Being first eliminated on “The Amazing Race: All-Stars” earlier this year didn’t make being cut first on “Survivor: San Juan Del Sur – Blood vs. Water” any easier for Nadiya Anderson.
“It’s just as hard,” she said in a phone interview from Los Angeles Friday. “The only thing that is a silver lining is that Natalie is still on the beach and walking away from ‘Survivor’ this time first, I’m still happy since I’m still rooting for Natalie and it’s awesome to be rooting for someone on the beach. ”
It was hard enough for her that the inseparable (and to some, insufferable) “twinnies” from two seasons of “The Amazing Race” had to be separated to opposing tribes on the outset of “Survivor,” which had its season premiere Wednesday.
Now, assuming her sister is still in it, they are now separated by the distance to Nicaragua.
“It was complete surprise,” Nadiya, 28, said of her being voted out by her tribe. “I had no idea that people were scheming against me solely based on ‘The Amazing Race.’ I went in feeling confident mostly because I knew we were coming off of a losing streak, and I knew I was one of the biggest assets for our tribe and they wouldn’t be dumb enough to get us out so early.”
With only three days on which to base alliances or snap judgments, it was the older player, Dale, who targeted Nadiya, citing the sisters’ willingness to U-Turn other teams.
The fact that the network outed the twins as former “Amazing Race” players right off the bat put targets on their back, she says.
“We went in not wanting to talk about ‘The Amazing Race’ at all, for obvious reasons, and we were introduced to the cast on day one as the Twinnies of ‘Amazing Race,” she says.
“We felt the cat was kind of let out of the bag, not by us., and Dale being a superfan of ‘Amazing Race,’ he had actually applied to be on that, and he was super knowledgeable about ‘Amazing Race,’ and he was the one who put it in everyone’s ear,” Nadiya says.
“We had a very young tribe,” she said. “It didn’t take much to convince them.”
The network did not reveal, by contrast, the background of her teammate John Rocker, she says. “They didn’t introduce him as this controversial MLB player who made millions of dollars.”
The way the premiere was edited would make it seem that another reason she was voted out is that Josh didn’t like being referred to as “one of the girls” as Nadiya tried to recruit him to an otherwise girls alliance.
“I had no idea I was offending him, otherwise I wouldn’t have kept saying it,” she says. “I didn’t mean he was a girl, obviously, I just meant that he was one of the girls in that the girls had his back more than the boys did. Because the boys out there was like a total fraternity.”
Once more, the attempt to start a female alliance seemed shut down. “I knew girls alliances are tough to do on ‘Survivor,’ and it wasn’t my first choice to do a girls alliance, cause of that reason. But I felt I had to because the boys were so tight.”