Jon Lovett reacts to being first person voted out of Survivor 47

Jon Lovett began his Survivor 47 journey by saying that his friends and family wanted to see him suffer. Well, they certainly got their wish. Lovett became the latest recipient of the Sonja Christopher Golden Ukulele award when he was the first person voted out of the game by his Gata tribe.

The target seemed to be pretty firmly on Andy Rueda, who was described by teammates as a “ticking time bomb” after he had a physical and emotional breakdown at the challenge, explaining how they did not cheer for him when he opened a coconut and saying how he had been thinking about throwing his biggest ally in Jon under the bus. That’s exactly what he ended up doing, joining his tribemates in unanimously voting out the celebrity podcaster.

How does Jon feel about Andy turning on him? And has the sting worn off from being the very first person voted out? We chatted with the Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It host about his all-too-brief stay on the island.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I’ve literally had nightmares about being the first person voted out of Survivor, and I’ve never even played Survivor. So be real with me: How much does it hurt to be the first one out?

JON LOVETT: There’s two pieces to it. One that's important and one that isn't. The one that isn't is, you get back and then you just put in your calendar: There's going to be this moment where everybody sees this and you think, “Okay, you've never put a moment a few months ahead in your calendar of this thing that happened that everybody's going to see.”

So that sounds a little bit like waiting on the train tracks, but the truth is that before, during and after, I really didn't spend a lot of time worrying about how people would react. I've been fortunate enough to be insulted on the internet pretty constantly for a decade, and to receive lots of kind words from people that like our shows on the internet. So I wasn't really that worried about the reaction.

The more important part of it was that I was really excited about the experience and I thought a lot about different pieces of it: What I would do here? What I would do there? And so what I feel like now is less like: Oh, I blew the experience, or I let myself down in the experience, but that I didn't really fully get the experience. And that disappointment is the part that's important to me. And honestly, in terms of the unimportant public reaction, I've just been genuinely pleasantly surprised. I expected people to be a little bit harsher.

You talked a lot about your friends and family wanting to see you suffer, so what has been their reaction?

It's some mix of anger on my behalf, support because they watched the episode and it does feel like a unique case, and the mockery has already begun, and I welcome it.

Well, you certainly dabble in self-deprecation, so in that regard, I have to imagine the material you get from being the first boot is a goldmine.

Yeah, there's that. Plus, in episode 2, I do storm the Tribal Council with a group of insurrectionists, so that'll be something for people to see.

Spoiler alert!

I'm not allowed to talk about what happens in the next episode.

Let's start big picture. What went wrong? Why are you here talking to me now?

How I have been thinking about it is, what could I have done differently before the challenge, and what could I or should I have done differently after the challenge? After the challenge, I felt pretty stuck. The machinations that take place after the challenge are hours condensed into a few minutes. Once Andy flips out, I really felt like the number of options dwindled. It just collapsed, because if Andy doesn't do that, then I think there were a lot of different possibilities that could have happened after the challenge.

My experience in the time there, it was naturally Sam and Sierra, Rachel and Anika, and Andy had kind of pulled me. And because things happened so quickly, that just became cemented. But I had felt a really good connection with Anika. And so I do think if Andy doesn't do that, there's a lot of different directions it could have gone when Andy has his conniption.

You think through all of these things about what could happen when you're there and I just hadn't accounted for: Oh, there's a possibility somebody will blow up their game because they will in that moment decide to not think enough about what it means to win, but rather just be desperately focused on what it means to stay. We've had people combust in a way that people are like, “Oh, this person is a liability,” and you've seen people turn on somebody. But it was just strange to have it happen in the same moment. So because that had happened, it made it really hard to pull anyone in to work with me and Andy.

The second problem is in a game where there are Shots in the Dark, it was very hard for me to actually move the vote onto Andy, because everybody's doing exactly what I would do — which is say it's going to be Andy and then vote for me. Because you're looking at these two people, you don't feel like you want to build something with them to the expense of the other people you're a little bit closer to. Andy is now weakened in front of the whole tribe. At that moment, everybody is recognizing that Andy is basically somebody you're either going to carry along or get rid of, but isn't really a threat anymore. We're 72 hours in, and he's been devastated emotionally by the game. And so the problem I had is, how do I persuade a bunch of people who are telling me the vote is Andy to actually vote for Andy?

That is sort of the challenge as we got back. They show a little bit of it, but there were a bunch of different conversations with Andy, with Sam, also I believe Anika and Rachel, just about where should the vote go. But in the end, I had to try to figure out how to get the vote onto someone else. And Anika’s name had been floated a few times. And so I was like, “Alright, let's try to see if I can get Sam and Andy to go along with this. Maybe Sam pulls in Sierra.” I thought that was one of my only ways out of this, and I didn't think it was likely to work.

There's a moment that Andy and I had, which isn't in there, where Andy's like, “I would never write your name down. You really are my friend.” And I kind of turned it in and I was like, “Man, you can keep saying it. We'll see what happens tonight, but right now I just don't know that I can trust you. If you want to redeem yourself, I'm really excited to see that, but that's what has to happen.”

And so I really was weighing like: What do I think is more likely— a one in six chance of doing the Shot in the Dark, or the chance that Sam and Andy are going to come along with me instead of Sierra, Anika, and Rachel? I even thought while I'm sitting there at Tribal Council, “How funny would it be right now to turn my bag upside down and grab the Shot in the Dark and go and basically show everyone that I'm going to use it?”

So that was sort of what I was thinking about in those hours leading up to the vote. I really did feel pretty stuck. If I have a regret about it, it is that Anika and I had a really strong connection at the very beginning. I could have maintained that, but it was very hard because people really weren't splitting off. It was just a very tight situation. The meltdown, combined with having not had a lot of strategic conversations beforehand, I just really felt constricted.

We didn't see you really bonding with people other than Andy, and you said in the episode you were having trouble making connections with your tribemates. Do you think that was an age gap thing, or was it something else?

I think there's probably a little bit of that. Also, Sam and Sierra seemed to pair right away, Anika and Rachel were in the middle, and it was me and Andy. And I think what you saw in the episode was real, which is that Rachel really discounted Andy. So then there was just a natural flow towards Sam and Sierra, and that really had nothing to do with me. I really did pay a price. It wasn't even a choice. I mean, you can even see it in my face. I really do think it was less of a social thing and more of just a strategic challenge in a group of six people where there's nowhere to hide.

What’s something that happened out there that did not make it to air that you wish we had a chance to see?

The machinations after we lose were a bit more complicated than what you see in the episode, which doesn't really come across. And I get why. And then beyond that, there was a lot of very funny performative bonding that happens of everybody like, “Oh, you like Thai food? I like Thai food!”

The making of the shelter and everybody wanting to be a leader was pretty funny. Anika kind of took the lead a little bit, and so they made something out of that. But the reality was that everybody was so afraid of being in charge that we kind of would stand in circles and just talk endlessly. And there were a few moments where we were moving as a group all around. That was part of the problem. We're moving as a group all around the camp, and nobody is splitting off into any kind of groups. And so you'd end up walking as a group, stopping and talking. We couldn't make any progress because nobody was in charge.

Francesca Hogi was voted out first and came back… and then got voted out first again. But would you consider coming back again if asked? Is there unfinished business?

Well, obviously there's unfinished business. I didn't get to do any business! Here's what I'd say. I have truly no regrets about doing it. I'm really glad I did it. Even just the short time I had, it was a fascinating and rewarding experience. When you get voted out of Survivor, you start figuring out the story you tell yourself about what happened, but that takes a beat. And when you're at Ponderosa, one by one these raw people come in and they just let it all out. And I learned so much about Survivor from those raw conversations before the narratives take hold. You can gather the little bits of information and a narrative to repair your ego a bit — kind of like what I'm doing with you right now. That was really fascinating, and it did make me want to have the experience I had hoped I'd have. So I would say, Jeff knows where to reach me.

He might want one of the greatest Survivor storytellers ever to come back because there hasn't been a lot of story yet to tell.

Imagine how good the story could have been if I had missed more than two dinners.

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