Survivor Live Internet Talk Show with Jonathan Penner
Episode 12 Survivor: Cook Islands  Cast-Off 
Segment 2 Transcript

DR:  Jonathan, we want to take calls but want to ask you first, what is really interesting, a lot of people who came into Survivor Live early after they were voted off really had negative things to say about you. 

JM:  In the game.

DR:  In the game.  But just in general, they didn't really say here or there because they didn't spend time with you after the game and they just, you know.  But the past two weeks, excuse me, the previous two, with Nate and Candice we saw some of the harshest on camera comments about you.  Yet when they were both in here they said, "You know what, Jonathan's a good guy, he's just in the game...blah, blah, blah, blah."   So it's sort of interesting then that these people were so harsh and now you're on the jury with them or what have you and everything seems to have changed.  Tell me what it's been like sort of watching yourself on TV, seeing some of these reactions from people, hearing the reactions, the comments, cause that's got to be weird for anyone. 

Jonathan:  Well I think honestly people have been very kind to me.  Most people have seen a relatively rational game.  I think that Nate certainly, I hope, in watching the show has seen that some of the choices I made were my own or what the rationale behind some of them were.  He was blindsided and furious.  When he walked off and said what he said it was because he had been totally blindsided and I appreciate that.  He was slapping back in any way.  You get hit in the head, you know, you're going to react that way.  Candice was just lashing out.  She knew she was going home.  I thought she didn't come across particularly well doing that, obviously.

JM:  Not a fan favorite I would say.

Jonathan:  And Adam is calling me all kinds of names but again it's in the context of the game.  I don't know what Adam thinks about me personally.  I don't know the guy personally.  I only know him in the context.  And he's still in the game and I'm not.  So more power to him.  He calls me a rat and a cancer and he lasted another week.  And I didn't appreciate it but...

JM:  We saw some brutal Tribal Councils.  I mean, there have been some pretty ugly Tribal Councils before but these ones were particularly mean because they were just directed at you.

DR:  Why is that?  Here's what I still don't get in Survivor, you go in there, the rules are: there are no rules.  You lie just the same as poker and other games like that.  Who in the game of poker is going to get mad and say, "you were acting like you had a better hand than you did" or this or that.

JM:  Why, why?

Jonathan:  I honestly don't know.  I brought up that analogy actually in one of the last two Tribals.  They didn't have it on camera but I said, "Guys if we were playing poker with a million dollars on the table in front of us and I bluffed you or I made a move that got you out of the game would you take it as personal as you're taking this?"  I never did anything in a personal way.  I never made any of the moves to hurt anybody.  But they took it that way. 

JM:  Was it an immaturity thing or was it because they were still mad that "well you're going to try to vote me out, you're a jerk."  Like that kind of reaction like you get in like kindergarten?

Jonathan:  I think it was.  They were just playing a much more emotional game.  And it's hard out there, you know it is.  After 30 some odd days, you're exhausted and these folks had to say what they had to say.  It did not bother me.  I've been called worse by better, honestly, you know.

DR:  <live feed skips> ...my one critique of your game is that you just weren't subtle enough doing it.  I had no problems with what you were doing.  Early on you heard people saying, "Jonathan's playing this game really hard."  They knew it immediately.

Jonathan:  You know what, I was pegged from minute two, literally.  When we were on the boat Jeff said, "you can't touch the other team's box.  You can't touch their oars.  You can't touch their machete.  Anything else is fair game."   So I saw the chicken and I grabbed the chicken assuming everybody else was doing the same thing.  They'd all seen Rupert steal the shoes.  You know what I mean.  So I jumped off, I got this chicken.  I'm busted for doing it.  Nobody else had played that way.  Nobody else had done it.  So immediately the light is shown on me as a guy who's playing the game hard, who's willing to steal, lie.

JM:  It was a bold move there for when you first started.  Did that come to mind at all?

Jonathan:  I didn't think about it that way.  I was like, okay what are the rules...don't touch this...everything else is fair game...and I just went for it.  So they probably rightly saw I was a guy that would do that.  And I was pegged from the get go.  I could never fly below the radar after that from minute one.  I was the first guy sent to Exile Island because I was the chicken stealer.  In some ways it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I didn't even have a chance to get under the radar but that was my own doing.  I stole a chicken. 

JM:  And then it got away.

Caller:  I just wanted to say that aside from voting Flica out before Ozzy, Jonathan, I agree with every move that you made.  You went from one of my least favorites to one of my most favorites.  Just a little Survivor trivia, they kind of touched on your acting in the past.  I was wondering if you realized that you and Shane from Exile Island actually did a movie together?

DR:  Manhunt 7?

Jonathan:  Did we work together?  Yeah I was in a move with Don "The Dragon" Wilson who is a karate champ.  Who said, "You leave the fighting to me and I'll leave the acting to you."  So I got my ass kicked by Don "The Dragon" Wilson.  I didn't know that.  Thank you for the trivia.

DR:  It doesn't get much better than Manhunt 7.

Jonathan:  Again, I got to play this villain, shockingly. 

JM:  Villains are more fun to play.  Even on Survivor we love the villains here way more than we love the sweethearts.  We love our Jerri Mantheys, our Fairplays and our Shanes. 

Caller:  Speaking as a filmmaker, Jonathan, having that unique point of view, knowing what happened versus seeing it packaged for TV, how would you have edited everything that happened to get on film differently?  Would you have?

Jonathan:  Heather, that's a great question.  I actually think I was edited pretty fairly.  I think that what you saw was what I was out on the island.  Obviously they left some things out.  The only thing that I wish they had done a little bit differently was, they made it look like I was gurgling beer instead of mouthwash. 

DR:  Nothing wrong with that, though. 

JM:  At that food auction did you feel that the audience thought or that it was edited like the way you were eating or how much you were eating was annoying?  Did you on purpose kind of do it?

Jonathan:  I didn't do it on purpose to annoy them.  It's a funny thing about the auction.  That was the one thing that I actually was good at and I felt like won.  We all had the same amount of money and like they weren't bidding!  I didn't understand it.  I wasn't doing anything other than what they were doing.  I knew that we had to get that bottle or that thing that would send somebody to Exile.  Becky paid for that and bid on that.  I would have spent all my money just to get that.  The fact is, I bid up the cake and the bathtub and I bid up the ice cream not because I wanted it.  It was because I wanted their money off the table so the next thing that I wanted would come up and I'd pay for it.  The only thing they didn't show was with that pizza I also won a Pepsi or a cola of some kind.  So I had a pizza.

JM:  Did you eat the whole pizza?

Jonathan:  Yeah.  I couldn't share it and I would have shared it.  I offered to share it and they wouldn't let me share it.  What am I supposed to do?  I didn't want to diss the other players.  I hope this doesn't sound backwards but I wasn't going to diss anybody by not eating the food.  I was respecting the food and I ate all the food.  Of course I belched.  Then after I belched I had a Pepsi, I had a beer, I had a pizza, I had a hot dog and French fries.  And I burped.

JM:  That's a lot of food. 

Jonathan:  It's a lot of food after eating nothing.  So I belched and then I excused myself to catch fish for the people that didn't eat anything.

DR:  Always bid on the first auction on Survivor because they use that to make you bid higher for other items.  You said you helped pay for the special power envelope. 

JM:  We didn't know that.

DR:  It makes it look like it's Yul giving money.  Did both of you give some money?

Jonathan:  Yes, we did. 

JM:  Were you annoyed that they didn't show that?

Jonathan:  I was wondering why they didn't.  I mean, I understood that it was editorial.  There's no question he and I sp...and you watch carefully in that auction...and I was actually disappointed with the editing of that only because it was out of context.  They shifted the time around, other people won stuff.  Adam won a whole breakfast and a power bar.  Sundra won cheese and crackers.  And they made it look like I was the only one who won anything and I was a complete pig about the whole thing.  I did help Becky pay for that and I would have paid a lot more.  

JM:  Candice didn't even mention that.

Jonathan:  That was clearly the item to buy. 

DR:  And yet Adam didn't think so.  Still shocks me. 

Jonathan:  Adam has learned nothing from this game.  I would have given her all $400 that I had left.  Yul would have given her the 500 that he had left. 

DR:  Last night we had what appeared to be a pretty benign challenge.  You go over some ledges and barrels and...

JM:  Oh my God, I peed my pants.

Jonathan:  Brutal. 

DR:  Watch it again.

<video clip of Immunity Challenge - Ozzy wins>

DR:  That's your boy, Morasca. 

JM:  Uhhh huh.

DR:  That's all you got to say?

JM:  I can...uhhh, yeah.  I was a little disappointed about him being kind of the instigator to the hiding the food thing.  Even though I did it, I think it's kind of lame.  But also it's starting to scare me a little bit because next week they do show previews of him starting to ???

DR:  In that clip everyone looks wasted. Or is it faded?

Jonathan:  Faded, yeah, you're right. 

JM:  People took some serious falls, especially Sundra.  It looks like she hit the back of her thigh before she hit anything else. 

Jonathan:  She was sore for so long after that. 

JM:  Any cuts or scrapes or blood?

Jonathan:  During that?  No per se.

Caller:  Hi Jonathan.  I had a really good time watching you on TV on Survivor.   You kind of touched on this in the very beginning, but is it safe to assume that you mutinied because Candice was the first one to step off the mat and she was your primary alliance?  Or were you, the wheels were already turning and you were getting ready to step off the mat anyway?

Jonathan:  Good question.  I was not planning on stepping off the mat at all.  I had no interest in it.  I thought that we should all just hang tight.  But as I said, I thought Adam had the idol.  Candice stepped off.  I had a very short amount of time to make the decision.  I saw the numbers shifting and I thought if we could win anything then Raro would be in a hell of a position going into the merge.  As I said, once I stepped off the mat, I realized I was the last man into a very big team and the chances of me surviving any vote off were very slim. 

JM:  But you did.

Jonathan:  I did, amazingly. 

DR:  Team whitey was in the house.  Let's go to Los Angeles.  Kathy, you're on Survivor Live. 

Caller:  Hi Jonathan.  I am so sorry that you were voted off.  You were the only person that made the season completely interesting.  Now that you're looking back, is there anything that you completely regret?  And Survivor Sucks loves you.

Jonathan:  Kathy, I love Survivor Sucks.  Prometheus(?), I rule.  I love it.  Survivor Sucks is great.  Ummm, smokeitgood.  What can I say about regret that I have?  You know what?  I really don't have any regrets.  I guess I regret not questioning Yul more deliberately about the idol.  I let the question of his having it go by too quickly.  I kind of heard what I wanted to hear when I said like, "You don't have the idol, right?  You don't have the idol?"  And I knew that he was in an unbreakable lock with Becky, he really was.  And Candice and I were tight and I unfortunately felt that I was gonna have to move away from Yul if I ever had a chance of winning the game.  At that point I thought it was going to be a Final Two, of course we all did.  And I thought he was going to take her all the way to the Final Two. 

DR:  What I thought was interesting that a player in your place of shifting things up a lot, doing this and upsetting people, because people were getting upset at what you were doing, can tend to start a lot of fires.  You got into some arguments with people but you didn't really start them, you were defending yourself.  The one time when I sort of saw you lose your cool was actually at Jeff Probst of all people in that one challenge.

JM:  Where you had to do the cannon balls. 

DR:  Tell me about your thoughts or what happened there in dealing with Jeff.

Jonathan:  I think Jeff is great.  The guy is about my age.  I don't know what other people feel about Jeff or their supposed relationship with him out there.  He was at all the challenges.  He was called a lot of stuff and he was a person that was out there I was dealing with like all the other people.  He was the only producer out there that you were allowed to talk to.  So I did talk to him.  I couldn't pretend he wasn't there like some omniscient voice of God or something.  He's just a guy having fun.  He was just a fun guy to hang out with.  I enjoyed myself.  I don't think he harbors any ill will towards me. 

DR:  Well, Jonathan, there's only way to find out.

<Probst's Thoughts>

Jeff Probst:   Jonathan.  Come on.  What can I say?  Jonathan, we sort of speak the same language.  We have the same cadence and challenge each other.  Jonathan and I had a great time at Tribal Council.  He never let me down.  He would never not give you something usable even if he wasn't telling you anything interesting or useful in the game, it was usable in the show.  And he knew the difference.  Great storyteller, good player.  I think, changed a lot in his days out there.  I'm curious to see if any of those changes have stayed with him.  Jonathan is a guy I can tell you right now if we could put him on the show every season he would be on.  He's memorable.  And does he still have that damn hat?

Jonathan:  Yes I do and thank you for those kind words, Jeff Probst.

JM:  Would you do it again if asked?

Jonathan:  Yes I would, I love my time out there. 

DR:  Morasca trying to start some All Star talk.

JM:  Just wondering. 

DR:  The curious thing he said and tilted your head, when he said that you changed out there.  Did you?

Jonathan:  It changed me, absolutely.  It was an extraordinary experience.  I had never done most of the things that I did out there. Suddenly it's like I found the fountain of youth.  I lost 30 pounds. 

JM:  And you kept it off.  You can't tell by the camera but he looks great.

Jonathan:  Thank you very much.  It was a life changing experience for me. 

JM:  Good, that's how it should be.  

Jonathan:  I agree.  I was frustrated with some other players that they were not appreciating the gift they really had out there. 

DR:  We're going to take a quick break. 

Segment 1>>     Segment 2>>     Segment 3 >>