Survivor 42: Daniel Strunk Spills Survivor Secrets In Exit Interview

Every week someone new is voted out of Survivor 42, and every week we look forward to hearing all the Survivor secrets, and behind-the-scenes tidbits we don’t see during the edited episode.

This week it was Daniel Strunk who had his torch snuffed, and we have some interesting revelations from his exit interviews.

Daniel spoke to various media outlets after his ouster, and here’s what he told Entertainment Weekly about his demise.

“Well, I think I was doing pretty well for two episodes, and then I faced a curveball, and it didn’t go well, and I didn’t play it particularly well,” Daniel told EW. “And then from there, I was on the bottom, and I didn’t play well from the bottom. And that’s basically it. I think that’s the summary of my game. I think in, unfortunately, 40 out of 42 seasons of Survivor, you don’t have people lose their votes and sail into the merge. But I didn’t adapt well to the new era of the game.”

EW then asked Daniel about the Tribal Council where he said he didn’t want to go to rocks, but he stopped them and said you have to go back even farther than that to understand when he first messed up.

“You’re already starting, I think, a bit too late,” he interrupted. “The analysis should not start there. If you want to give a full analysis of all the ways in which I screwed up, you gotta start earlier than that. I screwed up on multiple occasions. So let’s start earlier when Chanelle gets off the boat and says, ‘Daniel, I lost my vote.’ And what I would add to this discussion is you have to understand the context going into that moment where Chanelle tells me she lost her vote. For seven days up until that point, I’ve been utterly and totally loyal to Chanelle, sharing everything I could with her.

“The number one example of this is, I told her Mike lost his vote. And that matters because that gave Chanelle power to vote me out because she could have joined Hai and Lydia to vote me out. So I showed total faith in her. So she gets off the boat and says, ‘Look, I lost my vote.’ And what you also need to know is before she left for the immunity, she and I had a convo, the two of us, one on one. And we both agreed that under no circumstances whatsoever would either of us risk our vote if we went to the summit. So she gets off the boat and she says that, and this is where I think the analysis should be given. It’s like: What should Daniel do in that moment? And I decided in that moment to stay loyal to Chanelle and go along with the plan.

“I think, in hindsight, that’s the moment where, frankly, I probably should have changed up my game. Chanelle had lost her vote. I interpreted that as a betrayal of the alliance. And at that moment, I probably should have approached Hai and Lydia and said, ‘Look, Chanelle’s playing us and we should vote her out.” But I didn’t. I decided to remain loyal to that alliance I had because she was my number one and I was very much all in on it. So now you want to get to the Tribal, though, so let’s…’ ”

For the rest of Daniel’s interview, check out EW.com.


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