'Survivor 45' Drew Basile Says the Rebas Would Never Go to the End Together

Drew Basile

Survivor 45 is here! Every week, Parade.com's Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the castaway most recently voted off of the island.

"I'm one of the smartest people you've ever had on Survivor. Now, I don't say that to brag. I say that factually."

It's only appropriate that those were the first words we ever heard on Survivor 45, courtesy of Drew Basile. That's because the graduate student was one of the most consistent voices of the game. Drew always had something to say during his 23 days on the island, whether it was narrating his assessment of his competitors, talking through how to continue his dominance, or providing myriad analogies at Tribal Council. Unfortunately for Drew, his use of that voice had him emerging as an endgame threat. So, though he thought he had an easy second shot out on Julie Alley, the philosophy student was slipped hemlock by his opposition, a poisoning that snuffed out his Socratic Survivor journey.

Before the season, Drew vocalized a clear plan to us: Find a core group to stay loyal to, and look to work with the "super buff, long haired Asian guy" he was seeing around Ponderosa. He got the opportunity to act on both intentions immediately. On a tribe with Austin Li Coon, the two linked up as one of the tightest duos in the game. They then grouped with Julie and Dee Valladares to form the alliance that would go on to rule the postmerge. After the tribe swap, Drew was in the firing line in his first ever Tribal Council, but he had formed a key relationship with Emily Flippen that kept him safe. Once the merge hit, all these assets combined into a perfect run for Drew. The Rebas took advantage of massive tribal divides, and with Emily by their side, the red alliance had the Survivor streets running red with Belo blood.

The Final Seven arrived, and things seem set for the Rebas. But Drew felt this was the right time to commit Survivor matricide. Seeing Julie as a threat, he started to bring the numbers together to blindside her, despite having an idol in her possession. What he didn't count on was Austin's ever-growing connection to Dee. Austin tipped her off about the move, causing Dee to spill to Julie to play her idol and get out Emily. Despite the setback, Drew was more confident than ever in his path to the end. But, appropriate to his height, Drew was starting to stand head and shoulders above others. Julie and Dee were seeking revenge, while Jake and Katurah were seeking a move to put their names behind. In astounding symmetry to the week before, Austin and Dee sat in the same position, but the roles reversed. Unfortunately for Austin and Drew, Dee chose not to spill the plan. As a result, Austin played his amulet on himself, and the rest of the tribe tossed Drew out like an errant lid to a pot of rice.

Now out of the game, Drew talks with Parade.com about his reaction to his blindside, why he chose to take the first shot at Julie, and how his mood had turned during the late stages of the game.

Related: Read our Survivor 45 pre-game interview with Drew Basile

Hey, Drew! Listen, man, I wish we were talking in a week.
I wish we were talking in a week as well. So close! One week away. One day away. I don't know what I was thinking. But alas, you get jumpy, you're gonna get ants in the pants. So you're out a week early.

So let's start with where things ended. Kellie remarked, "Oh, he's pissed" as she watched you walk out of Tribal Council. And you had just spent the evening talking about how you felt there were solid alliances and, if you survived, you were already seeing your path to the end. Was her assessment accurate? How were you feeling in that moment
It's tough because I listen to these exit interviews. I think that people tend to correct. "Oh, this is how it was." The woulda, coulda, shouldas become the whys. So I really have tried to avoid that. So for the first part of that is, I'll say definitively, no, I wasn't mad. I was humiliated. I was so mortified. Because I knew all day, I had been so confident at camp. And then during Tribal Council, I had been listening to the answers. And I started to realize something's not right. These are not the answers that people are giving if Julie was going home. So I started to sweat and sweat and sweat. And so by the time I left, I was just inside thinking like, "Ah, they're gonna Roger Sexton me from The Amazon." [Laughs.] Coulda happened! But I wasn't mad. I was mortified. 

You mentioned at one point that you felt Julie's vote would definitely be for you and, if you were in danger, you would ask Austin to play the amulet on you. How much did you try to push him to do that?
So it's tough. Because the thing about advantages is that to ask for one is a huge commitment, and if you're wrong, and really jeopardizes your relationship. I didn't want to be a burden if it was unnecessary. I didn't want to freak out and be paranoid and be like, "Give me the thing!" The other component is that, if they're coming after me, and my ally has an idol who could play it on me, it would make a lot of sense to split the votes on Austin. So that's an aspect to that you've got to consider. Am I really okay with that for what could essentially be 11th-hour jitters? I'm at Tribal Council. I'm getting nervous. But I'm felling, "Okay, stick to the facts." But no, in fact, it was necessary. And obviously, I wish I pulled a Malcolm, like, [Raises hand.] "Bro." But at the same time, Malcolm was wrong. So you gotta be careful.

We need to talk about these last couple of votes. Because it seemed to us to be such a stark shift from the "Reba strong" mentality you all had in the first part of the premerge to suddenly targeting Julie at seven. What was the thinking that led you to make that decision?
So we already had an agreement as a four to turn on each other at six. There was no collusion to go to the end. We all love the game. And we were a little nervous about the interest of the season if we all went together. This was actually a point of out decision making. So we had decided we would turn each other at six. I jumped the gun a little bit because Bruce went home at eight. We were expecting him to go home at seven. And so then six would be that, "Let's get things going." But I went after Julie.

I was surprised by the way it was portrayed. Maybe this isn't true. But from my perspective, I went after Julie because Julie was playing the game harder than anybody else. Julie had so many Final Threes made with people that I was starting to hear about them. It was a point of discussion. So I figured if anyone was going to branch off from the group and go their own way, it would be Julie, since she has been laying the groundwork so assiduously. Now, everyone seemed to have a sense that I was, in fact, looking to do that. So, who really knows? But that was 100% the rationale for my targeting with Julie. She's gotten great social relationships with the jury. She's making independent strategic moves of the four. And she's consciously trying to build other avenues to the end. Julie and I had a Final Three,asnd we hadn't talked about it in a number of days. And so I was like, "Hmm, what's going on there?"

When you come back from that vote at seven, and Julie is awkwardly asking about what happened, you had said that there were some bad actors on this tribe. Did you pick up at all on Dee tipping Julie off about the vote and telling her to play her idol?
One of the reasons I said it was an island of bad actors is because I thought that Dee had leaked the vote to Julie. But I thought it had happened during that conversation with Austin, because I wasn't there. I was off doing a confessional, the other things. Obviously, we want to give those to their moments. But it was a long conversation. Apparently, it was a pretty emotional conversation. And I heard that Julie stumbled into it in the middle or towards the end of that emotion and basically got, "Oh,  nothing's going on." So my impression was that maybe the emotional length and the conspicuousness of that conversation had tipped off Julie. And so when I said they were bad actors, I was referring to not even keeping it together for the conversation of that piece. So obviously Dee intentionally told Julie, I didn't know that. But the assumption was that maybe Dee had leaked it somehow. 

Again, you talked at Tribal Council about forecasting yourself in the end if you survived that vote. Let's say Julie does end up going where you do. Who were you visualizing sitting at the end with?
I would have been comfortable going to Final Three with anybody. Maybe that was total delusion, watching it back, just based on what we've been presented. But I did think that the jury, just based on the composition and the boots, and whatever, they might give me an oversharing of the strategic credit. The Reba four made most of its strategic moves together. But I certainly had been a component just by the way I talked.

I'm a great talker. I can sell, sell, sell. So I thought that those attributes would set me up pretty well in any Final Three combinations. I was set to go with Dee and Austin. But, obviously, at Tribal Council, it's a little unusual for somebody to be like, "Oh, if I get through this vote, I'm going to the end." From my perspective, as I've told you, I started get a little nervous at Tribal and changed the way I was approaching. So that for me was more of a show of strength. "If you think you're going to the end with me, let's do it. I'm confident. Don't get rid of me. I'm not gonna betray." But, alas.

What I find so interesting is that you told me in the preseason that you were not going to obscure how cerebral you were. On the one hand, you just spoke to the positives in that, since you could be seen as the brains behind the Reba four and get the credit. But, on the other hand, you have Jake say this episode that you're the best speaker he's ever seen, and is one reason why you're talking with me today. Do you feel being so upfront about your skills helped you or hurt you more in the game?
On the island, I think it worked out for the better. Because it was how I accrued a lot of my presence on the beach and for the jury. Definitely, since airing, it's gone for the worse because the fans freaking hate it. They really come for me, and that sucks. I'll give the example of Katurah. There was a conversation at this Tribal Council, which we didn't see. Jeff was like, "Katurah, you think you're making moves. Do you need to present those moves? Do you need to take a little more credit?" Because she was so under the radar. That would be a great example of the dichotomy. On one side you have me and Emily, who are very upfront. And then you have people who are really keeping the moves close to the chest. And so we'll have to see on this season and the next season and previous ones, which strategy is the right one.

You were definitely upfront in more ways than one. There were a couple of times we saw you be very open on the beach, like when you outright declined an offer to be in an alliance with Brando. And, obviously, there's the big fight with Jake where you let your emotions be heard. You even talked at one point about how you and Kendra bonded over being very open. Talk to me about the choice to be so forthcoming in a game all about deception.
Mike, I can't swear, but I didn't really give an [expletive] with a lot of this stuff. In my opinion, Survivor's like an 80/20. 80% of your interactions are meaningless. It's 20% that really count for something. So I'll go point by point. With Brando, we had made some final alliances with us and Austin earlier. And then we hadn't spoken about a new one. And so my thought process was like, "Okay, dude, come on. You're just trying to trip me up over myself and then go to Emily or Austin and be like, 'He's not working with you.'" So I was just kind of sick of it. I was like, "Okay, obviously here are the battlegrounds." Because we've never had any talk about our alliances.

And then with the Jake thing, I was just frustrated. Because I felt like I had gone to bat for Jake, especially with the Kellie vote. It had rained that day, and we'd been sitting in the shelter. And this is one of my most, you know, clear memories. All the girls had been sitting together talking about their astrology and their Zodiac. And Jake and I have been talking about video games, basically. About Fire Emblem and Pokemon. And I was I was listening to this guy and I was thinking, "This dude really cares. This is a great guy. It would really be a shame if he went home at this point. I love Jake." And so then when he's tossing my name out, I was like, "Dude, come on. Out of personal affinity, I really stuck my neck out for you." But in hindsight, of course,  it was not as much gameplay as the intrusion of personal emotions, which I think is more interesting as a viewer and as a player. 

I know this happened a while back. But you're the first Reba four member I'm speaking to, and I'd be remiss not to ask. Why did you think Sifu had an idol? You were a key part of Austin getting his!
Mike, you're coming through for me, dude! I wanted somebody to ask this question. First of all, we had just seen 44, where there were six idols by episode four. So six idols was kind of the benchmark. We're like, "Okay, there could be this many." And then on our sign, there were two rows of code. So we found that we found that thing that unscrambled one of the rows. But then we're like, "What's the second row?" And the solution from my perspective was obviously it's another idol. It's another advantage that we just didn't find the clue for, and that Sifu probably found the clue for. So that's why we were so convinced that Sifu had something, because there was a second line of code which was never resolved.

Speaking of idols, did Austin ever formally ask for his idol back from Julie? What was that interaction like?
The next day. I can remember walking with Julie. We're at the waterwell. And I called it Austin's idol. And she corrected me, like, "My idol." And we were kind of just like, "...okay." Because that's a situation where, if she's correcting you, she's obviously not going to give it back. And the other thing is, especially at the point, when she first got it, she would talk a lot of times about a big move she could make with it to set herself apart. So we kind of just got the sense that, okay, she's laying claim, it is what it is. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and overreact to this. But that was really the moment when Julie started to, for me anyway, kind of step out as a target. As someone who would not be making moves that were necessarily commensurate with my best interest.

Going back to the point about emotion, I'm not sure if you saw this, but there's a secret scene that just got posted all about your moodiness. Julie calls you a "fun curmudgeon," while Jake says you get stuck in your ways and have problems with authority. And we certainly see your emotions come out in this last episode after not getting picked for the reward. It's a bit surprising, since we're not used to one of the biggest strategic voices of the season being seen as so openly emotional. Talk to me about that.
Emotionally I was pretty down by the end of the game. Alot of it was lack of food. But then it was also I was really nervous about my position. On paper, I looked really good. But Ryan Ulrich is a guy I really like and I thought I played a very similar game to him. I always said I wanted to play the game like him because I think he's very well adapted for the current meta. And he got to the end with one vote. And the whole time I was like, "God, I can't do that. I can't repeat that." I was worried the jury hated my guts. And Austin, who had been such a reliable number one, suddenly there's this thing with Dee. And it's like, "What can you do?" It's Day 20, all your plans have been made? I was feeling a little left out, and I was feeling that things outside my control had changed that were affecting me for the worse, and it really shifted my mentality.

So as you go to Ponderosa, you talk about that mentality, compounded with your aforementioned humiliation from your blindside. What was it like to try to reconcile all that while also knowing you had to vote for a winner in three days?
[Laughs.] Irresponsibly, I was pretty done dude. In my mind, I wanted to sit by the pool, drink pina coladas, just chill. The wheels are still turning when you get to Ponderosa for everybody. Not for me, man. I was out. I probably didn't think about Survivor from my vote off until July, and then the floodgates opened and I processed the hell out of everything. I think that was the end of my fuse a little bit in the game. Certainly, you're gonna see it in that secret scene, it sounds like. But when I arrived at Ponderosa, I was ready to just chill out.

Well it looks like you had a great crew to chill out with. And I can't wait for next week when we see Drew on the jury holding a pina colada!
[Laughs.] They don't let you bring alcohol anymore. We tried! But, anyhow.

Next, check out our interview with Emily Flippen, who was voted out in Survivor 45 Episode 11.