An Interview with Boo
“I Was Pretty Much on My Own Out There” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Boo by David Bloomberg -- 05/14/2007 There was more to Boo than we saw on the show, and now he has his chance to talk about it. What were his plans to move forward? How does he think he would have done in front of the jury? What does he think of Dreamz’ claim that he was playing Yau-Man the whole way, and what did he mean in saying Dreamz is an “immature Christian”? Boo answers all these questions and more, right here! Boo was an interesting person to watch on Survivor, because we didn’t see all that much out of him until the end. What does he have to say about his time on the game? How is his knee? Does he believe Dreamz? Read on to find out. RNO: What did you do to prepare for being on Survivor? Boo: I started swimming and tried to hold my breath and get to where I could hold it as long as possible. I got up to two minutes and we never had any swimming challenges. I trained, I’m a martial artist, so I do a lot of training, so I wasn’t doing too much different. And I only had like three weeks to start preparing. RNO: What was your strategy going into the game? Boo: Going in I wanted to keep an open mind and see what was going on, but I was just going to try not to get on people’s nerves. I tend to have a good first impression but I tend to wear on certain people. That’s what happened with Stacy, I think it’s because socially she didn’t like me and she left me hanging. She just severed that tie and didn’t have to deal with me. That strategy worked a little bit with some people but I never got to get a solid person on my side. Cassandra was the closest one to me and I was like her third or fourth choice. I was pretty much on my own out there. RNO: Why did you decide to side with Earl, Yau-Man, and company after the merge, rather than rejoining Alex and Edgardo? Boo: I figured out really quickly that they didn’t want me to rejoin me with them. They were avoiding conversations with me and very interested in conversations with other people, so I knew something was going on. After the challenge after the merge, I knew they had decided to replace me with Mookie and they left me out. It was an umbrella I had to get under to save myself, and they needed a swing vote at that point. It wasn’t a decision I made, it was a decision the game forced me to make. I would have rather been in charge of the game at that point. RNO: Did you ever get to use the hideout you created for yourself? Boo: No. I made that so late that I knew it wasn’t going to benefit me. But we were just bored at that point, so I just wanted to go do something and kill some time. I had a little project to keep me busy a couple days. RNO: If you had convinced Yau-Man and Earl to vote off Dreamz instead of you, what was your plan from there? Boo: If I had convinced them, I would have won the challenge. I’m pretty confident because of the training I do. I do a lot of pulling in my training, so I would have definitely won that challenge. I think at that point, it would have been easy to vote out Yau-Man – they voted him out anyway. I would have been in the top three. I think I had a shot against Earl. I didn’t have any enemies like Dreamz and wasn’t just complacent like Cassandra, even though it was kind of edited like I was. Last night you could see, I made two compelling arguments to two different people. That’s what I was doing the whole time, but they didn’t show those things because they were irrelevant. But my point would have been I outlasted equally with Earl, and outwitted – he did a little bit but it was him controlling Dreamz and getting that swing over, and it was Yau-Man who did a lot of the outwitting. I had to save myself and do some fancy dancing because my tribe left me. I would have tried to focus on “outplay.” Earl had to stab a couple people in the back and that’s the big reason he was there, and I hadn’t stabbed anyone in the back – I won some challenges. The only one who was close in challenges was Yau-Man. Earl hadn’t won one challenge. So, that being said, I hoped the jury would say I did outplay and Earl did stab a couple people in the back. I hoped I could convince at least a couple people. I don’t know if it would have been a unanimous decision. RNO: Do you believe Dreamz’ claim that he was playing Yau-Man all along, or do you think he intended to keep his word and then changed his mind? Boo: It’s not even a question. In his own interviews, he said, “I’m giving him immunity.” He was basically talking to himself. That’s his private moment to say what he’s really going to do. You don’t tell yourself that in a private moment and then change your mind. It’s a given that he wasn’t playing the game when he accepted the truck. He accepted the truck, fully expecting to give Yau-Man immunity. And shoot, he cried at the final Tribal Council. They didn’t show all of it, but he broke down and cried. He was having an inner conflict with himself, his moral values he preached all the time, “I’m a good Christian, I’m a man of my word.” Some of that stuff was part of the game, but that particular move wasn’t a game play, it was, “I want this truck and I want to give you what you want for it.” If he’d have shown up at Tribal Council and not cried and said, “Yau-Man, I’m sorry but I was playing you from the beginning,” I would have respected that and he probably would have gotten my vote. Other things, when he backstabbed, it was part of the game and that’s what we’re here for. I definitely respect that. I wish I could have stabbed people in the back – I might have made the final three. RNO: What kind of reaction did the jurors have after Dreamz failed to honor the deal? Boo: They knew – they said he would. We were split on that. I had no doubt he was going to give Yau-Man the immunity necklace. I was wrong. That made for a great episode and helped the season tremendously. A lot of the other guys, Mookie and Edgardo and Alex that he did that to, they said, “Are you kidding? He’s definitely not going to give it to him.” They were right. It seemed like either one extreme or the other – definitely keeping it or definitely giving it away. RNO: That probably explains why Mookie was smiling and nodding in the jury box when Dreamz kept immunity – not because he approved of it, but because he knew he was right. Boo: That’s what I thought.
RNO: What did you mean when you said Dreamz is an “immature Christian man”?
Boo: I think he really is a strong Christian. What I think is he hasn’t fully matured, where he gets swayed by certain things. This time it was money. It doesn’t mean he has a bad heart. I just wanted to make a point that you chose the money over your Christian values, don’t try to rationalize it. I do think you’re a good person but I’m going to point this out to because this does mean something that you cried and you’re having trouble dealing with what you did. I didn’t want to let him off the hook.
He’s not a bad person, a lot of that was the game. That particular incident, his values broke down for money. I wanted to say hey, look man, you have good values but you’re a little immature because you’re siding with the money over your values. I need you to come over and accept your Christianity over money. I wasn’t trying to say he was a bad Christian, I hope I stated it clear enough. I think I said I believe in him and he is a good Christian, but he’s an immature Christian. That’s what I meant, I think he’s going to grow into a more mature Christian the older he gets. Hopefully this will point that out to him that he did choose the money over his values, instead of rationalizing it.
RNO: For now, having just talked to him, he’s still rationalizing it.
Boo: Yeah, on The Early Show, he said he left his honor at home. It went over for him there so he’s going to go with it. But you watched the shows and he said he wants his son to know how strong he is. He’ll get it later on in life. I think he’s embarrassed by it, so the only thing he can say is it’s a game. It’s prretty easy to see that he wasn’t playing the game for that decision.
RNO: You mentioned on the reunion show that you have a torn ACL but probably wouldn’t get it fixed. How much does it hurt and why not have it taken care of?
Boo: It doesn’t hurt to do most things. It’s just in certain positions, certain types of movements, it doesn’t have as much stability. The cost is around ten thousand to fix it and about eight months of recovery. I’m going to resume my training and right now I can deal with it. I’m going to go as long as I can until I can’t support enough weight on it in a fight, then I’ll either stop fighting or get it fixed.
RNO: Did it hurt throughout the rest of the game after we heard it pop?
Boo: There was a soreness for a good bit. But the pain actually subsided and it was just a very weak joint and I could be walking and take a misstep on the terrain out there and that would be enough to send a shock through my knee. If I took a controlled step and used the muscles to support the joint, it was fine. In the challenges, sometimes you can’t. When I did the food challenge to get the pork off the wire, I hurt myself again in that one. It wasn’t as bad but it sent that extreme shock and pain through my leg. But I had to keep going and the pain went away. It was just that it was weak. The pain just to walk around, I just had to be careful. I couldn’t run full speed.
RNO: Considering the way you played through it, how do you view others who went through a lot less on the show and gave up, like Osten on a previous season and Lisi on your season?
Boo: I guess I’m not as hard on them. I can understand people really want to be on the show and then they get on and say they don’t want to. Why would you take spots away from people who would give their left foot to be there? For me, as far as the physical conditions, they didn’t bother me. I understand I’m going to be able to survive undesirable conditions better than the next person. I don’t come down so hard on people who couldn’t handle it.
Cassandra and Stacy and Lisi wouldn’t have survived on Ravu. Cassandra thought she was going out the first vote, because everybody wanted her gone, and I swung that vote away from her. When they told her, she said that’s okay. That means she was wiling to go early and things hadn’t even gotten rough yet. Lisi did quit basically. Stacy wouldn’t have made it. She would have been voted out on the other tribe or she would have quit. She’s a high-maintenance girl.
RNO: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your time on Survivor?
Boo: Just that you can start a petition to put me on All-Stars. I will win the next one and I might do a challenge naked a la Richard Hatch.
RNO: Thanks, Boo!
“I Was Pretty Much on My Own Out There” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Boo by David Bloomberg -- 05/14/2007 There was more to Boo than we saw on the show, and now he has his chance to talk about it. What were his plans to move forward? How does he think he would have done in front of the jury? What does he think of Dreamz’ claim that he was playing Yau-Man the whole way, and what did he mean in saying Dreamz is an “immature Christian”? Boo answers all these questions and more, right here! Boo was an interesting person to watch on Survivor, because we didn’t see all that much out of him until the end. What does he have to say about his time on the game? How is his knee? Does he believe Dreamz? Read on to find out. RNO: What did you do to prepare for being on Survivor? Boo: I started swimming and tried to hold my breath and get to where I could hold it as long as possible. I got up to two minutes and we never had any swimming challenges. I trained, I’m a martial artist, so I do a lot of training, so I wasn’t doing too much different. And I only had like three weeks to start preparing. RNO: What was your strategy going into the game? Boo: Going in I wanted to keep an open mind and see what was going on, but I was just going to try not to get on people’s nerves. I tend to have a good first impression but I tend to wear on certain people. That’s what happened with Stacy, I think it’s because socially she didn’t like me and she left me hanging. She just severed that tie and didn’t have to deal with me. That strategy worked a little bit with some people but I never got to get a solid person on my side. Cassandra was the closest one to me and I was like her third or fourth choice. I was pretty much on my own out there. RNO: Why did you decide to side with Earl, Yau-Man, and company after the merge, rather than rejoining Alex and Edgardo? Boo: I figured out really quickly that they didn’t want me to rejoin me with them. They were avoiding conversations with me and very interested in conversations with other people, so I knew something was going on. After the challenge after the merge, I knew they had decided to replace me with Mookie and they left me out. It was an umbrella I had to get under to save myself, and they needed a swing vote at that point. It wasn’t a decision I made, it was a decision the game forced me to make. I would have rather been in charge of the game at that point. RNO: Did you ever get to use the hideout you created for yourself? Boo: No. I made that so late that I knew it wasn’t going to benefit me. But we were just bored at that point, so I just wanted to go do something and kill some time. I had a little project to keep me busy a couple days. RNO: If you had convinced Yau-Man and Earl to vote off Dreamz instead of you, what was your plan from there? Boo: If I had convinced them, I would have won the challenge. I’m pretty confident because of the training I do. I do a lot of pulling in my training, so I would have definitely won that challenge. I think at that point, it would have been easy to vote out Yau-Man – they voted him out anyway. I would have been in the top three. I think I had a shot against Earl. I didn’t have any enemies like Dreamz and wasn’t just complacent like Cassandra, even though it was kind of edited like I was. Last night you could see, I made two compelling arguments to two different people. That’s what I was doing the whole time, but they didn’t show those things because they were irrelevant. But my point would have been I outlasted equally with Earl, and outwitted – he did a little bit but it was him controlling Dreamz and getting that swing over, and it was Yau-Man who did a lot of the outwitting. I had to save myself and do some fancy dancing because my tribe left me. I would have tried to focus on “outplay.” Earl had to stab a couple people in the back and that’s the big reason he was there, and I hadn’t stabbed anyone in the back – I won some challenges. The only one who was close in challenges was Yau-Man. Earl hadn’t won one challenge. So, that being said, I hoped the jury would say I did outplay and Earl did stab a couple people in the back. I hoped I could convince at least a couple people. I don’t know if it would have been a unanimous decision. RNO: Do you believe Dreamz’ claim that he was playing Yau-Man all along, or do you think he intended to keep his word and then changed his mind? Boo: It’s not even a question. In his own interviews, he said, “I’m giving him immunity.” He was basically talking to himself. That’s his private moment to say what he’s really going to do. You don’t tell yourself that in a private moment and then change your mind. It’s a given that he wasn’t playing the game when he accepted the truck. He accepted the truck, fully expecting to give Yau-Man immunity. And shoot, he cried at the final Tribal Council. They didn’t show all of it, but he broke down and cried. He was having an inner conflict with himself, his moral values he preached all the time, “I’m a good Christian, I’m a man of my word.” Some of that stuff was part of the game, but that particular move wasn’t a game play, it was, “I want this truck and I want to give you what you want for it.” If he’d have shown up at Tribal Council and not cried and said, “Yau-Man, I’m sorry but I was playing you from the beginning,” I would have respected that and he probably would have gotten my vote. Other things, when he backstabbed, it was part of the game and that’s what we’re here for. I definitely respect that. I wish I could have stabbed people in the back – I might have made the final three. RNO: What kind of reaction did the jurors have after Dreamz failed to honor the deal? Boo: They knew – they said he would. We were split on that. I had no doubt he was going to give Yau-Man the immunity necklace. I was wrong. That made for a great episode and helped the season tremendously. A lot of the other guys, Mookie and Edgardo and Alex that he did that to, they said, “Are you kidding? He’s definitely not going to give it to him.” They were right. It seemed like either one extreme or the other – definitely keeping it or definitely giving it away. RNO: That probably explains why Mookie was smiling and nodding in the jury box when Dreamz kept immunity – not because he approved of it, but because he knew he was right. Boo: That’s what I thought