Contestant J. Maya chats with EW about leaving 'Survivor 45'.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 (soft music)
00:02 - Jay, what's going through your mind
00:07 when Caleb calls you out by name at tribal council?
00:12 - What's going through my mind?
00:13 I would say the first thing that goes through my mind
00:16 is, okay, we're doing this.
00:18 Because at that point in the day,
00:20 it was not really a huge secret
00:21 that I think both of our names
00:23 had been thrown out aggressively.
00:26 Maybe going into tribal council,
00:28 I thought that there was going to be a little bit more
00:30 subterfuge in the tribal council.
00:32 I'd only been to one tribal previously,
00:34 and we'd spoken a lot in subtext at that one.
00:36 We're just gonna see how this goes
00:38 when we speak openly and plainly in front of everyone.
00:41 And so the first thing I say,
00:43 and that moment is captured where I'm like,
00:45 that's very interesting, Caleb.
00:46 And I'm formulating my argument immediately
00:49 because I know that he's a great player,
00:50 and he's gonna do what great players do
00:52 and try to persuade people to vote with him.
00:54 And I'm already thinking of my rebuttal.
00:56 I grew up doing debate.
00:58 That was where I felt most comfortable
00:59 was in a debate room.
01:00 So I felt like it was a debate.
01:02 And this was the time to let my argumentative side
01:06 shine a little bit.
01:07 But a part of me was enthralled.
01:09 I was like, this is why we all did Survivor.
01:11 We're a tribal like this.
01:12 - When you saw the safe scroll come up,
01:14 did you know that you were in a lot of trouble
01:17 at that moment?
01:18 - Oh, absolutely.
01:19 Well, I knew I was in trouble going into that tribal.
01:22 I knew I was in trouble during that tribal.
01:25 And I was waiting for Jeff to show that scroll.
01:28 And I remember thinking, five and six chance,
01:32 this goes fine.
01:33 One and six chance, you're going home tonight.
01:35 And I don't know what it is.
01:36 Sometimes you call it like a gut feeling.
01:38 I had a feeling.
01:40 I had a feeling about that shot in the dark,
01:42 but I dismissed it as irrationality.
01:45 And it's always a sign to trust your gut feeling.
01:49 - That's the question that some people will ask
01:51 is why didn't someone just throw a hinky vote at someone?
01:54 So did you ever think,
01:55 let me just put my vote on Emily just in case?
01:57 - Absolutely.
01:58 And it's one of those game time decisions
02:01 that haunts you after you leave the game.
02:03 I've thought about that every single night,
02:05 every iteration.
02:06 What if I put this person's name down?
02:07 What if I put this person's name down?
02:10 And I think it just boils down to calculated risk-taking.
02:13 And I'm really glad that they included that segment
02:16 in the tribal council where Jeff asks me,
02:17 okay, well, what happens when you hear your name?
02:20 Do you go and scramble to make someone else
02:23 the name that's being thrown out?
02:25 Or do you take the L so to speak
02:29 and hope that that's a calculated risk,
02:31 you're not actually going home tonight
02:32 and that your cool under pressure pays dividends
02:36 at the next tribal council.
02:37 'Cause people know that they can trust you
02:39 that any alliances that aren't a hundred percent formulated
02:42 might just shift into place
02:44 after you show this kind of calmness under pressure
02:48 during a tribal council.
02:49 And so that was what I was trying to do.
02:51 I was just at the end of the day,
02:53 a little too scared to rock the boat.
02:55 And I think that's a good kind of summation
02:59 of where my gameplay goes south.
03:01 - Well, let's talk about after the safe scroll comes up
03:03 and then it goes to like a live tribal.
03:05 There's always, I feel like so much
03:06 that we don't get to see in that.
03:08 We just see little bits and pieces.
03:10 You were pitching Emily before the revote.
03:13 Just tell us why her
03:15 and how did you feel going around pitching that?
03:17 Did you know that that wasn't taking
03:19 or are you hoping that it was taking?
03:20 What was going on there?
03:21 - Well, I will say that in that moment,
03:24 my brain is a little discombobulated.
03:26 I don't know if I'm really clearly thinking
03:28 every single thing out at that point.
03:30 It is a Hail Mary.
03:32 I have a few, I don't know why I thought
03:35 that she would be someone people would rally for
03:38 at the last minute.
03:39 I think maybe I'd heard her name a couple of times
03:41 on the beach.
03:42 I was just going back to people that I'd heard
03:44 'cause I felt like maybe that was a safer pitch.
03:47 But I mean, I knew.
03:49 Like I knew that it was, like I said, a Hail Mary.
03:52 And I think truthfully, at that point,
03:55 it was just whatever name I had heard that day
03:58 that was not me that was eligible to go home,
04:00 I was kind of sticking to.
04:02 - Let's roll it back a few episodes
04:03 'cause we have a lot of stuff to talk about, Jay.
04:06 First off, Dee votes for Sifu,
04:08 yet you decide to take the blame
04:10 'cause you think he has an idol.
04:12 You wanna make him comfortable so he doesn't use it.
04:14 I understand that aspect of it,
04:15 but how worried were you about that strategy
04:18 of just sort of creating an enemy in the game
04:20 as we later saw Sifu at the winner's feast,
04:22 just throwing your name out there and throwing it hard?
04:24 - Oh, 100%.
04:25 Well, I think I do wanna,
04:27 I think it's important to clarify.
04:28 I never told Sifu that I voted for him.
04:30 I think the plan that was being formulated
04:33 was if we go to tribal council,
04:35 you know, if it's desperate game time
04:38 and we were worried about Sifu having an idol
04:40 and we're worried he's gonna play it,
04:43 I can go to him to try to convince him
04:45 that he shouldn't play his idol
04:47 and that I'm on the outs
04:49 and try to quote unquote apologize
04:50 for putting his name down to make that happen.
04:52 But I never was planning to proactively tell him
04:56 unless we'd gone to tribal council.
04:57 I think there was a mistake made
04:59 and that gave an opening then for other people to say
05:03 that I was going to do it
05:04 because they probably knew that I wouldn't negate it.
05:06 But I never went and told him that
05:08 because I didn't wanna introduce that hole
05:10 in the game at that point.
05:12 And so, you know, I would say for that strategy,
05:15 something that I would talk about
05:17 actually goes back to like original Reba,
05:20 which is that I tried to work with Sifu at original Reba.
05:23 And I totally get how sometimes
05:24 some of these smaller elements of gameplay
05:26 don't necessarily, you know, make the cut
05:29 because there's just so much,
05:30 so many dynamics to cover in even 90 minutes.
05:33 Like I truthfully, totally, totally understand that.
05:36 But in the original days of Reba,
05:37 there is a very important conversation,
05:39 I would say to my gameplay, where I go to Sifu,
05:41 I say, "Hey, the way that the cards are shaking out,
05:44 you and me should stick together in this game."
05:46 And we do the whole pinky swear, alliance making situation.
05:50 I forget the name of the alliance.
05:51 It has to do with music, obviously.
05:53 And immediately after this conversation,
05:57 Sifu goes and tells other people at Reba
06:00 that I want them out of the game.
06:02 And I take this as a sign
06:04 that Sifu does not wanna work with me.
06:07 Sifu is throwing my name out from day one on the beach
06:10 as someone that he thinks the tribe
06:11 can unanimously vote out.
06:13 And so now for the rest of my gameplay,
06:16 this is a factor that I have to take into account.
06:18 And obviously it comes up many times because then we swap
06:22 and I'm swapping again with Sifu still on Reba.
06:25 So that is a big part of my game
06:27 that I try to work with him and it doesn't pan out.
06:30 And that I think goes again back to the decision
06:33 with the decoy vote at the swap.
06:35 I truthfully thought that the only way we could get Sifu
06:38 to not play his now I know non-existent idol
06:41 was if he believed that I was the one who put his name down
06:45 and that the girls would rally for me.
06:46 And so that was my last ditch effort
06:48 after my number one ally leaves the game
06:51 to go to the girls and basically say,
06:53 hey, at least I'm loyal.
06:55 I know that it's gonna be between me and him.
06:58 Please, please let it be him.
07:01 - Well, that shed some light
07:02 on why you were so targeting Sifu.
07:04 It also shed some light 'cause we didn't really know
07:06 if you were aware of that Reba big four alliance.
07:09 It seems like you definitely were.
07:11 Let's get into the amulets.
07:12 This was a very odd advantage
07:15 in that it basically incentivizes you all
07:17 to vote each other out.
07:19 You seemed very insistent on taking that.
07:21 Any second thoughts once you get back to the beach
07:23 and like sort of the adrenaline maybe had lowered
07:26 a little bit in terms of like, wait a minute,
07:27 this might not play out so great.
07:29 - Absolutely, I was terrified of being caught in my lie
07:33 at Reba Beach when I came back.
07:36 And we had spent a lot of effort
07:39 trying to perfect this lie of sweat versus strategy.
07:43 And I would say this is one of my proudest moments
07:44 of the game is we're cycling through potential lies
07:47 to come back to our camps with
07:49 and I throw out sweat versus strategy
07:51 and everyone takes it
07:53 and then we all go to our respective camps
07:55 and actually everyone believes it.
07:57 I go back to Reba and I tell the girls in Sifu
08:02 that it was sweat versus strategy.
08:04 We lost and to my knowledge, they really do believe me.
08:08 And when Mergatory comes,
08:10 obviously we see this conversation
08:11 where the Reba Four are discussing
08:13 the actual true nature of the amulet.
08:16 And this further goes, I think,
08:18 to my level of distrust in the game
08:20 that I've so openly lied about this to Dee and Julie.
08:22 And I do wanna go back to what you said
08:24 and correct it for just half a second.
08:26 I would say that things are a little bit in the middle.
08:29 Like I am aware of the Reba Four,
08:31 but I do also want to give them their flowers
08:33 and that they played up until this point
08:35 in the game is all I can talk about,
08:36 but they, you know, a great game.
08:38 So I think I was less aware than I should have been
08:41 about this Reba Four developing.
08:43 And optimistically, you know, at this point in the game,
08:46 I'm desperate for people to work with.
08:49 And I think maybe it's blind optimism
08:51 and just wanting it to work so badly
08:53 that I think I like these two people
08:55 that I'm on the journey with.
08:57 This would be awesome if this could work out,
08:59 even though I'm fully aware
09:00 that it does put a target on each of our backs.
09:02 I thought maybe that would be an issue
09:04 a little bit later into the merge.
09:06 Obviously it becomes an issue
09:08 the second that we come back to the beach.
09:09 So that is definitely a big regret of mine.
09:12 And something that I think is especially fun
09:14 about that journey is that one of the sandwiches
09:16 is a veggie sandwich and I'm a vegetarian on the beach.
09:19 I stay vegetarian the whole time.
09:20 And so when I think I saw people discussing
09:24 the decision-making behind taking the amulet
09:26 when people said, well, Kelly and Jay had fish back at camp.
09:29 In my head, I was like,
09:29 this sandwich is the thing I can eat.
09:32 I can't really eat much back at camp, but I can eat this.
09:35 So that was a really hard decision for me.
09:37 I was really, really tempted to take the sandwich.
09:41 - How difficult is it to get voted out
09:44 that close to the jury?
09:45 - I think there was a lot that was difficult
09:47 to stomach about that.
09:48 (laughing)
09:49 So, being close to the jury is one of the things.
09:52 I think there was a lot that you stay up at night over
09:56 being like, how could things have changed
09:59 if the shot in the dark hadn't gone through?
10:01 What would have happened
10:02 if I'd stayed in the game longer?
10:05 You go through these hypothetical what-ifs,
10:07 but I think in kind of this poetic way,
10:10 there is a lot of peace in the way that I go out
10:12 because I feel like at the end of the day,
10:16 what brings us all to Survivor is this love of the game,
10:20 is this love as a viewer to watch the game.
10:22 And of course I'm playing as a player in that moment,
10:24 but even in the back of my brain, I say, wow,
10:26 what a story this is gonna make when I get off the show
10:30 and I get to watch it back with my friends and family.
10:32 To go out with such a bane in such a chaotic tribal council
10:37 that will hopefully go down in the history books,
10:41 I did feel there was some satisfaction in that leaving.
10:46 So I think the way that I go out,
10:48 immediately when I came home, I was like, oh my God,
10:51 parsing it each and every way.
10:53 And of course, going over my game play
10:54 and all the mistakes I made
10:55 and what I could have done to correct my game.
10:57 But the more time has passed since that tribal council,
11:00 the more I've been able to take this perspective
11:02 of things happen, everything happens for a reason.
11:05 I think in my secret scene from a couple of episodes prior,
11:09 I talked about control.
11:11 And it's funny how this theme of control comes up
11:14 in my game play and in the life lessons
11:16 that I take from this game
11:17 about how you really can give something your all.
11:19 You can fight tooth and nail for something
11:22 and still at the end of the day,
11:23 things are sometimes out of your control.
11:25 And I think if I had to go back
11:27 and talk about my game play from day one,
11:29 I would say that it is trying desperately
11:32 to make a bad situation yield a little bit of good, right?
11:36 Because when the swap happens, I'm immediately like,
11:39 this is not good for me,
11:40 but I have at least this new person that I can work with.
11:43 And for that, then to immediately, you know,
11:46 not work out the way that I wanted to,
11:48 even though I'm flipping the votes,
11:49 I'm really working to save him in the game.
11:52 I think the lesson that I took from my experience
11:54 on Survivor is like, it's okay,
11:56 sometimes things just don't go your way
11:58 and you have to put a smile on your face
12:00 and see the positive in it, you know?
12:02 - Absolutely, it's a great perspective to have on it.
12:04 Before I let you go,
12:06 hit me with a good pun
12:07 to describe your shot in the dark experience.
12:09 - Oh my God.
12:11 Okay, I'll give it a shot, first of all.
12:14 I would say someone was on a roll that night.
12:19 It was sadly not me, but I did roll with it
12:22 and things got dicey, but at the end of the day,
12:26 even though I wanted to,
12:28 this emerging artist did not make the merge.
12:32 (whooshing)
12:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]