‘Survivor 50’: Angelina Explains How She Tried to Target Christian After Mike White Blindside

“I think it’s compelling because he’s in my life because of the game, right? We’re close because of Survivor. So to me, our friendship is a testament to the bonds that Survivor builds and the experience that it provides to all of us who go through it,” Angelina tells TV Insider. “He and I went through 39 days together, beginning to end, and then this time we got two more days together. Days out there are years in real life, so he’s just really near and dear to my heart, and I was absolutely torn to pieces when he left. I mean, I was crying. I was just really beside myself.”

When the Vatu tribe lost another immunity challenge and had to head back to tribal council, the writing seemed to be on the wall for Angelina. Christian, Emily, and Ozzy told her they were all going to vote Stephenie out, which is the plan Angelina went with, but she was actually trying to orchestrate her own blindside of Christian at first.

“My first plan was to get Ozzy to join me,” she explains. “I knew Ozzy and Stephenie were together, and at that point, Stephenie had voted for me, and Ozzy had voted for me. But I’m the type of player where, like, I’m flexible. Especially in Season 50. You gotta be able to look past that and not let your own self get in the way. So I tried to go to them first, and I was like, ‘Let’s get out, Christian. Justice for Mike. Christian is crazy; he will clearly cut anyone. He doesn’t care. He’s playing a certain type of game. That’s not someone you want to work with long-term. They’ll take you out in a second. If they can take Mike out, a real friend…’ So that was my pitch. I tried. They tried to pretend like they were with me, but I could tell.”

Angelina ended up getting unanimously voted off. For more from our interview with her, including what else went into her pitch to get Christian out and why she’s dubbing Emily the “best liar” in the game, scroll down!

The White Lotus star Angelina! I’m starstruck!

Angelina Keeley: Oh my gosh, I’m living for that cameo. We got paid for it to be shown. I didn’t know that was a thing!

That was epic. So I was upset to see you voted out this early, but to back up to last week, what was your reaction to the Mike White vote? We saw how Ozzy felt, but I’m sure you were super blindsided, too. We didn’t get to see that, but what was going on for you back at camp afterwards?

Thank you for asking. I wish we had seen it. I think that it’s very interesting what we’re seeing and not seeing this season. I’m hoping that improves over time. There’s still a lot of season left, so I hope production and editing gets better for our female voices out there.

I was devastated when Mike left. I mean, he was clearly my closest friend in the game and one of my good friends in real life, too. I had known him for seven years. That was a real-life friendship. I mean, he made my older daughter laugh for the first time ever on our back porch during COVID. So this time going back, we always talk about how there’s lessons to learn out there and things waiting for us to uncover, and for me, it was seeing Mike back out there. It really came full circle for me. I told him our first day on the beach when we swapped, I said, “You matter to me more than this game. You matter to me more than winning. You matter to me more than a million dollars. I will never betray you. You got me. So let’s do this, let’s have fun, let’s have a good time.” And I meant it. Going into the game, my game plan was to work with him as long as possible. Even my husband and Kara Kay were like, “Be careful with Mike. We love him, but you know, he’s a really good player. You can’t trust anyone in Survivor.” But I was like, “I don’t even care.” At this point, he just mattered to me more than the game.

Did you express to Christian how upset you were?

Yeah, I  was really honest. I told him it really hurt. I am much more measured and controlled than some of the other reactions we saw after that vote. It’s really interesting, I do think that women display a lot more emotional control in this game than men do. We see a lot of male tantrums on Survivor, and there’s some that we don’t see that happen and just get brushed aside. So that’s a fascinating sidenote to me as a feminist.

But anyway, with Christian, I told him I was really sad and that Mike meant a lot to us. I didn’t understand because I thought we were all really close. I mean, Mike was the glue that was holding me and Christian together. Me and Christian always kind of had this feud. I was the first one to throw the punch, so that’s on me, you know, back on David vs. Goliath, when I gunned for him at the merge, and then we came for him three or four times. So he owed me no favors. All’s fair in love and war. He had every right to go after me. But I was shocked that he got Mike because they have a very real friendship outside of the game. You know, visits to each other’s houses, on location where Mike was working, constant calls, texts. I mean, seven years. And vacations together. So I think Mike was very surprised. Mike is a loyal person in real life, and very generous and very kind. I was really surprised Christian decided to take him out when he did.

Look, we had no disillusion. We knew what it was and that it was a liability for the three of us to exist in the game together, but in my perspective, and I think Mike’s perspective, too, it’s just that he did it way too soon. Why do it now, man? Let’s get to the merge. Let’s be able to hold our heads up a little bit for our season and represent 37 and just make it a little bit further. But he clearly had other plans.

The edit didn’t show us too much of you scrambling on the beach that day, but I can imagine you didn’t feel too safe going into this vote…

No. Send help. Blink twice. I was blinking twice all over that beach! Someone come! No one. No one was coming to save me.

Ozzy’s not a very good liar. And that’s not a bad thing. I mean, that’s a good trait to have, right? Whereas the complete polar opposite is Miss Emily. The Devil Wears Prada, is what that girl Emily is. She’s the best liar I have ever met in my life and in this game. I mean that as a compliment. She was the best player on that Vatu beach. She’s clearly not getting shown that way in the show, but she was far more convincing than Christian, than even Mike, than anyone else. She was the reason I went on with the Stephenie vote. She had me convinced that she was going to work with me, and I really didn’t have any other options at that point. I didn’t have any allies in the game. I was kind of a free agent.

So I had to weigh, do I play my Shot in the Dark, or do I take a gamble in the off chance that Emily’s with me and that I have a little bit of trust with someone going into a potential merge.

I was going to ask, so was the Shot in the Dark an option for you?

Yeah, I had it in my pocket. I think it’s very subtle, but you kind of see me holding my pocket when I walk up to the voting podium. It was down to the wire, down to the last minute, deciding, like, do I drop it in? Do I do this? But it just hits so rarely. I’m from Nevada, so gambling, in my mind, is a fool’s errand. So I’d rather just see if Emily is being for real because she was so convincing. I mean, she must believe her own lies because she is so good at getting you to believe she’s with you. So that was my contemplation: Shot in the Dark, or try to trust Emily and take a gamble on Emily. I decided to take a gamble on Emily, and obviously, that was the wrong choice. But the writing was on the wall. I mean, how many lives does a cat have? It was a pretty uphill battle for me from the jump. I really feel like I had a bit of a false start out there with both of my tribes.

Were you aware of how close Emily and Christian were?

Oh yeah, for sure, they were seen as a duo. Ozzy referencing them as a couple, I don’t think that’s the right word, but they were a duo for sure. They were very close, and they played games online together, so we all knew that. We were all aware of that and knew they had a friendship. And then obviously we’re at camp 24/7, and you can see it with your own eyes, too, that they spend a lot of time together. They talk a lot together, and so that was a concern. So that was part of my pitch to Ozzy, like, hey, they’re really close. This is not a good thing for our games. I know Ozzy’s regretful of his decisions. He’s told me many times since the game ended. I think he realizes he chose the wrong team.

You were both an original and swapped tribe with Stephenie – what relationship did you guys have? Was working with her even an option?

We were never working together, but it wasn’t for lack of me trying. I’m a very much exhaust every resource and avenue kind of player. I’m open for business with anyone who’s down to play with me. I was just grasping at straws this whole season, and a big part of that was that an older school alliance came in with Colby [Donaldson], Stephenie, Coach … some of those folks were already pretty locked in together. I was given a heads-up that they heard I was targeting old-school players, which was completely false, and so I had a target on my back before we even flew out to Fiji. It was just an uphill battle. And that’s a big reason why I played an under-the-radar game, and I was just trying to be really low-key.

I was really working overtime to mitigate that perception of me as a chaotic player, as someone that can’t be trusted. So I was trying to be the calm in the chaos and just do my job at challenges, do stuff at camp, and not stir the pot. I knew that would make for a quieter look back, and I was OK with that. I didn’t play the show to watch the show. I played for the adventure and for trying my hand at it again, with some years under my belt, some motherhood now, with being a business owner. I mean, a lot of life has happened for me since David vs. Goliath in a beautiful and expansive way, so I wanted to come back and be that evolved version of myself, and I think that might have been incongruent with the story the editors were trying to tell of Angelina in times past.

Well, you did still get to hand over the favor you didn’t get last time with the jacket at the end…

That was an epic period on the story. We had to just wrap this up, let’s do it the right way!

Survivor, Season 50, Wednesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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