Tim Spicer 'surprised, shocked, and hurt' by Survivor 46 blindside

Tim Spicer wanted to stay Siga strong, which is ultimately what got his torch snuffed on Survivor 46. When presented with a plan to oust Siga ally Ben Katzman, Tim instead tried to shift the target to a member of his other alliance — Hunter McKnight from the +1 group. Tim’s insistence at not voting out a fellow Siga (who also happened to be the only non +1 member available to vote for after a tribe split at the challenge) turned Q Burdette against his alleged alliance partner, sending Tim out of the game.

And not just out of the game, but out of the jury. Because Tim’s group did not last the longest at the challenge, that meant they had to attend the first of two Tribal Councils, and the person eliminated would not make the jury. But, then again, maybe that was not such a bad thing since Tim was missing his family while out on the island. We caught up with the seventh torch snuffed to get his take on everything that went down, and why he chose to go down Siga strong. (Also make sure to check out our exit interview with Soda Thompson.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, most important question here right off the bat: Did you ever poop?

TIM SPICER: Yo! First time I pooped was at the airport going home. I didn't poop out there. They want you to be vulnerable in this game and I didn't think I could be vulnerable in the ocean. Something might go right up there. But nah, I wasn't eating enough to pass anything, honestly.

You looked pretty devastated by the vote. How surprised were you and what was going through your mind as you saw you name coming up?

I was utterly surprised, I was shocked, I was hurt. I remember just having to take a moment after he snuffed my torch. It was a total blindside, and they say that's the high honor in the game to be blindsided. So that is a positive, but what's going through my mind is I was never giving up my number one, and I felt strongly enough about a threat that the threat should have gone.

What happened on your walk out of Tribal Council? You stopped there for a minute and looked like you needed to collect yourself.

Benevolence and I hugged, brotherly love, and I go to my torch and I'm just like, “I can't believe it's my time. They got me.” And honestly, bro, I was sad. I was sad. You don't expect it. I think the blindside is probably the most brutal type of way to go because you really have no idea. You go in thinking it's one way and it comes out the other way and it's you. But I think eventually I started catching on what was going in Tribal and by time I realized what was happening, it was too late.

How tough was it to be that close, as close as you can get, and even make the merge, but not make the jury?

Yeah, it is challenging, but I think that if I was the first person to sit on the jury, I wouldn't have wanted to watch the rest of the game after being blindsided like that in that vote. I think when I came out, I was raging completely. So the more and more I thought about it, I was like: Tim, it was time to go. If you had to sit and witness what you were a victim to, then I think that would've added another layer of trauma, honestly.

Did it offer also any solace that because you weren't on the jury, you got to go home and see your family. I remember talking to you before the game and I know this is a big deal for you to be away from your family and it was weighing on you.

I mean, it is some relief you are going home. We were like 14, 15 days in, plus getting there to Fiji is a long haul. But I came back on Father's Day, so I thought that was full circle for me to be with them on this day. So everything leveled out. You couldn't really be too mad or hung up on it. You had to move on from it. And I think by time I actually watched it, it felt worse than it looked.

What do you mean by that?

It's a blindside. I had to sit with it for a minute. I remember just being home, not being able to sleep, angry at everybody that voted me out, upset with myself in the challenge for talking, and things like that. And you go through this kind of guilt trip or this blame game or the hypotheticals, if you will. But coming home Father's Day just proved that it was way bigger than me and showed me that I was planning to represent my family.

Let's go outside the game for a minute because this was a really big thing for you being away from your family for that long and we had that deleted scene on EW that shows you thinking about them out there and reevaluating your role as a father. That was 10 months ago, so what has it been like since you got back?

Nice. That's a good question. The deleted scene was when I first saw it, I was like, “Wow, that's my only confessional.” When it got deleted, we were like three episodes in. I think since then, 10 months ago, I feel like I have a better control of my work-life balance, my schedule when I'm flying, how many times I'm flying, and being able to negotiate that now with my employers' clients and things of that nature.

I think it's important to be home. You can run and hustle all you want, but if you're not even able to enjoy the fruits or see the seeds that you planted, it is tough. But my boys both play baseball, so I've just been more diligent about what I want to do when I'm home and how often I want to be home and just being able to time those two weeks off where I'm home and not being able to hit the road as much. And then last but not least, taking them with me, bringing the family with you. And that's been amazing too. They get to be a part of my life when I am on the road.

Alright, let's talk some game. Why ultimately did you worry more about the Nami numbers and getting rid of Hunter instead of holding onto that +1 alliance?

So let's start with the +1 alliance. I think when we went to the journey, Quintavius proposes the +1 alliance with Hunter and I. And I was hesitant because I don't know these guys. I had been competing with them the entire season, so no way I was giving up my number one. So I threw a person out there that I did trust, not my number one.

That wasn't the question. It was who do you trust the most? And I trusted Maria a bit and for them to go to Maria before I did was odd, and I didn't like that. That was totally a sign. If I say this is my plug, why would you go to the plug before I told the plug we even working together? And so that was childish when I heard that that was going on, and I remember telling Maria some sort of it, we talked a bit about it, but it wasn't in detail. It was like, “Hey, I know some names, they're going to look out for names.” And I didn't like counting six out in a group of 13. It never has worked like that in Survivor and I'm not a super fan, but I know that you can't count your eggs before they hatch.

The second piece. I didn't feel like Ben was a threat. It wasn't a threat to me, so I wasn't voting out Ben. Hunter had beat every tribe single handedly — like, this guy was artificial intelligence. Quintavius and I went back and forth about the discussion, and I said, “You've never beat him once.” And so in my eyes, I thought he was the biggest threat, and that was the only way I saw it. That was the only way I thought the vote should go. Yeah, it was the numbers game that people play, but it was also: Who's a threat? That's how you get people out.

You said Maria was your number one and your ride or die, yet she had another number one and ride or die out there. What was it like learning that she didn’t quite see you in a game sense as you saw her?

I thought it was odd. I thought it was totally odd. I wasn't too moved by it because the question was: Who do you trust the most? I said, “I trust Maria,” and if you look at that group, if I would've said Ben, those guys would've counted Ben out from the jump. It was a strength question. Who's the strongest out of this?

Seeing that she had another number one didn't really bother me. It was Charlie. Siga boys rule, so I wasn't really thrown off by it. It was the fact that she was like, “Maybe he's my number three,” and I'm like, “Get out of here!” Sure, sure. If I was your number three, you wouldn't have went with Tim's plants. At the end of the day, it was Tim's game.

You alluded to this a little bit earlier that you weren't having a lot of confessionals early on. You live this experience 24 hours a day and it's your experience, and then it comes on TV nine months later and they have 18 stories to tell. What was it like seeing yourself a lot lighter in the edit early on?

I think I emerged when I needed to. I think you said it. You hit the nail on the head. You said 18 stories to tell. When I got cast for a Survivor, I was like, “Wow, I must be pretty impressive.” And then you see all these people and you're like, “ These people are characters!” So it didn't really bother me. I trusted what producers, what Jeff, what CBS and the Survivor team were doing, and it was fine.

I think I came about when I needed to, and also, if I knew I had to lose to get screen time, I could have lost a couple more challenges. But I was out there competing. I was out there, “How do we win as a tribe to get to the merge?” But it was fine. I thought it was cool when they started showing Tim.

What’s something that happened on the island that didn’t make it to air that you wish we had a chance to see?

One, I made fire day two at night. It was cold. I needed some fire, so I made fire at night two. Two, we found a lot of food at the Siga Beach. I shook a tree and we got some papaya down. Coconut, I wasn't a fan of. But Charlie found one or two crabs out there, so I had to teach the tribe how to eat crabs. Me being from Arlington, Virginia, everybody had seafood around and we would do crabs.

And then three, the merge episode, I think they downplayed how chaotic that was. That was the birth of when the leaders emerged and you saw who had the voice, who I was going back and forth with, and that was a chaotic episode. They did a good job in their 90 minutes, but it was a lot happening on that day. Quintavius and I got into it a lot. People were scrambling, and I just wasn't saying yes to anything. I'm not a yes man. That was something that wasn't shown, just how crazy that merge feast was.

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