Survivor 47 star Rome Cooney got a 'salty' reception at Ponderosa

Rome has fallen. That would be Rome Cooney, the sixth player voted out of Survivor 47. But even in a season full of blindsides, Rome’s elimination this week was especially epic — coming after the player delivered ample boasts and brags about how he was running the game and would be feasting on the bones of his enemy.

Instead, the entire newly merged tribe — even if the show refused to call it a merge at that point — turned on Rome after the former battle rapper attempted to flip the former Tuku tribe against one of their own in Kyle Ostwald. Unfortunately for Rome, folks were not buying what he was selling, so once he was fact-checked on his claims, the end was near.

What does Rome have to say now about his epic exit? Was he tempted to throw some bombs on his way off the Tribal Council set? And what was it like to watch it all play back on TV? We asked the Aqua-Mamba all that and more the morning after his televised ouster.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: First question: Who am I talking to: Michael Jordan or Kirk Hinrich?

ROME COONEY: Hey, apparently Kirk Hinrich, man. Things didn't work out for me last night, so I guess Kirk Heinrich.

Take me through how shocked you are when you see your name keep coming up on all those parchments at Tribal Council?

Honestly, I wasn't all that shocked. I knew that it was either going to be Sol or me, just because there was no other names being floated around, and in Survivor, if there's no names other than the name you're thinking is going to be being floated around, it might be you. So I knew that going into Tribal, there was a 75% chance that it was Sol in my head, and 25% chance it was going to be me. And I had my Shot in the Dark in my pocket.

I wasn't all that surprised that it ended up being me. I was more shocked that the people that voted me out wanted to vote me out. That's what I was more shocked by, because I felt like I was more of an asset to people than a hindrance at the time. So I think I was more a little bit shocked that those people wanted to vote me out instead of potentially using me as a shield or something like that.

Well, let's talk about your old tribemates. Did it surprise you that Genevieve turned on you so quickly?

See, I don't consider it really Genevieve turning on me as much as it is Genevieve not wanting to rock the boat. I feel like pretty much everyone got in that same mindset where it nobody wanted to rock the boat. Nobody at the camp was throwing out names until the immunity challenge, and it just seemed like it was all kumbaya until the immunity challenge happened. And then the second after that, it was a mad scramble.

I talked with Kyle the night before the immunity challenge, and then Kyle went and spread the information that I said and said that what he told me wasn't true. And in all actuality, everything I said was true! He wanted to target those people. They were his number one and number two targets. And I was fine with that. And I was fine with working with Kyle because to me those were two big name players, as well and Tiyana and Sam. But there was some other stuff said on the beach and that made me actually want to turn on Kyle. But all that stuff wasn't shown, so I'm not even going to get into it.

Get into it. What did he say?

He just said something about Caroline and Sue that was a little bit outside of the game. It didn't make the cut for probably obvious reasons, but I wasn't going to work with somebody like that. If I would've repeated that, I'd get canceled. I'd never say any of those things ever again and never host anything ever again. So I was like: Okay, I don't want to work with someone that's going to talk about people like this. And I told Sue and Caroline what he said. It didn't make the edit for obvious reasons, but that really just turned me away from working with Kyle. I thought he was a genuinely good guy, but when he said that, I just couldn't work with him anymore.

So it was personal stuff, not game stuff.

Yeah, it was personal stuff, and that's why I'm not going to bring it up.. Everyone in the game knows exactly what he said. Everyone knows, Sue and Caroline know. So it's just between Kyle and him figuring out how he wanted to play the game.

You were very classy in your exit, which is, of course, the last thing I want to see. I want the fireworks, baby! Did part of you think about dropping some bombs on your way out?

No, I mean, pretty much the bomb that I dropped was writing down Sam's name. It's a game. I feel like a lot of people forget that I'm a gamer. I didn't know what the show was 18 months ago. I'd never heard of Survivor 18 months ago. So the fact that I'm sitting here doing an exit interview with you now, I just got the chance to play the most awesome game in the world. So honestly, I couldn't be happier just for the opportunity.

Going into the game, you know that you have a one in 18 chance of winning the million. You also have a one in 18 chance of being the first boot. So anything can happen in Survivor. I went into the game knowing that as long as I have that mindset, that I'll be alright, and I went out there, I got to do so much in the six episodes that I was there, man. Those 12 days were absolutely jam packed for me. So I had a blast. I had a ton of fun. I got no regrets, man. It was a great time.

Listen, it’s clear you are a competitive guy, and an emotional guy. We saw those emotions when you lost that one reward challenge and how upset you were. So you put on a brave face out there, and you're putting on a brave face now, but I have to imagine this deeply stung. Are you telling me it didn't?

Oh, yeah, it definitely stinks. Nobody wants to go home. Nobody wants to not make the jury and things like that. Nobody wants to come home on a plane two days later knowing there's still what at that point, 10 people left in the game. It sucks. It just stinks knowing that I'm sitting here playing with my dogs and there's still people that are out there doing an immunity challenge right now. It definitely stinks.

So it hurts, but at the end of the day, like I said, you don't want to sit here and say what ifs and blame certain things. All you can do is look back and say: Okay, did I play as hard as I could? Did I have as much fun as I could? And did I leave it all out there on the floor? And I like to say, if you didn't play hard, you didn't play at all.

First off, as far as I'm concerned, you made the merge. If you're all living on a beach, and you have a competition, and only one person has immunity, and everyone's going to be vulnerable — that's a merge.

We were all a little bit confused out there as well, because we were like, “Okay, what's the difference between this and merging if only one person's immune?” There's really no difference. It's essentially an old school merge at 13, so I appreciate you for saying that. Technically, in the wiki it'll probably go down as not making the merge just because that's what Jeff classified it as, but to me, it was making the merge. I'm glad a lot of people feel it's making the merge too, how things went down.

What was it like watching it all play back on TV last night?

It was honestly pretty cool. It was awesome being able to witness me being so confident thinking that it's going to be Sol, and things like that, and then being able to sit in Jeff's seat as well. That was obviously an absolutely incredible experience. I pretty much got to tell Jeff, “Hey, the advantage isn't all that great,” and he let me talk about it right in his seat. So that was an incredible moment. Watching that back was surreal because in the moment you just blank out and you forget everything, and then when you watch it back, you're just in awe, like, “Wow, I didn't stutter at all. Wow, I was actually kind of on point with breaking it down off pretty much no food for 12 days, no reward challenges that I won.” I lost 27 pounds at that point. So it was definitely tough.

We saw all these super cocky confessional interview quotes from you last night. Was that all just one long ramble they chopped up into different bites or did the producer keep prompting you for more quotes about how you would be feasting on Sol’s bones and stuff? How did that all work?

Yeah, that confessional was really interesting. It was all one confessional, just me sitting there leaning against the rocks and stuff. But it was right before Tribal. I didn't want to go on because I know how important being around camp was right before we leave for Tribal. So it was just really, really unfortunate timing because pretty much while I was in that confessional, that was when a lot of conversations about me were also going down. So it was just really unfortunate timing that I didn't want to be away from.

But, at the end of the day, the writing was on the wall. I knew that even if I felt like it was a 25% chance, it was me. The reason I wrote Sam's name down is because listen, even if you play your Shot in the Dark, if you feel like it might be you, and you play your Shot in the Dark at 13, guess what? We saw what happened to Kaleb, you're going out next. It doesn't matter if everyone voted you out or wanted you out the game, you're going to go out sooner than later. So a Shot in the Dark at that point doesn't really save you. That's how I saw it. So I'd rather sit here and write down Sam's name and have a one in six chance that I'm still in the game and maybe create some chaos instead of playing my one in six chance of a Shot in the Dark.

We had this great exclusive deleted scene on Entertainment Weekly last week where you got very emotional and talked about how you were not a super confident guy back home and had a lot of insecurities, and were surprising yourself out there. So my question is:  Is this the real Rome we saw on TV, or was this Rome 2.0, or was this almost like a character you created for yourself out on the island?

It was honestly just me playing as hard as possible and having fun. A lot of people are sitting here like, “Man, Rome in these secret scenes and in these little deleted scenes, he seems like a great guy.” And then on the island cut, “Man, this guy is just talking about himself the whole time!” People have to remember, an edit is an edit. Teeny and Kishan, as much as the edit made it seem like they were annoyed with me, there was never a confessional from either of them in the tribe situation where they said they didn't want to work with me or that they couldn't work with me until Kishan said, “You know what? Let's do Rome.” It was a very strong alliance, and I think that that alliance just wasn't shown just to make it seem a little more interesting. But that alliance was very, very, very strong and very solidified.

So what was it like meeting up with Kishan and Aysha at Ponderosa? Tell me about that situation.

It wasn't a good one, I'll say that. I walked in and I walked downstairs and all the people were sitting at the table, and the first thing that someone says to me is Aysha says, “Well, it's about time.” And I'm like, “Wow, I'm going through this super emotional time. That's what you're going to say to me first?” I was just like, “Wow, salute to you.” It is what it is. Then I went down and I told her what happened, and I guess Aysha was a little bit confused. I don't think she realized how simple it was that if she just would've went with [the Sol vote], then she would've still been in the game. So I think she was a little bit in denial about that, but it was really just as cut and dried as that. So she was pretty salty to see me, I guess. But she was, I guess, happy that I got out of the game.

What was your post-merge plan? Did you want to stay Lavo strong or were there other folks you wanted to roll with?

So how I saw it in my head, I was like: Okay, there's not a lot of individual immunity threats left in the game. In my head there was Kyle, Tiyana, Sam, and myself, and I was like, we're probably going to run the gauntlet with individual immunities. In my head, that's how it would go. So I was like: Okay, there's only a few “physical and social threats” left. And in my head, the top two people were Sam and Tiyana when it came to social and physical threats. So I was like, I want to work with these threats because there's not a lot of threats left in the game.

Jeremy Collins, he had a great strategy about the meat shield strategy, and I kind of wanted to implore that as well and work with those people that were “in charge” or or running the tribe and things like that. So that's who I wanted to work with — people who I felt like would be good shields, and it just didn't work out.

What’s something that happened out there on the island that did not make it to TV that you wish we could have seen?

This is an easy one for me. The alliance of me, Teeny, Kishan, and Genevieve — that was set in stone before Aysha got back from the journey. Literally before Aysha even got back from the journey, we all had a four-person alliance, and I straight up told all of them, “Hey guys, should I go look for the idol so that Sol and Aysha don't have the idol on their side?” And they all said, “Yeah, that's smart.” So boom, I'm hitting the jungle. Within 25 minutes of our alliance, I'm looking for the idol to make sure that Aysha and Sol don't get it on their side. And everyone was on the lookout for me.

So it's pretty interesting when you see Aysha and Sol are always the ones like, “Man, where's Rome at?” And there's always Teeny like, “Oh, for real? Rome's gone?” It's just funny because in my head I'm watching it knowing that Teeny’s in on it and looking out for me. But edit-wise, it looks like Teeny is suspicious of me as well. But they knew I was out there looking for it.

What were your best and worst moves out there?

I don't know, I made a lot of pretty bad moves, honestly, out there. But my best move I would probably say is being helpful in challenges. It might have seemed like I put my foot down a lot when it came to the team challenges and things like that and what I wanted to do, but that was mainly because when you watch something happen and you watch someone not do it right, it's pretty frustrating. Because the thing that I know is, yeah, you might be mad at how I'm trying to quarterback this situation, but at the end of the day, if we win and we do good, no one's going to be complaining about how we did in the challenge, or who argued about what to do. The only thing people are worried about is getting the win at the end of the day.

So I would say that I'm happy with how I performed in the team challenges, aside from the puzzle, obviously. I'm excited with how I performed in the physical portions of the team challenges. But yeah, I'd say my biggest mistake would be honestly being too open with the information that I was getting. I was a big fan of if you get information, you tell the people that you want to work with the information, and that came to backfire against me at the merge.

It worked great for me in the pre-merge, but once we all hit the same beach, that plan backfired. Kyle got wind of it, everyone was down to vote Kyle based on what I had told Sam, Tiyana, Sue, Caroline — everyone was down to vote Kyle. And then Kyle won immunity. So that was pretty much where my game went down the drain as I picked the wrong player to target.

Who is your biggest competition to co-host the On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast next season?

Ooh, that's a tough question. If it's not me, I think Genevieve would give some really interesting insight. I think that Sol as well would be a nice touch as well. But yeah, I'm hoping that I get the job. I'm hoping that I'm able to land it. We'll see what happens.

Last question: What does the bottom of the water well look like and how much water did you have to submerge yourself in to get that idol?

There were so many rocks, man! I don't know why there's a bunch of rocks at the bottom of the well, but there were like 10 gigantic rocks like THIS BIG at the bottom of the well, and the key was underneath all the rocks. So everyone's sitting here, “Why didn't he just use the ladle?” And it was literally underneath all these gigantic rocks. So I'm sitting here, my hair was wet, the waterline was right here [points to forehead]. Everything from here up was wet, my whole shoulder was drenched. It was deep in there. So yeah, I had to fully descend into the well, man. But that's definitely a moment I'm never going to forget.