Survivor 48 Mary Zheng Post-Elimination Video (Exclusive)

Because we'll start with where things finish

You know, Survivor is often described as an emotional roller coaster. And in one evening, you got to experience the frustration of, you know, your plan going up in flames, the devastation of getting voted out

And then simultaneously, the confusion of one of your former allies giving you a standing ovation on the way out

Give me your like entire reaction over the course of like that 45 second period of time

oh my god I was really proud of myself because I was like damn I am serving in my final episode

um I made myself laugh uh when I watched myself crack all crap crack oh crap open crack open all

the coconuts um I made myself cry when I cried when I didn't get picked for the reward and I

made myself proud when I you know saw myself playing so hard you know I was doing

the best that I could, you know, and I was trying to appeal to really smart people. I was trying to

appeal to really smart people with logic. And it didn't work out. But I don't really think there

was anything else I could do. But I was and then I was Oh, my God, I wanted to cry out of sadness

when I got voted out. And I did not expect that I would be crying out of laughter at David

standing up. I had heard about that moment. Okay, like, honestly, I did not see that when it was

happening i did not see that i was you know out of body um when it was all going down and i'd heard

people be like yo david stood up and i'm like the like like like stood up once sat down or like

what's going on like but to see him just literally stand up as if i'm his fallen comrade uh i love

david so much that was hilarious david has always been just a really you know he's got a lot of heart

And in that moment, he was he was he was feeling it. So, yeah, it's hilarious

And also Star trying to hold back her laughter, trying to be like as polite as she could, literally while in her mind thinking, God damn, David, sit your ass down

Well, I know that's what Star was thinking. I want to stay on the David train for a second, because this clearly was, you know, one of your tightest relationships throughout the whole game

I'd love to hear your perspective on it, especially because, you know, when I talked with David about it, he sort of vocalized that, you know, maybe it was not as requited in a manner of speaking

I think he said that you were, you know, rather clingy with all the stuff that he was doing

Give me your reaction to all that and your perspective on the relationship. Yeah, yeah, yeah

When I saw that David called me clingy, I was like, David, come on

I love David. But I have to clear up that from the first day of new Loggie, David, Eva and I collectively agreed that we would be working together

We were collectively hyped to work together because it was mutually beneficial

I hope you put the emphasis on those on those things. Mutually italicized beneficial because I was a number for them

um and they were the first people since day fives when kevin got voted out who wanted to work with

me who i could trust um i mean we see eva is not a good liar eva does not really lie and so

who doesn't want to work with someone who doesn't lie and then david so strong um like i

know people are gonna be like oh my god she said he was so strong okay guys there was nothing romantic going on between me and david ever ever ever nor will they'll ever ever be

but David was going to help us win challenges. Um, and prevent and, and stop me from going back

to tribal council coming from Vula, where I went to tribal council every single time that

one could go to tribal council. I was elated that now I could work with someone who

could prevent that. Um, and, and yeah, so it was, it was, it was from the beginning, it was David

Eva and I collectively agreeing that we were going to work together. And they didn't also show that

even I had a relationship as well, which got completely soured when, you know, they voted

out David. But, you know, listen, I don't think people understand the desperation that I felt

coming from Vula. I know desperation is not cute, but also there is no way that anybody who survived

Vula would not be desperate because I felt like I had gotten so many second chances. And so

So every time that I was alive on that island I was like it could be my I was like it can be my last day And and so they wanted to work with me and i could trust them and uh listen if you selling i buying well i want to talk

about some of the final things that you did in this episode going back to the eva of it all because

you know um unlike that machete you were swinging around you know you were blunt in some of the

stuff that you were doing whether it was that conversation with eva over the coconut where you

tell her like listen you're probably going on a reward and i'm not which ends definitely i said

i said you're definitely going on a reward you will be picked you will be eating tomorrow and

then you have obviously your sort of uh move where you you just tell joe openly in front of a mixed

company yeah i'm voting for you were these part of any sort of tactics you were pursuing or was

this more so from like a don't give a attitude i'm on the way out anyway might as well like

really call out what these people are doing to their face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have more

tact if I felt like I had more life in the game. But I knew that it wasn't going to happen

whatever I was trying to cook up. And so I just reverted to my real life self, which is incredibly

blunt. And I'm very happy that I did it because like, listen, it's not very often that you get to

say what you really feel to people's faces. So, I mean, to that point, you had experienced some

really interesting conversations with both Eva and Joe in last week's episode, right? Where you

had even sort of called out in the confessional, like, yeah, I know this is jury management on both

of your parts. Talk to me about what your reception to that was. Because, I mean, to your point

you had a tight relationship with Eva earlier. So I imagine you were feeling a certain way where

after David's blindsided, she sits you down and to a certain extent is basically like

yeah listen uh i'll try to protect you but no promises yeah no um i actually i didn't enjoy

that conversation with eva at all but also i left it being like damn respect like that's a hard thing

to say to someone's face to be like hey i i don't know if i want to i'm not working with you anymore

um i didn't like it but i did respect it um i think because like in my life i have um

like struggled to be i'm really blunt now but in the past i i'd struggled with people pleasing

tendencies and so i was like damn she's just being real um i want to say i did the reason i asked her

if she would use the idol on me is because when she unlocked star's idol um she was like i'm using

this on all of us and so you know a girl's got to shoot her shot right like if she said that before

like maybe she still means this maybe um so yeah that conversation with eva i was okay with it

because she wasn't pretending to be doing anything joe's i was annoyed at i was like damn i gotta

sit through this um because it was very clear and i love joe and eva both um in real life

um not in the game but in real life and um with joe's i was just like damn like you're really

wasting both of our time right now by like making me sit through this it's also not helping you at

all in any way it's not achieving what you think it's achieving you mentioned before that you know

you had a very good sense that everything you were pitching was not being caught by everyone outside

of joe and eva why do you think that was the case was it particular relationships was it just the

the way the game was at what made you feel like this was such an open and shut vote to get you out

uh okay so to keep myself organized I think it's two prong the answer is two prong I don't know do

people even say that whatever and then but the reason I knew it was happening was because nobody

made eye contact with me like the last couple of days was really hard for me because I knew

that it wasn't personal but um I really felt it in my heart because in my head I knew it wasn't

personal, but there's a lag between your heart and your head. And my, what my heart was picking up

was that nobody's talking to me. It looks as if I'm going to infect people with cooties if they

just make eye contact with me. So that's how I knew. And I think the reason is two prong. First

the relationships that the people had were really tight. Like throughout the season, you hear people saying, this is a season of relationships and connections

I left the Island thinking that I was going to be like Venus and not have a single friend

I left the island before I got to Ponderosa and I thought damn I really going to have to go to these viewing parties with people And well actually I not going to go to them The one that you know if there one that the show is hosting I go to that But like any other ones like damn I guess I just going

to watch it solo. So in a season of connections, I had no connections and everyone else had day

one connections. Kyle and Camilla, Eva and Joe, Shaheen, Eva and Joe. And so I think they were

just really tight and the second reason two prong right not one prong is that people were

after the game a lot of people came up to me and they were like yo we're sorry we didn't play with

you we're sorry we didn't talk to you or try to get to know you because um we thought you were a

threat and we thought that if you made it to final travel council you would win and take all the votes

rightfully or wrongfully my cast mates viewed me as a threat I think they didn't know that so much

of me getting off of Vula was luck but what they saw of me um their perception of me was that I was

very manipulative um that I was you know like physically not bad of a competitor um

and I don't know why everybody just kept saying I had good social game but I'm like the I

like literally have not had like a personal conversation with any of you guys I've tried but I also just can't get along with you guys in the game I don't know why um but yeah rightfully

or wrongfully my castmates viewed me as a threat and they didn't try me to be missed there and they

didn't want to sit next to me final trouble council well you talk about these sort of duos or you know

day one you had a rather complicated i don't even know if you want to call it a friendship

a frenemyship with say definitely not a friendship well i want to hear your perspective on this you

know twosome between the tailing each other through the jungle the arguing tribal council

the truce that you make the decision to turn everything at the merge we weren't tailing each

other i was being tailed that's very true i want to preface all of this by saying that after the

game ended say called me and apologized and i accepted her apology so i just want to say that

preface everything that i say with that um but yeah out there she made my life a living hell

um i did not have fun at all on vula everyone's like oh my god did you have fun

and I literally told people like after the season ended right people were like did you have fun and

I'm like no I didn't have fun like are you crazy were we watching the same show I'm literally being

chased I feel like I'm prey right now I'm on the island I'm walking with Justin and say

and uh Justin say or Cedric they're always staying a few steps behind me whispering about me and I I

just keep turning my head around to like interrupt their conversation because I don't want them

plotting against me like I slept on the beach while all of them slept in the shelter because

I could not stand the fact that I had to sleep and be vulnerable when you're most vulnerable

near people who wanted me out from day from the first tribal council I was on the outs so yeah no

I was not having fun at all um and that was mainly due to say but also because she's such a great

competitor but yeah when I said that I was having fun Mike I was lying I was not lying to other

people, I was lying to myself. In the game of survivor, you have to lie. And sometimes that

means lying to yourself. I knew that the only way that I could make it was not be physically strong

but mentally strong. I knew that if I allowed myself to feel the isolation, the fear and the

rejection and the hopelessness that I actually was feeling, I would not have the strength to make it

to the next day. Not that I'm being so dramatic, not as if I'm going to keel over and die

But I knew that I had to lie to myself and say that I was having fun

I had to try to convince myself that everything was OK. I did a pretty good job of that, convincing myself and I guess convincing other people

But yeah, no, I did not have fun at all. But you know what? That's OK, because even though life is about having fun, I firmly believe that experience

meaningful experiences are not always fun. Yeah, it's a very good way to put it

I mean, on that note, I would love to hear about how you sort of reflect upon your experience

Because look to say it was not ideal would be an understatement considering all the times you were on the bottom you know facing this tribe decimation you know getting this exhilaration of playing your shot in the dark but then facing all of these other you know moments of tumultuousness So how do you look back upon this experience I look back upon this experience and recognize the power of emotional strengths

The reason why I didn't even make it to the final phase of the last

challenge that I was in was not because I physically couldn't do it

It's because my soul was tired. Listen, like I, this feel after justin after stephanie after kevin after justin after david after star i had

that familiar feeling of surviving tribal and for half a millisecond being like oh and then

immediately dipping down my stomach like dropping to my feet thinking okay great but like what the

is next and day that was okay you know like from the first tribal council now we're at day 21

I had felt this feeling so many times and I think my soul was just like girl

maybe it's time I could not imagine a way forward and looking back I see that maybe if I literally

won all of the immunity challenges afterwards I could have done it but I was just tired I felt

like I had been actively antagonized on Vula and then I felt like I had been intentionally ostracized

um like the last few days and I I think my body and my soul was trying to protect me from

from having more emotional harm but I mean I would like I would like to say also that like

I understand why people did that like everybody out here is playing I have a lot of grace for

myself but that means I also extended to other people um the people that I played the game with

for everyone it was their first time playing and for everyone everybody was making the decision

that they thought was best for themselves. I cannot fault them for that. And I cannot fault myself for, like

feeling incredibly hurt by the last few days of the game. Like, when we came back from the challenge

nobody said anything to me. I thought that, like, oh, my God

if someone is going to cry in front of Jeff because they didn't get picked for the reward, at least somebody would be like, hey, man, like, it's okay

Nobody said anything to me. I felt incredibly hurt by that, But I also knew that it's because also it was such a tense time and everybody was in their heads and disappointed in themselves to focus on their own perceived failures to extend any kind of empathy towards me

This is why I love having conversations with you, Mary, is that you're incredibly open and incredibly eloquent with what you express

but I think the fact that you've been able to reflect not only upon your own feelings upon, again, an incredibly arduous experience

but then also extend that grace to the others just speaks about who you are and what you were able to bring within yourself

that allowed you to last three weeks within an absolutely up and down experience

So as always, I really relish not only the conversations we get to have

but the fact that, you know, you have been incredibly open about the fact that Survivor is not going to be this incredibly positive

life-affirming experience for each and every person. And so, as always, as we saw in this last episode lovingly

so I'm so thrilled you were able to open up about all that today because I think it's incredibly clarifying for a lot of fans too

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, literally, you know how I was talking about

how I thought I would be, you know, just, like, bitter and not have any friends? That completely changed for me when I got to Ponderosa

When I was getting out the bus, before I got out the bus, I looked out the window and I saw Cedric, Star, Chrissy and David standing outside

I thought, oh, , like, wow, like, I think I am going to have some friends

You know, like these people are showing me care and love, something that I didn't really experience

Or especially in the last part of the game, but I guess in the beginning, too

And that completely changed my outlook on this experience. Ponderosa was incredibly healing for me

and uh i really really have to like shout out all those people you know jerry who welcomed me for

for really healing me honestly well thank you so much for welcoming me and all the fans into

this conversation today and again opening up about this game mary you know how much i adore getting

the chance to talk with you and i know this won't be the last time so sincerely thank you always so

great to hear the best of course you're the best as well all the best to you and your family as well

And thank you as always, Mary, have an amazing day. Cheers. Yeah. Bye