Swati Goel was all about the number one on Survivor. It was the first digit of her age, making the 19-year-old the youngest member of her cast. It’s the number of fingers she would cut off to avoid Tribal Council. And it was her choice of phrase around Ika camp, as she told multiple tribe members they were her No. 1. What Swati didn’t count on was all of her tight allies to begin to compare notes. And so, she quickly became the No. 1 target, making her the one to go in this most recent episode. Swati entered the game having just finished basic training for the Army National Guard, ready to use her recently found discipline to buck the trend of younger women being targeted first. And while this didn’t work out so well for the other young person in her tribe, she was able to get in tight with basically everyone at Ika. Though Tori Meehan’s shadiness threw up a red flag for the blue tribe, Swati had different ideas. She attempted to cobble together a majority to blindside Drea Wheeler, who Swati felt was already growing too powerful. But word spreads quickly among a small tribe, and soon enough, it all came back to Swati. Everyone soon realized the student was overcommitting herself, making multiple promises and attempting to turn them against each other. So they made a motion to turn things around and ambush her. Swati could feel the heat increasing and denied her planning at Tribal Council to turn things back onto Tori. But the tribe’s mind had already been made up, signified by Swati’s playing of a (once again failed) Shot in the Dark. Now out of the game, Swati talks with Parade.com about her war of words with Tori at Tribal Council, who her real No. 1 ally was, and how transformative Survivor was to a crucial part of her life. So I need to start with the most important question of them all. When you got back from Survivordid you listen to any Missy Elliott, Aerosmith or Cher? [Laughs.] No! But a friend of mine recently made me listen to Luther Vandross. She watched the secret scene and was like, “You’re listening to this man.” And he was pretty good! Alright! I’m excited Survivor got you dipping your toes into some new music. Well, you guys’ music! My age’s music I know very well, thank you. [Laughs.] Very true. Let me change my tune and get to the game proper. When you played your Shot in the Dark, it’s pretty clear that you thought there was at least a good chance you would be going. Was there any moment that tipped you off to do that? So I was getting really good vibes—not super confident, but generally good vibes—from Drea and Romeo before Tribal. But I remember 30 minutes before Tribal, Drea went to Romeo, and she was like, “We need to talk.” I think she might have even said, like, “We need to change the plan,” or something along those lines. And I was like, “Damn, it’s going toward me right now.” So, how much did discovering that change your tactics at Tribal Council to try to get the target off of yourself? My strategy was just to try that entire day between the challenge and Tribal to act the way a fully innocent person would act. So I scrambled a lot less than I would have. I spent a lot of time working on the shelter with Rocks. I really just wanted to give off the appearance of “Why would I be worried? I’ve done nothing wrong.” I think it worked. And I don’t know exactly what it was that made Drea change her strategy right before Tribal. But then I was like, “OK, I guess the only solution here is to fight because they clearly are planning to vote for me.” What did you make of Tori’s reaction to what you were saying at Tribal Council, and the reaction to that reaction from the other tribe members? I mean, I feel like it wasn’t even that chaotic. Because, yes, Tori and I were arguing. And I don’t know if Tori felt confident that they were going to side with her. But I felt very confident that they were going to side with her. So for me, it was just sort of like, “I’m gonna try and argue and try and argue and try and argue.” But nothing was really changing. So I don’t think it was necessarily the most live Tribal Council. I think people’s minds were actually pretty set before walking in. Let me ask, of all your “number ones” in the game, who was the number one number one? [Laughs.] It was definitely either Rocksroy or Tori. It was not Drea or Romeo. I really wanted to work with Tori. I really wanted to work with Rocks. Rocks and I were actually very, very close. He was probably my most dependable ally. It was one of the two of them. It’s hard because that’s also a function of how much the other person wanted to work with you. And that’s not a question that I can ever fully answer. And obviously, for the last few days, I was much, much, much more on the Rocks train than the Tori train. That’s interesting about Rocksroy. Up to this point, we’ve only really seen him personally grate on the people in your tribe. But we even got a glimpse of what you were talking about last night when he talked up how much you came out of your shell at Tribal Council. Talk to me about your relationship. I feel like it was very paternal. It was cool. He’s a dad, and I didn’t see my parents in a really long time, even before coming to the show. So it was just nice to have him there. We got along really well; I think he’s a great guy. I think people in my tribe are all great people. I didn’t love all of them necessarily while I was on the island. But rewatching it, I don’t have any feelings of bitterness, really. I wish them all the best for the rest of this season. You came right from Army training to Survivor. How much did that transition end up helping you when it came to playing the game? I think the military just made me a better person in every way. I don’t think it was in any way a negative thing to come from. The thing I do think was perhaps negative is just like my general headspace at the time. I knew what I wanted for my life throughout high school, and I worked really hard for it. Then I got to college, where I have the freedom to do all these things that I now want to do. And then COVID hit, and I was just sort of stuck in my room. And that was really, really, really bad for me. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t really have a sense of “Oh, this is what I’m doing.” There are all these things in my life that I’m excited about. And it all just sort of happened all at once. So I think that headspace coming off of COVID was actually really bad for me. I was going through my full teenage identity crisis. Who am I? What am I about? How should I make decisions? Does anybody give a [expletive] about me? So I think that was not a great headspace to play. But the military is great! Speaking of the “teenage identity crisis,” you were the youngest person in your tribe and the season. Do you think your youth helped or hurt you more in the game? I would say absolutely hurt. I think the advantage of youth is that people don’t take you seriously as a threat. But for me, as you can see, I have a very hard time being passive or being told what to do. And so I don’t think the cover of youth was ever really going to help me. Even with just a year more of life experience, I think things would have been different. Part of my personality is just fundamentally gone now. I would have gotten so much better. I think it would have just been a lot easier to relate to people and understand where people are coming from with certain things. You were playing with another young person in Zach, who we saw you target in the first vote. Did you ever give any thought to trying to keep him around, so you had someone of a similar age in the game with you? Oh my gosh, absolutely. I wish we had not gone to Tribal first. Zach is such an amazing person. And I feel like if we had had more than just two days, we would have clicked, and it would have been so cool. But that’s not what happened. And that’s definitely a decision that I very much regret in this game, voting out Zach. Not only did I not do anything to stop it, that was one of the two names that I had thrown out to Rocksroy. And so then to then be stuck on this tribe with mostly older people was not it for me. After the Zach vote, we see Drea form a women’s alliance with you and Tori. Then you seem to turn things back around onto her immediately. Did you ever intend to stick with the alliance, and what made you decide to target Drea? They didn’t show this, and this might be inaccurate to how other people perceive the dynamics of the topic. But to me, it felt very, very controlled. And to an extent, that is abnormal. It was very much a sense of “no one can ever go off on their own.” For the first few days, aside from Tori, nobody went off on their own. It was so paranoid, sticking to this group and everyone had to be in the same place. At the same time, we didn’t really delegate tasks. All six of us had to be in the same place. Drea also flip-flopped a lot between booting Tori and Rocksroy. Sometimes she would go up, and she would talk to Rocks, and she’d immediately come to talk to us, and she’d be like, “Oh, girls alliance.” I suppose internally, she really wanted to work with me. But to me, it felt more like this person has full control over everything that happens in this game. And this person very much could decide to keep Tori over me. And that’s what happened! So at what point in that timeline do you decide to tell Drea she’s your No. 1? I knew she was in control, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t go after me. But the way they edited that montage was super funny. I think it is super accurate to how I play. But I think most of those “you are my number one"s, though, were in response to other people saying the same thing to me. Though I know factually that it was not true. Romeo had been telling me I was his number one from Day 1, even though it was very apparent he and Drea were working together (Laughs.) You said in your final words that, had you survived, you would have become “a new Survivor player.” What does that Swati 2.0 look like? Coming in, I was very reactive. Generally, a thing that I’ve been trying to work on in my life is, rather than just immediately reacting to things people say or do, just taking a moment and really thinking about, “OK, what’s the best way to respond to this?” But I think the bigger thing is, I walked in obsessed with controlling everything about the environment around me. And I think being a Survivor player, that’s definitely one way to play. And that can be really good at some point if you have a sense of what’s going around you and how you can influence it. But I think trying to dictate everything around you is a very negative way to play. And I think that more than anything is what led to me being voted out. I was just doing a little bit too much to try and manipulate the other relationships around me. The night before the last challenge, I could tell that people were mad at me. And I was like up all night worrying about it. But then the sun rose, and I was like, “It’s a new day. It is what it is.” If I had survived, I would have been much more chill. When Jeff asked you about losing a lot of insecurities and finding a group who accepted you, you told him to check in on you after some months had passed. Now that we’re at that point, how do you look back on your Survivor journey overall? I like this version of me so much more. I feel like, in some ways, the experience really broke some parts of me down. There are things about this new version of me that I would like to continue to improve. I had never done anything in my life other than studying. Then I lived with a bunch of other college students in the woods. And then I went, and I joined the military. And then I was on reality TV, and I got to live out my dream. Then I came home, and I was like, “Well, what do I do?” It was definitely a very chaotic experience processing the show. But it was just a very beneficial one. I feel like the way I view the world is a lot less fearful and controlling. I’m proud of a lot of the things I’ve done, and I feel confident and capable. Next, check out our interview with Jenny Kim, who was voted out in Survivor 42 Episode 3.
