Reality TV Updates

“Survivor” contestant Candice Woodcock thought she was playing smart and making rational decisions. She was resilient, and she made sure to smile in front of her opponents.

She played the game of “Survivor” on her own terms.

Thursday night, it was clear those terms wouldn’t take her to the finals of “Survivor: Cook Islands.” More than 15.5 million viewers watched as she became the 13th person eliminated from the show.
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Candice Woodcock talks about being eliminated

But Candice said in a phone interview Friday that she would do it the same way if she had another chance. She would have defected to a new tribe — based on the information she had, she emphasizes — even though that’s what eventually led to her ouster.

“Sitting back and looking at it afterward, it’s easy to say you shouldn’t have done it,” said Candice, a graduate of Terry Sanford High School and UNC-Chapel Hill.

She thought that she would have more allies on the tribe she joined and a better opportunity to make it to the final group of contestants. She said she felt like her days were numbered with Yul and Becky, with whom she had an alliance.

Several factors, though, contributed to the strategy backfiring, she said, factors she couldn’t have predicted. Her tribe lost challenge after challenge. Jonathan, one of her presumed allies, betrayed her and others. Yul, already a strong player, had the immunity idol, saving him from elimination.

“Had one of those things gone differently, I think I would have been there a lot longer and been more successful in the game,” she said. “But that’s part of what makes ‘Survivor’ great. You have to expect the unexpected.”

As a longtime fan of the show, Candice could expect certain things. She knew that food would be scarce, so she gained 15 pounds before going on the show, which was filmed over the summer. She anticipated tough physical challenges and the potential for isolation at Exile Island. She knew she could draw on experiences she had from being a UNC Morehead Scholar, she said.

She was surprised, though, when she learned the tribes would be divided by race and ethnicity, she said. It was a stunt that generated controversy before the show even aired.

“After the initial shock, I thought it was a bold move,” she said. “Once we hit the beach, it didn’t matter. You could have divided the teams by shoe size.”
Exile Island

She also didn’t expect to become so emotionally drained when she was sent to Exile Island four times, the most of anyone on the game. She had no food, had to endure cold rain and missed opportunities to bond and strategize with her tribe. She spent her time digging for the immunity idol, not knowing whether it was still on the island.

“I think I figured one of every six nights, I was on Exile Island,” she said. “The nights were so long. You have no way of knowing how many more hours it’s going to last. All I could do was sit by the fire and stay warm.”

She always returned to camp with a smile, though. Thursday night, she said Adam, her “Survivor” paramour, always asked, “Are you still smiling?” She did so to keep her spirits up, she said.

Oh, yeah. Adam. When Candice heard that five people had voted to send her home, before she got her torch snuffed by host Jeff Probst, she embraced Adam and kissed him for what seemed like a long time. Friday, Candice said that even though her fellow castaways saw their flirtatious connection, they didn’t know they had a romance going on.

“I knew I wanted to go out and have it be interesting because I love the show,” she said. “I kind of wanted to see some shocked faces. It made for some good TV.”

You can say that again. But what’s the status of Adam these days? Are they planning to have a white-picket fence like others joked about? Alas, the romance is over, she said Friday. He was simply someone she could trust in the game, she said.

“We are just friends,” Candice said Friday. “There’s nothing off the island. In a game for a million dollars, when all people want to do eventually is stab people in the back, it’s nice to have that.”

So she didn’t get the guy, but she did have a life-changing experience in her month on the Cook Islands, one that she’s still processing, she said. While she’s recently been busy as a graduate student at Georgetown University, she hopes to have some down time to reflect on her stint on reality TV.

“The reason I wanted to go on was that it’s one of the craziest ways to challenge yourself mentally, physically, emotionally,” she said. “It’s been interesting to sit back and watch the show, because in normal life, you don’t ever really have a chance to replay things in your life. It’s like holding a big mirror to your life, although a mirror with a crazy filter.”

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