Read on for my interview with Zach, and make sure to check in with Parade.com every day for interviews with this season’s contestants and other tidbits. Survivor 42 premieres on March 9 with a special two-hour premiere on CBS.
Interview with Zach from Survivor 42
Why are you here on Survivor? I’ve literally been watching this show my entire life. Like actually my entire life, because I’m 21 years old. I’m the same age as the show. It’s been my dream my entire life. You can find the essays I wrote in third grade or whatever, where I’m actually writing, “My dream is to be on Survivor.” And I’m somebody where, if there’s something I want to accomplish, I can’t sleep until I actually get to do it. I’ve never been someone who’s just happy being an observer. I always feel like I need to participate. To put my stamp on the game. And that’s what I hope to do here. What’s the best advice you received before coming out to play? Before I came out here, I heard so much stuff from my friends and family who knew about this. And even with friends and family who didn’t know, I’d ask, “Hey, hypothetically speaking, what do you think would be good here?” And the best advice I got was from my brother. He’s a massive fan like I am. And we’re allowed to bring an MP3 player out here. And I had some of my family members record messages so I could hear their voices while I’m kind of isolated and I can’t talk to any of them. My brother left me a 16-minute message going through literally the most minute details of the game. Things like, “If you pretend you have a crush on someone back at home, you can use that as a way to build relationships and to ask advice from some of the older people or some of the married people.” And he ended it with being like, “And finally, just throw all that stuff away that I just said, and just go in and have fun and live your dream. Because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” If I let it pass me by, then that’s what I’ll truly regret. So just go in there and soak in every minute and make my dream a reality. Give me one Survivor winner and one non-winner who you identify with the most. The winner is super easy. That’s Adam Klein. Adam is someone that I can really look at and be like, “That’s literally just me in a lot of ways.” I just rewatched Millennials vs. Gen X during the quarantine, so I got to really look at his game and a lot of the strong points and not-so-strong points of it. I want to go into the game with a similar energy that he has. Every time you see him, other than a couple of times, he’s really smiling and just so happy to be there. And I really gravitate towards that. I also think the fact he was in Winners at War is going to play huge to my benefit. No one’s going to be like, “Oh, he reminds me of Adam Klein. That’s the guy we need to worry about.” So I’m very happy with that being my closest parallel. And as for a non-winner that I relate to, it’s Spencer Bledsoe. I mean, that’s the person that I watched, and even more so than Adam, I thought, “This is me.” He’s such a hyper-competitive person in the same way that he put his heart and soul into everything. I did that with speech and debate. I really wasn’t happy until I felt like I was achieving my full potential with that. The passion that he has in the game is how I feel when I approach things that I truly love and how I’m approaching Survivor. I think that I have a lot of his best qualities and some of his worst qualities. I was rewatching Cambodia as well. And the mistakes that he made in the end game in terms of how he was talking to people are the mistakes that I know I can sometimes make when I’m too passionate about something and I want something so bad. I can sometimes oversell and maybe push a little bit too hard to the point where people start to think that I’m being rude sometimes. Hopefully, I’m going to be able to enter the game, knowing that about myself and seeing what happened with Spencer in Cambodia. And also not to take the firefighter to the end and be a completed version of that archetype. What’s one life experience you feel has prepared you most for the game? I did do speech and debate. And that did help me a lot in terms of speaking and speaking to people and speaking confidently. But it helped in ways that you wouldn’t expect to. You’re going to tournaments all around the country; you’re meeting all different types of people at these tournaments. And you get to become friends with them. And you get to learn about different people with different backgrounds and experiences, Really get so much more exposure to the country just from the activity. And on top of that, just all the basic skills it gives you for arguments and speaking to people and structuring your argument, sometimes for the audience itself. That helps. What do you think people will perceive you as? I love this question. I’m trying to carefully craft my perception and make sure that I’m entering the game as somebody that people will want to work with and not be threatened by. Now, first of all, I think that I’m kind of lucky, as I mentioned, with the whole Adam Klein thing. I don’t think I’m naturally someone that people would look like and be like, “Oh, that’s a threat. That’s someone we have to get out.” As long as I don’t go in there and just go balls to the wall and make stupid, awful moves and play too hard. Then all of a sudden, people are like, “Oh, okay, let’s just knock him out.” So I’m definitely going in wanting to keep my reputation as not a strategic person. I am just so excited to be here. And every day that I’m here is a blessing. I am just living my dream right now look. “Look at the stars. Oh my god, wow, we’re in Fiji, guys.” I’ll be talking game; I’ll be making alliances. But the early game is more about crafting that perception, especially the perception of somebody loyal. Not that loyalty really matters to me. But I need people to think that loyalty matters to me. Throughout the game, as it moves on every single opportunity, I’m going to be looking at it as is this the time for me to make my move. And the second that I see it, I just feel in my gut that it’s right. The pros outweigh the cons. I’m taking that shot. And from that point on, I’m not going back. So I’m going to wait, like a snake in the grass, and just be ready to strike. What do you desire in an alliance partner? Well, I would say that I desire three things in an alliance partner. Number one is just someone that I can naturally get along with those. That’s where the strongest alliances end up getting formed, the people that you could just click with. You can’t know if you can trust them, because you never truly know that. But you know there is a connection here that goes deeper. We both want to stay in this game, and we actually do like each other. So first and foremost, that’s what I’m going to be looking for. Next, you’ve got to look for people that can be in line in front of you when it comes to targeting threats. It’s modern Survivor, which means there will be an idol. There are going to be two idols. And there’s going to be a triple idol that can only be used on every third Tribal Council or something, and you’ve got to be willing to prepare for that. And that means that if you’re in the majority alliance, and they use an idol, you’ve got to have an Andrew Savage in front of you that’s going to get chopped before you. Or someone where if the numbers flip, they target them before they turn to you. And then you’ve still got some room to maneuver. So I’m definitely going to try and have people who are bigger threats than me in front. And then third, I have to have people that I can beat as my allies. I mean, I know myself. I know that I’m not necessarily the type of person that a jury might want to reward at the very end. Look at Spencer Bledsoe on 31. Look at Ryan Ulrich in 35. Those players can play great games and then not get the votes at the end. And the key to that is that you need to have people you can beat. Spencer and Ryan had Jeremy and Ben, who they just simply couldn’t beat. So I know that as I’m going through the game, I’ve got to be very careful about who I’m voting out and make sure that there are enough people there that I can still beat by the end game. And the best way to do that is to align with those people and make those people want to take you as much as you want to take them. Next, check out our interview with Survivor 42 contestant Tori Meehan.
