Christian Hubicki made Survivor history in a way no player ever wants to — by becoming the first contestant forced to write down his own name at Tribal Council thanks to a twist from Jimmy Fallon. The wild Survivor 50 moment punctuated a sudden unraveling for one of the season’s sharpest strategic minds. In his exclusive exit interview with The Hollywood Reporter below, Christian explains how it happened, where the game slipped and why he’d still “always take the call” to play again.
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Do you have a message for Jimmy Fallon? Anything you want him to know?
Look, Jimmy, I am always open to reconciliation. I don’t know who has to get the mediator, but I think we can repair this budding friendship. I believe we can. And maybe it was just a typo. Maybe it was just a typo on the note that maybe Christian will not have to vote for himself. And so we’ll figure this out, my friend.
You became the first player to have to write your own name down at Tribal Council. If you’d kept your vote and had the extra vote, where do those votes go, and does it change anything?
The mere fact that I don’t have to vote for myself and announce that I have to vote for myself, I think changes things potentially a bit. Going to that Tribal, I wasn’t in a great spot. But Emily, to her credit, came out swinging to save me. She could have just thrown me under the bus, but she came out swinging to save me even before I got back, it seems, to pitch Ozzy. So that made her a target. In my understanding — and again, I come from a very particular perspective — the fact that I had to vote for myself made me just a clear target.
I think Rizo said that well when he said, “Look, Christian his back is against the wall. He has nothing to defend himself with. Why not take him out now? It’d be silly not to take him out now.” I think it was a helpful determining factor in me going home. But that said, I have to take ownership that that particular day, I made a couple of bad decisions — and you’re only as good as your worst decision on Survivor.
What were those bad decisions that you made that day?
For the first 17 days, I made a lot of very good decisions. Really number one, far and away, was telling Cirie I was interested in targeting Ozzy. I was even nominally aware that they had a relationship. Back on the original Cila tribe when we started, there were a lot of conversation, but over time that faded away. I have to give credit to Ozzy and definitely Cirie for having a way of just getting past that. And not to take anything away from Ozzy, I think he’s great, but Cirie has a way of communicating without looking like she’s communicating with people. She’s clearly crafted that so well, so it made it easy to forget.
On top of that, I was partly blinded by how much I wanted to go deep with Cirie. And yes, Rick and Emily, huge allies, love working with them, no inclination of wanting to turn on them. But Cirie is the one person who I’m fairly sure is almost certain to have a bigger target than me. Not that I necessarily would be the threat to beat at the end, but in case I was, like I was perceived on my first season, I need someone who is a bigger target, a bigger shield.
I told Cirie on my first day on the beach, “I want to go to the final three with you. This is going to sound crazy, but we both have a similar problem to vastly different degrees. We both want to punch through to the end of that game. I’m not you, to be clear. But there are shades of the same problem. So what if we work together? There will be times where I will need to protect you and I’ll happily do it. And there will be times that I will need to be protected by you. But in the end, we will protect each other and go to the end.”
Now, would I have gone to the end [with Cirie]? Probably not. But at least it gets me deeper. I put so much stock into needing that endgame option. I think it blinded me to what other relationships were like. And while I am flattered to be Cirie’s number three, like she said on the island, it’s easy to forget that you’re not number one, right?
Ozzy Lusth and Christian Hubicki.
Let’s talk about your overall game. You had gastrointestinal distress, called Ozzy “Polly Prissypants” and formed a Star Trek alliance with Rick Devens. You were killing it and seemed to have the game under control up until this last episode. So when did the game slip away?
The show, I think, did a pretty reasonable job explaining even what I understand to this day to be true. I’m sure there are things I’m unaware of, but the reason Jonathan was targeting me, for instance, was because of the previous vote at the pairs Tribal Council. That vote I felt was existential, because the way it paired up, that Coach and Chrissy had to go. If they didn’t, there was this potential big, giant alliance of old school thinking people that wanted to band together and would seem very loyal to each other that could have taken control of the entire game and have us on the back foot and basically in the minority. So it had to be Coach and Chrissy. That was the easiest decision. But to do that, Jonathan couldn’t know, because clearly Jonathan was in with this group and I was paired with Jonathan.
Jonathan started to try to take me in, but I had to deceive him a lot. I had to pretend to him that I wanted Devens and Aubrey out. I kept telling people that. And even that Tribal Council, I’m saying things like that because he cannot know what the plan is. Then it kind of got all blown up anyway. So he looked at me, I think as someone who betrayed him and that’s why he wanted to target me. Was that enough to get me out? I’m not sure. Maybe other people had similar ideas, but once you have that and you also have Cirie wanting to target me, that was a real turning point.
It’s possible if I just lay low and say, “Cirie, what are you thinking? There’s so much going on. What do you do? I’ll be happy to go whichever way you want. “Maybe she doesn’t target me. Maybe she goes after one of these other people. I was hoping it wouldn’t be Rick. That was my concern. But if I let her drive a little bit more, maybe it worked out better.
Let’s talk about early in your game when you had some issues with Ozzy because you decided to take out Mike White. When I talked to Mike, he told me in his exit interview, and I’m quoting him, “There’s a part of me that thinks Christian felt like I shouldn’t have been asked back.” And when referring to other players possibly angling for a White Lotus cameo, he said, “Both Emily and Christian are purists about the game and saw that as some kind of unfair advantage.” Are those accurate or inaccurate takes by Mike?
In terms of The White Lotus cameos, people use whatever they can to get further in the game. The only reason Mike was the target was all about diffusing my target at the merge. If the three of us went together into the merge, after we were on a tribe altogether, it would look like I was protecting them. After I was telling people, “No, no, we’re not working together.” But in fact, I wanted to work with Mike. I absolutely did. But when we kept going to Tribal Council at the swap, I had to get rid of one of them. Originally I was like, “Oh, it’s Angelina.T hat makes all the sense in the world. Angelina and I are not that tight.” When she gets to the merge, she’s a person; I’ve been there, she just goes to the end. She goes from being a target to not a target very quickly.
So I was like, that’s bad because who’s the target? Me. And people love working with Mike. Celebrity or not. I’m the target of the three. One of them has to go. But then when Mike is really pushing to keep Angelina to the point where he’s trying to get me to ignore the danger to me at the merge and say, “Just get rid of Emily instead.” And when I ask him about what we are going to do at the merge, he’s like, “We’ll figure it out.” I’m like, “Oh no, there is no plan. He just wants to save Angelina.” At that point, I start looking at Mike as a person that is not my closest ally, but someone who is the glue between Angelina and Ozzy. Yes, Ozzy will be mad, but Angelina and Ozzy are not a natural fit. They’re unlikely to lie together to get me out of the next vote. And sure enough, I caught no votes in the next Tribal Council. What was the other accusation?
Mike said, “There’s a part of me that thinks Christian felt like I shouldn’t have been asked back.”
Oh, no, no, no. I think that’s sad. I’ve been Mike White’s biggest supporter over the years. I voted for him [in the David vs Goliath finale.] I thought his game was transformative. He absolutely earned, irrespective of his celebrity, his spot on Survivor 50. I’ve always said he’s an excellent player. I said he was a transformative player. He earned that spot. I don’t know exactly where that comes from. I think there might be people who think that, but I’m not one of them.
What’s your relationship with Mike White now?
I think it’s a bit of a hiatus because when I got back from the island, I knew he’d be understandably hurt. The thing is, I know he has many, in my opinion, great things going on in his life, and I’m thrilled for him. But I also know he loves Survivor. Of all the things he could be doing in his life, he goes back and plays Survivor again, where he doesn’t eat and he got ripped to be on the season. Purely strategically, the move was to get rid of Mike. And I think time has borne that out. There was no part of this that is like, “I don’t think Mike would’ve been able to save me from being targeted at the merge.”
But my point is that I knew it hurt him because he wanted to be there so badly. So I reached out to him as soon as I got back and I sent a message, an absurdly long voice message basically saying, “I felt I owed you an explanation for what happened. This was not some grand plan. I wanted to work with him. I did. It was just a bad situation and why I targeted him instead of Angelina. The thing I liked about it the least is that it would hurt you. And I knew that it might, and I knew it probably would. So I hope someday you’ll understand that my phone’s open to you whenever.”
Survivor host Jeff Probst.
Your last challenge was a major first. You are one of only 11 people to ever participate in a challenge with Jeff. What was going through your mind when you saw he was going to participate? You even outlasted him.
Of course, pride in the end. But what I realized, so much as I enjoyed on Survivor: David vs Goliath doing a long endurance challenge where I’m yammering at Jeff Probst and he’s my hostage, I also realized it’s an opportunity for interrogation and extortion. So you can hear me yammering. I was starting to talk about, “Jeff, when we’re done with the season, we tend to do these little exit press interviews and some of these postseason interviews, you limit it to an hour. I would like it not to be limited to an hour if I beat you. Can you please do that?” I’m negotiating that stuff and using it for leverage because he’s in pain and he’s not of his full mental faculties. That’s what I’m thinking. Leverage.
After season 50, do you feel you’ve put a bookend on your Survivor experience, that you accomplished everything you wanted or would you play again if asked?
If I was asked, I’d always take the call. I know realistically there are so many people who have not gotten a second chance on the show who are due to be called back, and I sure hope that they are. But if someday down the line they’re saying, “We need more metaphors at Tribal Council again. The people stopped giving them.” I’ll send them my rate. It’s very reasonable.
We started our conversation with me asking if you had a message for Jimmy Fallon. I’d like to wrap things up with a message you might have for your son Michael. Imagine years from now, he’s watched you play twice and he’s reading old exit interviews. What do you want him to know about you and season 50?
I want him to know that in life you should always be kind and good to people, and also that you should be able to stand up for yourself and try to fight for what you feel like you can earn. That you feel it’s okay to try to win as hard as you can, so long as you’re respecting others. My first season — I talked about this when I met you, Terry, out in Fiji — when I got voted out in David vs Goliath, I was like, “Yeah, I did really well. But I guess it was my time.” But you know what? There’s always an opportunity to do better. There’s always an opportunity to realize, “You know what? I am worth it. I can earn this for myself. That’s okay. You don’t have to limit yourself.” And that’s a great way to live life.
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Survivor airs new episodes on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.
