Jon Lovett (‘Survivor 47’ exit interview): ‘Nobody imagines that they’ll be the first to go’
On Wednesday’s premiere episode of “Survivor 47,” Jeff Probst declared the start to the season’s first immunity challenge “one of the worst starts to any challenge in 47 seasons.” In that contest, the six members of Gata were one of two tribes to capsize their paddle boat in the water, sending them on a collision course toward tribal council where they ousted political speechwriter and podcaster Jon Lovett in a 5-1 vote. Read on for his “Survivor 47” exit interview from the end of the episode.
“Nobody imagines that they’ll be the first to go,” Jon said in his first thoughts after leaving the game. “When you take a risk sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want, but that’s why they call it a risk.” In hindsight, the risk that Jon took may have been sticking to his day one alliance with Andy Rueda. Following their immunity challenge loss, the Gata tribe was shocked to hear Andy express a concern that he was disliked by his entire tribe, that he knew they’d be voting him out, and that he was already having thoughts of throwing his best friend Jon under the bus in order to stay.
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Even after Andy apologized to the group and while many still saw him as a liability going forward, Jon did not trust that the women were willing to use Jon as the decoy name to tell Andy and so he made the decision to stick by Andy and attempt to form their own majority against Anika Dhar. Jon thought he could persuade Sam Phalen to see that Anika is the physical liability of their tribe and should go first, but Sam questioned whether Jon, not Andy, was the bigger threat to a strong Gata. From there, Sam and the women of Gata had a decision to make: keep Andy for his strength in physical challenges or keep Jon because Andy’s volatility makes them too nervous.
Jon thought hypothetically that his community back home would get a kick out of the fact that the Gata tribe ultimately decided to keep Andy around longer. “This will bring so much joy to my friends and family making fun of me for years,” he said. And then with a hint of his own positive outlook, “Maybe in the end it will be worth it.” As a big fan of the series, he even welcomed the commentary he’s bound to get from the audience, knowing the reputation one gets as the first voted out. “First out – let me have it, people. Let me have it.”
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