across my body in my life before. When he came back in and gave a fist bump after playing my idol for Owen, I didn't even think that was an option. I didn't think morally you could do that. After being out there, having this relationship, I didn't think it was a choice. And when it happened, I went numb. Like I said never felt that emotion before.

And believe me, everything went through my head. Do I choke slam him into this fire? Do I frickin' kick him right between the legs? Do I punch him in the face? And Cody maybe five years ago that would have happened. Believe it or not, a little bit more mature Cody at 35--almost 36 on Friday--took the high road. And I'll tell you what, after after I got my torch snuffed, I went out, and they put you in a tent. And immediately after the vote out, I was kicking and screaming and kicking some ass in there. But yeah, I hope I never have to feel that again.

I imagine a lot of that emotion came from the fact that it was coming from such a close ally as Jesse. Talk to me about that relationship you had, and how close you two had gotten.
Every relationship is built of experiences. And we are out there with an uninterrupted time, more time together, when you can do the math, than we spend with our own families. We spend a few hours a day with our own family. We're out there every day for that long, and we're having all these experiences, whether they're challenges, being hungry, not sleeping, blindsided. It was a real relationship. We had choreographed the game so beautifully. We were having a ton of fun. And, it's freaking real. It was a real relationship. I'll be honest with you. It still is today.

I'm glad to hear things are still going well! Like you said, with some contestants the time you spend out there can supersede even the toughest blindsides.
I gave him no choice. That move was mine. And I gave him no choice given the arsenal that he had. I've got nobody to blame but myself.

Let's talk about your endgame plans. We see in this episode you wanted to take out Karla and Cassidy and then go with the guys to the end. Did you have a particular Final Three in mind?
I was comfortable sitting next to any of those people in the Final Tribal Council. I felt like I made some good friends over there on the jury. The Sami vote, for example, I said, "Hey, you've got to play the Shot in the Dark," planting those seeds to get my jury up. I would have felt comfortable. I think I can articulate my game well enough to go sit with any of them. But my plan was Gabler and Jesse.

Why's that? Did it come from the odd arm handshake you did with Gabler back in the split Tribal Council?
Brothers in arms handshake, Mike! (Laughs.) After the Nneka vote, I was gutted. And I told myself I didn't want to go through that experience and that feeling again. So at that point, I was locked in with Jesse. Because we played the whole time and there was no way I was going to turn on him. Gabler was just somebody that we picked up to really communicate with there at the end. There wasn't a whole lot of strategy about picking the last two. I was comfortable with my game. I was okay with going to the end with anybody.

I knew Jesse's game. I knew Gabler's game. I didn't know the other players' game real well. I knew Karla was a threat and watched a couple of things she had done. But I didn't really know if Cassidy was doing things that I hadn't seen, because we hadn't been aligned. We weren't on the same tribes. And same with Owen. I didn't know any of that. And Owen kind of scared me in the Final Three. Because the guy had been getting his butt kicked all game, couldn't catch himself on the right side of the votes. And my mind was like, "Hey, that's a bit of an underdog story that somebody can really cheer for."

I want to stay on Cassidy for a second. We see a couple of times that you and Jesse disagree about voting her out over someone else, whether it be Ryan or Sami. I should also mention that you said she would be a challenge threat last episode, and she ended up beating you crucially for immunity here.
Thanks, Mike. (Laughs.)

(Laughs.) In both cases, you end up acquiescing to Jesse. How do you look back on those decisions now?
I mean, the one challenge where she beats me by seconds on the puzzle, that was all Cass. Cass was the challenge threat for me and I knew it. Sami I knew had to be the challenge threat somewhere along the line. And if you watch early in the season, he knows puzzles. He did that puzzle in frickin' seconds. He is a puzzle master. But the thing that got me to change my mind was when they pitched the idea of not telling Karla and pinning Karla and Cassidy against each other. That's what then allowed me to say, "Okay, good, I'm fine with Sami, as long as we don't tell Karla." Then she votes for Cass and those two are no longer ever going to be able to vote with each other.

Going back to the beginning of the game, you really came in hot, making quick deals, creating blindsides, finding idols, stirring up trouble at other tribes' camps. But from our perspective, it seemed like you shifted back as the game went further along. Was that actually the case?
Yeah, man. Because once the Nneka vote happened, as I said, I was gutted. I didn't sleep that night. I told myself I didn't want to do that again. But it also allowed me to kind of really sit under the radar. Because at that point, Noelle had gone back and told everybody that we just voted out my number one. So I'm like this lone wolf. I don't have a number two. And that allowed me to kind of sit in the shadows for the entire game.

When the tribes came together, people like James, Ryan, and Sami have told me that they made bonds with you, which we didn't see on the show. Were those authentic, or were you trying to build relationships with the jury as you mentioned before?
I wasn't playing them up. Those were really relationships. Those guys are cool. I liked hanging out with them. We had a lot of good laughs out there. I remember one night, I was on the beach, freezing cold, sleeping. And James comes over and wakes me up and says, "Hey, bro, I made a big old fire. You can go lay by the fire." These are real dudes. We had a lot of fun. Those relationships were organic with no strategy behind them other than, "Hey, we need relationships to move forward in this game."

We saw you begin the game making a palm frond hat and end it making a bamboo walking stick. Any other Cody crafts we missed out on?
You never saw my swing! There's a pitcher out there and I'm sitting on the swing. It's a freakin' rock-solid swing. We were using that swing the whole time.

How did the swing end up coming into the picture?
Well, there's a lot of downtime out there. And a lot of people would talk strategy nonstop. And I'm just like, "I'm not going to be a part of this." We were freakin' spinning our wheels. And I almost felt like the longer you start talking strategy to everybody else, the more people would be like, "Wait, what is he telling them? Where mine was much more structured. It's like you can go to a meeting for two hours and talk circles, or you go to a meeting for 15 minutes if everybody's prepared and get it done. And it's good to have fun out there, you know. Because it's a tough thing to win. But you can have a good time. And I made sure we did.

To that point, you said during the season, "There’s not a day that I’m gonna let go that I can’t do bed and be like, ‘I’m gonna have a good time today.'" Looking back on your time on the island, were you able to have as much fun as you hoped you would?
Yeah, reflecting on the game was, as they say, an adventure of a lifetime. It was a lot of fun. I hadn't had them competitive juices in my body freaking going for a long time. And that adrenaline of competing. When Jeff says, "Alright, let's go," all the tiredness and all the hunger goes away. (Pause.) I can't wait to watch all the episodes again and really process what happened and the fun that it was, the laughs that we had. Because this whole time in watching it back, I've been waiting for yesterday's episode. Right now I'm gonna be able to look back and be like, "I don't remember how Episodes 1, 2, 3 went down. What were we talking about? What fun did we have? What did I forget?" Because in life, I journal, and that allows me to recall what's going on. Not so that I can remember but so I can put it out there. There's no way to write anything down or remember anything. So you have to watch it and call other contestants. "Hey, do you remember this? Do you remember that"? And I'm excited to watch again and really see how much fun it was.

I'm excited for you to watch back that premerge in general. Because between jumping off of rocks, finding the idols, sowing chaos at Coco, it's clear you were truly "livin" out there.
Yeah, well, I wish I would have turned that gear back on towards the end of the game. Because I think it would have ended differently. But hindsight's 20/20.

Next, read our interview with Sami Layadi, who was voted out in Survivor 43 Episode 11.