An Interview with Edgardo
“Dreamz Has a Big Mouth” – An Interview with Survivor: Fiji’s Edgardo by David Bloomberg -- 04/20/2007 Edgardo and Alex seemed to be controlling the game for quite some time. What happened to cause them to lose control? What was Edgardo’s strategy? Did he know all of what was going on that final chaotic day? And why did he say in his final words that he didn’t like Cassandra? In watching the alliance of Alex and Edgardo, Alex always seemed to be the front man, with Edgardo in the back. As it turns out, that was his plan! So what did he think of Dreamz, Stacy, Cassandra and others? Who is playing what kind of strategy? Read on to find out! RealityNewsOnline: Hello, Edgardo, how are you? Edgardo: Hello, good. RNO: Let’s jump into it. What did you do to prepare for being on Survivor? Edgardo: I watched a lot of past Survivor seasons and worked out a strategy coming into the game on how I wanted to behave and what kind of people I wanted to attract to be in my alliances. RNO: That takes us nicely to my second question – what was your strategy going into the game? Edgardo: My strategy was to find somebody that I really trusted – which I did – and then use that person to make it look like they were making all the decisions so I wasn’t put on the spot. For example, with Alex, I would tell him what we should do and then he would be the person who would tell all the other people. I wanted to stay behind the scenes because the more opinions you get in, the more you have a chance of people noticing you and getting voted out. RNO: In general, do you think you succeeded in that? Edgardo: Yeah, I think I did succeed. But Survivor is a game of strategy and a game of luck, and you need both of them to win. I had the strategy but I didn’t have the luck. RNO: As was discussed at Tribal Council, your last few hours were crazy and chaotic. What did you learn by watching it on TV that you didn’t already know? Edgardo: I knew all the time what was going on, because once people don’t start looking you in the eye, that means you are on the chopping block. I knew it was between me and Alex because they wouldn’t look at him either. It was 50/50 and we had the wrong person. The only thing was Dreamz actually told them Alex had the idol, which is what messed up the whole plan. RNO: So did Dreamz have you all fooled, or did you suspect something? Edgardo: Me and Alex had Dreamz measured up from the beginning. We knew he was a rat. We heard all his stories about being homeless for 27 days over and over and over. I knew that when people are trying to do that, they are really insecure and don’t know where they stand in the tribe. But at the same time, we knew he was a key person to the other alliance and our alliance, so we needed to have him on our side. RNO: Do you think there was anything you could have done to keep him on your side? Edgardo: Not really. From the beginning, Cassandra and the older people brainwashed him. Apparently, when he grew up he didn’t have a lot of family. If you analyze the show, you notice he was looking for somebody to comfort him. The only move we could have made to change the outcome was instead of voting Lisi off, we should have convinced her to stay in the game and we could have voted Dreamz instead. Then we could have gone back to our initial alliance with Stacy and Boo. RNO: Lisi told me that she knew she was going home that night and it was all play-acting for the camera. Did she know? Edgardo: She asked me and Alex to vote her out. Once she did that, we talked to Dreamz and Mookie about it. When she came back to us, we already made the decision. We felt like if we changed at that time, we would have been compromising our alliance with the other people. We didn’t want to deceive anybody yet. RNO: So then, did she know she was going at that point? Edgardo: She had a last plea and I think she went to Tribal Council asking for forgiveness for what she said. I think she had some hope we weren’t going to vote her out. I didn’t want to vote her out but you don’t want to bring somebody to the merge if they are really unstable. RNO: How did you deal with Lisi, who didn’t seem to play logically, then wanted out, then wavered on it, etc.? Edgardo: Lisi and I had a good relationship on the island. She’s Cuban and a lot of her cultural mannerisms are the same as mine because I’m from Puerto Rico. Every day that went by she was cracking and cracking. A lot of people didn’t like her but I still felt we had a connection. All the things we talked about, we agreed. She didn’t complain when I told her who we were voting for. She was loyal. RNO: I already asked about Dreamz, but did Stacy have you fooled? Edgardo: I thought Stacy was going to be on our side, but once Alex had that meeting with her and she gave him weird excuses that only a spoiled girl would say, I told Alex she’s not in. What I didn’t expect was she gave the idea to me off. That was a surprise after we covered her butt for the first 15 days. RNO: To me it seemed like the first strategic move she made in the whole game. Edgardo: Yeah, from the beginning of the show, her strategy was to form an alliance and she did with us. But she wasn’t making any decisions. After watching last night’s show, I think it was a desperate move in order to save her butt, not really strategy to move ahead. I just think she was trying to get by. There are two types of players, those who look ahead to the final two or three and those who are happy to get by. I don’t know how it is going to play out, but to me that’s how she was from the first day. RNO: Speaking of Stacy, were there any repercussions from people picking on her in answering the reward challenge questions? Edgardo: I think the actual reason she wanted me voted off was I voted for her in every single question we had. What she didn’t know was my strategy was to get every question wrong in the challenge – that way I didn’t have to break their tables and they wouldn’t vote me off. But I guess she took it too hard. I told her it was only strategy and I thought she could take it, but apparently she couldn’t. RNO: For a while it seemed like you and Alex were in control of the game. What happened? Edgardo: The turning point was when Lisi told us where the idol is. I decided that it’s of good use only if you use it for two or three people. It’s really complicated this year. My whole strategy and game went to hell when Mookie told Dreamz about the idol, which I told him not to do. I don’t know why he told him – maybe he’s a little gossip queen. Dreamz has a big mouth, I knew he was going to use that info against us. That’s when Alex and I lost complete control of the game. RNO: So why did you guys let Mookie know about the idol? Edgardo: I was the one who told Mookie about the idol. The reason was I was looking for it before and couldn’t find it. Lisi gave us some really bad clues – I don’t know what she did on Exile Island but she didn’t read the clues. I told Alex we need to tell somebody, and the person I decided to tell was Mookie. It was lucky for us because he was digging in the right place . RNO: In your final words, you said you hoped Cassandra would be voted off next because you didn’t like her very much. We didn’t really see anything about that on the show – why didn’t you like her? Edgardo: The reason I didn’t like Cassandra – first of all, we haven’t seen her the whole show yet, but it is because she was using Dreamz and Stacy, playing on their weak parts and acting like Dreamz’ mom and a person that cares about Stacy. She basically wasn’t doing anything. People weren’t figuring out that she was playing the game; people were thinking that she was being stupid when she was really playing everybody. She was the link. I knew Dreamz was going to backstab us, if we voted off Cassandra, Dreamz and Stacy would have nobody to trust, so they’d go to our side. RNO: If your plan had worked and Cassandra had been voted out, what was your plan for the rest of the game? Edgardo: My plan was to vote Cassandra off, that would leave Yau-Man and Earl’s alliance crippled. Then Stacy and Boo would know they don’t have that alliance anymore. Since they are just playing the game to get by, we’d pull them to our side and have Mookie, me, Alex, Stacy, and Boo – we knew Dreamz was gone by then. RNO: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your time on Survivor? Edgardo: It was a great time. You get to meet a lot of insane people and really nice people. It’s just weird and you’re just wondering why you’re doing this with 18 of the craziest people. But you see what you’re made of and it was a really good experience. RNO: Thanks for your time! Edgardo: Thank you, have a good day.