Last week on Survivor 41, Liana Wallace faced Jeff Probst and had her torch snuffed. Since then, Liana has been on her mini press tour, and we have some details from her interviews you’re going to want to read.
First of all, like all the other interviews this season, Liana lets us in on some behind-the-scenes info and other things that never made the Survivor edit. But what we were really hoping to read about was how she now feels about Xander and who she reacted to him revealing he had a crush on her. So let’s start there.
Liana explained to Entertainment Weekly why she had such an aversion to Xander’s … face.
“Well, first and foremost, in real life and outside of the game, Xander is an amazing person: super genuine, super kind, a complete sweetheart,” Liana told EW. “And so to see how that was misconstrued in the game was kind of hard to see, but let me explain. It provides some things that led to that relationship and dynamic between us. So at Yase camp, I think there are three things that contributed to me and Xander’s relationship. First, you see in the scene when he first finds the idol, I go left, he goes right. He finds the idol, fine. You know, that’s the game. The second piece is that when he did find the idol, he managed to tell everyone in the tribe, but was really, really adamant for whatever reason about not letting me find out about it.
“From day one, for whatever reason, Xander never wanted to work with me. So for me, when you show me your true colors, I believe you. And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, if you see me as a threat, then it’s in my best intention to get you out of the game at some point.’ And on top of that, now he has all these advantages. The third thing is, and I think this is kind of downplayed in the episodes, but me and Evvie were actually really close.
“And so as we begin losing immunity challenges and don’t know if we’re going to make it to the merge, I’m like, ‘You know what, Evvie? It makes the most sense for you to play up your relationship with Xander and make sure he feels comfortable. So when we do go to Tribal Council and we don’t win one of these immunity challenges, he doesn’t play one of his advantages and one of us goes home.’ I was like, ‘Let’s play that up.’ ”
Recently, in a Survivor 41 Secret Scene Xander revealed he had a crush on Liana while playing the game. What did she have to say about that?
“Yeah, I was just laughing at that. I was like, ‘Oh my God, that is the cherry on top — that this entire time he has this little crush on me.’ But at that point, I’m so fed up with him. I’m like, ‘I don’t care how big of a crush you have on me, I just want you out of the game.’ So that was a funny dynamic. I think it’s a fun thing for people to watch and see, because it makes our season interesting, but that really like just made me laugh. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this game.’ ”
Sounds like that crush might have been one-sided. There goes our hope for a Survivor 41 showmance.
Read what else Liana had to say in her EW exit interview.
