Survivor Live Internet Talk Show with Jonathan Penner
Episode 12 Survivor: Cook Islands  Cast-Off 
Segment 3 Transcript

DR:  Time for Minus Ten.  We're going to give you ten categories, give me your answer in 10 words or less.

DR:  Number 10, stealing chickens 

Jonathan:    seemed like the right thing to do, wish I'd eaten them

DR:  Number 9, deception

Jonathan:    what everybody in Survivor does

DR:  Number 8, mutiny

Jonathan:    seemed like the right thing to do at the time

DR:  Number 7, Alan Alda

Jonathan:    apparently I speak somewhat like Hawkeye, I think, Groucho

DR:  Number 6, Exile Island

Jonathan:    nice place to stay, wouldn't want to live there

DR:  Number 5, bollocks

Jonathan:    testicles in English

DR:  Number 4, your Alma Mater, Sarah Lawrence College

Jonathan:    I got educated, let's just say that

DR:  Number 3, Candice

Jonathan:    very smart, not great taste in men

DR:  Number 2, sucking face on national television

Jonathan:    I did it with my wife!

DR:  Number 1, receiving an Oscar nomination

Jonathan:    one of the great moments of my life

Caller:  Jonathan, I thought you played a great game out there, really entertaining to watch.  Aside from the editing, what were the other people like toward you, other than what we saw on the camera?  How did they treat you?

Jonathan:  I think the show is pretty fair, actually.  The quiet people who don't get as much camera time, it's not that they weren't there, but they were much more quiet.  The loud people who were probably incredibly abrasive for the quiet people to have to listen to all the time got more camera time.  I think the show is very fair in editing.

JM:  Were they like cold to you all the time, though?

Jonathan:  No, of course not.  I had a lot of fun.  I'm actually a nice, fun person.  That's one of the reasons I was able to survive.  I know it looks like my social game got me the kibosh but it's the same game that let me stay in there for 13 people before me.

JM:  Was it awkward meeting with like Candice and Nate once you came back to the jury?  Did you have some things to hash out?

Jonathan:  Yeah, once we got to the jury, Candice...it was funny...I woke up the next day after being voted out and Candice was there and she's like...

JM:  Standing over you?

Jonathan:  Basically.  And it was like this sort of psycho moment and I'm like, "Oh crap."  And she's like, "Are you awake?" And I'm like, "I am now are you okay?"  She's like, "I want to talk."  And we talked for hours that day and really got through a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff.  And I have nothing but respect for Candice. 

DR:  When I did the interviews beforehand, Becky was one of the ones who seemed to have...very chatty, very talkative, said her nickname was Bossy Becky.  But you're not seeing her on the show at all.  She's the invisible woman.  Was that the way it was like at camp or did you see a little more personality out of her?

Jonathan:  I really like Becky a lot.  She's super bright.  She's a lawyer.  Korean American woman with a very interesting perspective.  She and I talked actually a lot and got along well.  Why she didn't trust me, I don't know.  I put myself out for her.  Certainly when Cecilia got the vote it was gonna be Becky.  Yul and I went to work and turned the tide and was able to keep her in the game.  I mean, I know why she didn't trust me after that, because I mutinied.  But it was never a personal thing.  I grew up in a New York Jewish household with screaming and yelling and laughing and crying and dancing and singing all the time.  And I'm gonna guess that a lot of the folks on the island did not grow up in a household like mine and are not used to the volume or the degree of action that I have. 

Caller:  What was the hardest challenge you did and also do you think that your career in acting helped you on the show?

Jonathan:  The hardest challenge was the pole challenge.  I really did not do well in that and basically said, "I'm not going to win this."  When we walked out there I said, "okay, it's Ozzy or somebody like that."  All I wanted to do was not be the first one out.   I knew that I was not going to win so my strategy was to hang in there for as long as I could but not kill myself in a challenge I wasn't going to win.  So I dropped down and slept for two hours while Ozzy did the Ozzy thing, his amazing thing.  As for my career as an actor, whether it helped me.  I don't really think it did, honestly.  In some ways it was harder for me to get on the show I think.  I've had just enough...just...my career as an actor, I didn't want to let the fact that I'm an actor stop me from doing the show.  And acting is just a job like any other. 

JM:  Did you act at all while...

Jonathan:  No.  Somebody else asked me that the other day. Was I playing a part or was I acting out there.  No, I really wasn't.  I mean, I never thought that I was.  But I am a person who would grow up to be an actor and I have that kind of personality. 

DR:  Shouldn't you be acting on the show?  Meaning shouldn't everyone be acting on the show?

JM:  I think everyone should be acting.

DR:  Acting and dealing with people and making them think that I'm not gonna flip and then you do flip.

Jonathan:  You know what, maybe that was my mistake because I really didn't act.  I was extremely overt.  My agenda was clear to everybody.

JM:  Maybe that scared them.

Jonathan:  And maybe that scared them.  Everybody and certainly by the end of the season, I think you'll see that everybody lies, cheats, steals, does all those things.  You have to do that.  I didn't lie in the game.  I lied one time in the game. 

JM:  You should have probably lied more.

DR:  That was the one thing that struck me, you were an actor yet everyone could see very clearly like you say, what your agenda was.  I thought, maybe he could have done a better job of hiding that.

Jonathan:  But the difference is that I'm not a liar in my life.  I really don't lie.  I mean, I try not to.  I'm sure that I have.

JM:  But on the show it's okay.

Jonathan:  Right, fair enough but you are who you are.  It's too long a period of time to pretend to be somebody else to act in a way that's not yours.  They strip you of all your defenses essentially.  And they get really down to the core of who you are.  What you saw of me from minute one was what you saw of me at the end. 

DR:  There's one image of you that I saw, this image disturbs me.  I think we might have a clip.

<image of Jonathan with fish hanging near his crotch>

JM:  Fishy, fishy.

Jonathan:  Oh, pleaaaassssse. 

DR:  Look, I know you missed your wife Jonathan but that's horrible.  Speaking of your wife, this was the family loved ones visit.

JM:  My favorite challenge because it reminds me of when my dad came.  It's such a fond memory that we share.  It makes me cry every time. 

DR:  Let's check out Jonathan's reunion with his wife.

<video clip>

DR:  Survivor wet t shirt contest.  You guys were blindfolded.  You didn't get to check it out, huh. 

Jonathan:  My wife works so hard and is such an incredible competitor and she would have given anything to help me through that. 

JM:  She did a really great job.

Jonathan:  I thought so.

JM:  Somehow Parvati caught up.

DR:  You take yourself out of that family mode and get in that game mode and then she comes.  It sort of breaks you down emotionally seeing her and then you have to go to Exile to deal with the emotional fallout of that.  That must have been really tough.

Jonathan:  I wasn't so happy but I totally understood.  There was no question if Parvati or Adam won I was gonna get sent and if I had been lucky enough or they hadn't been lucky enough to win one of them probably would have gone and I don't think I'd be here today.  One of them would be here today.  But that's the way the game works and good on her, she won and sent me and had the time and wherewithal to talk smack or whatever she did so that I got the vote last night. 

Caller:  Jonathan, I thought you were such an eloquent and well spoken player and it's a real shame that you're no longer on the show.  Looking back at the show and the people, do you see how you played with them versus how they were portrayed on TV?  Is someone really flying under the radar who you think was more active on the actual island as opposed to how we see them on TV now?

Jonathan:  As I say, Becky and Sundra are big parts of the game.  You can't make it to the final six without doing something right. 

JM:  You could align yourself with good people.

Jonathan:  So that's who I would say.  Becky and Sundra are the least visible people who are as visible as any of the rest of us out there.

JM:  Are they doing work or as we've seen before are they just going under Yul's wing and just gonna ride it out until they have to.  

Jonathan:  No, I think they're doing work.

JM:  Do you think they're actively participating in the decision making? 

Jonathan:  Absolutely. 

JM:  So you don't think anyone is really riding any coattails at this point?

Jonathan:  No, I don't.

DR:  Also, when they were down 8 to 4, all 4 cogs have to be...

JM:  There's been some people who have made it to the final 5, I won't mention names, who have looked like they have done pretty much nothing.  I won't mention names but this is not the case. 

Jonathan:  The reason that I can say that I don't think they are is because when I went to Raro and saw people relative to them, I really did believe were not pulling their weight.

Caller:  The last few episodes have gotten me worked up more than any other previous seasons.  I really got a sense that the alliance of Candice, Parvati and Adam have a sense of self-righteousness, a sense of moral superiority in the way they played the game that really irked me.  My take on it is that Parvati played the flirt to win angle.  Adam played the let me sit back and flirt with the women, flirt with Candice, flirt with Parvati.  Candice was the first to mutiny and seemed to be playing just to be with the people she liked.  She liked Adam and that was her motivation.  It really annoyed me.  What's your take on that self-righteousness that sort of emanates from that group of people?

DR:  I think the comment was, "how dare you", what you said on TV.

Jonathan:  Yeah, that was my feeling exactly right.  How dare you imply that you have a right to be here in a way that I don't.  We're all playing a game and whatever it takes to get to the next episode, to survive the vote, to align yourself, to do whatever you need to do is fair game.  But the same token, I think it would be self-righteous of me to say that the way that they played was any worse than the way that I played.  They did what they felt...and I'm not going to talk personally about them.

JM:  I do.

Jonathan:  That's fair enough.  I don't know them.

JM:  You did not go out of your way to call them names. 

Jonathan:  But that's the way that I played.  I would never call somebody a name like that.  I wouldn't but they did.  And they're still in the game and I'm out.  I can't sit here having done what I did in the game which was piss a lot of people off and make moves that people thought were unethical, had no integrity, blah, blah, blah.  I didn't think that's what the case was.  But I can't sit here and say that they have no integrity, that they are unethical.  They're in the game and I'm not.  And when we sit down and talk to each other, and there were some things that happened that I don't happen to appreciate, but they were on camera so I'm not even going to go into them.  But the fact is that they were playing the game and they did better than I did. 

DR:  How much of what they're saying is pure anger and nastiness and how much of it is "we got to shake it up because now if we don't shake it up we're starting something with this guy."

Jonathan:  I think they did feel righteous in the way that they deserved it and somehow I just wasn't like a good guy because I wasn't playing the game the way they were playing it. 

JM:  I know exactly because I did what they did.  It's like, we can do it to you but when you do it to us we're pissed because I was the same way and once I got the tables turned and I was the one on the losing end, I was like "you're a jerk, how could you do that."  But meanwhile I was just doing it to you.

Jonathan:  It does hurt even more when they think that they're in the driver's seat, they were lording it over me.  They let me work until they were going to vote me off or whatever and then I said, "screw this", I'd had enough of that.  I made the move that I made and all of a sudden they found the tables turned.  It was doubly upsetting to them.  They were playing a very emotional game and not particularly a strategic one. 

DR:  Time for Jenna's big question of the week.

JM:  Tell us what you're going to do now.  Do you have any big acting plans or going to be in any shows?

Jonathan:  No, you know, I don't act that much anymore.  I'm much more of a writer/producer. 

JM:  Anything coming up that you produced?

Jonathan:  In show business you don't say anything until the deal is done.  My wife and I write together.  We have a couple of feature scripts that are out there right now and we have a couple of TV deals, not on CBS, I'm sorry to say.  I'm going to play with my wife and my kids.

DR:  Let's take a look at the clip for next week's Survivor.

<Video Clip>

DR:  Okay, Jonathan, you gotta sit tight, Mr. Inside Knowledge over there.  But Morasca and I will discuss the final six.

JM:  Something we didn't talk about is, there's going to be a final three, now.  There's not going to be a final three, there's going to be a final two which I would be LIVID about. 

DR:  We wondered about that and sort of discounted the possibility because there could be a 3-3-3 tie. 

JM:  I don't think that would happen.

DR:  My preseason pick, Yul, looking good. 

JM:  You still go with Yul?

DR:  Never waver, baby.  Your boy's Ozzy. 

JM:  That doesn't mean I necessarily pick him. 

DR:  They're showing him in trouble next week which makes me think he's not in trouble. 

JM:  For some reason I feel that one of the girls is going to be sitting in the final two. 

DR:  Final three.

JM:  Final three.  See that's what ticks me off.  I don't think three people deserve to be in the final running.  It's always been two and let's just leave it at that.  If there's a tie and it comes down to fire making for a million dollars I'll barf.  That would be the worst.  Don't you think that would be the worst ending ever.  Who can make a fire the quickest? 

DR:  What would be the dream Morasca tiebreaker? 

JM:  Who works better naked.  I don't know.  There's three people so the chances that they have, obviously they don't know, but the chances are going to be very good.  So we could actually see Adam or Parvati.

DR:  I'm calling it out, Yul, Ozzy, Becky.  Give me a three.

JM:  That's the three that I have.  There's no one else.  It's definitely going to be Ozzy and Yul because Ozzy is going to win everything. 

DR:  We gotta roll so thanks to Jonathan for hanging out with us for an hour. 

Jonathan:  My pleasure.  Thank you guys.  Survivor Sucks, TV Without Pity thank you.  I've been enjoying myself tremendously. 

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