The middle is a valuable position to be in on Survivor, and perhaps no one can prove that better than recently-crowned season 41 champion Erika Casupanan. As recently vocalized in the final Tribal Council, she made sure she was never at the top and drawing a target, nor at the bottom and falling out of power. And positionally, that put her in the middle as well, the key vote in several big decisions in the endgame. Erika came into the game wanting to start like a lamb and end like a lion. And she did just that, marching to a decisive victory, becoming the first woman to win in seven seasons and the first Canadian citizen to take home the million-dollar prize. Erika did not take a trip to Tribal Council until two weeks in, part of the dominant Luvu tribe. But she tried to make the best of her time off from Tribal, making relationships and setting her sights on ideal targets. Unfortunately, that scheming was beginning to boomerang back on her, to the point where a challenge throw was attempted to get her out. All of that built-up tension came leaking out when the tribes came together, as her fellow Luvus immediately set sights on her as an easy target. Indeed, who knows what would have happened if Erika did not make what ended up being a million-dollar rock draw. Because in drawing a grey stone, her prospects became far from gloomy. She got given the opportunity to “turn back time” and give herself immunity, changing the course of the rest of the season in many ways. Erika made good on her metaphoric second life, now guaranteed to make the jury phase. She joined up in a majority that targeted the Yases, all the while biding her time to strike from within. Meanwhile, she was drawing attention like she did in the premerge, this time from Shan Smith. Erika used the growing anti-Shan sentiment to help blindside one of the biggest players in the game, putting her in a new foursome that would dominate the endgame. But Erika never rested on her laurels, making sure to shore up her most important relationships with people like Deshawn Radden and Heather Aldret. Sitting in the Final Three, Erika did not necessarily have the tight bonds that Deshawn did, or the advantages that Xander Hastings possessed. But she made her pitch to the jury regardless, knowing she would have a strong but underrated game. And her boardroom experience paid off, as the jury gave Erika a historic and near-unanimous win. After the finale, Erika spoke with Parade.com about how she views her final Tribal Council performance, the critical moves she made both early and late in the game, and her reaction to what her win does for Survivor representation. You put in a solid performance, in what I think was a very compelling Final Three. Did you expect to win by the time the votes were cast, especially in such a landslide victory? I’ve worked in communications for almost ten years. A lot of my career is setting up people to be in interview situations, some of which are hostile. And being able to look at how the interviewer is reacting and figure out whether to pivot or stay on course. When I saw how the jury was reacting to Xander and Deshawn compared to me, I thought, “Oh, I’ve got this!” Before the votes were read, I thought I had maybe five of the eight jury votes. When they saw it ended up being a landslide 7-1, I was in shock! I think my eyes were going to fall out of my head, to be perfectly honest. (Laughs.) (Laughs.) So going into the finale and even coming out of it, there was a lot of discourse in the Survivor fan community about whether your edit was too understated to give you a chance of winning the game. How do you look back on the way your winning game was portrayed in the season? I have complicated feelings about it. I left filming the season really proud of how I did. I’m a big of the show. I’m aware of Edgic; I’m aware of what a regular winner’s edit looks like. So I thought, “Okay, even though I know that Luvu was dominant the first half, they’ll have to show me some way!” Watching the show and seeing that I had some moments in the premerge, but there were a lot of episodes where you didn’t see a lot of me, I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, am I not getting the winner’s edit that people normally get? Am I destined to a lifetime of having to defend why I won Survivor?” And I’m glad that it really started to turn around towards the end of the show. Even though the volume of my edit was a bit on the lower side, I think that the content they showed was quite positive. I kind of go back and forth because there are some times where it sucks. Seeing people believe there’s no point in rooting for me, because according to the edit, it wasn’t strong enough. But I also think it’s kind of badass. Maybe it makes the rest of the Survivor community think, “Maybe the way that we watched the show before needs to evolve. Maybe the systems that we cared about for so long need to evolve.” I think that in the game, I was underestimated, and I proved myself. I think for the audience, I did the same thing. So let’s talk about some of those things we didn’t see on Luvu beach. There was some perception from your fellow tribe members that you weren’t talking much game in the beginning. But it seemed like you were making key bonds with people like Heather. What were you doing during the first half of the game? I was prepared for the first part of the game to be a dangerous one for me. I know that there’s a history of Asian women not going past the merge often. I know that it’s easy to target people who don’t look like physical players. So I thought, “Okay, premerge is a red zone for me.” I didn’t expect to be on a tribe that won all the time. And it’s hard to anticipate what the dynamics of constantly winning tribes are going to be like. When I first got into the game, Sydney and I became friends right away. It’s kind of funny that we were painted as being these rivals. Sydney and I got along right away. We would just talk about the dumbest stuff and make each other laugh. I feel like none of our conversations made it on air because they were all either incoherent or inappropriate. (Laughs.) But we became friends. In the first part of the game, my plan was to get to the bottom of the majority alliance. I could see that Sydney, Danny, and Deshawn were really close. And I got kind of pulled into that alliance because I had pretty good relationships with the three of them. But I knew that I was very much on the bottom. With Naseer, we had a really complicated relationship. A lot of our in-game interactions weren’t positive experiences for me. So I actually wasn’t really interested in a game relationship with him, so I didn’t do a lot of strategizing with him at all. But I did feel the shift in the dynamics of the tribe. It became very obvious when I was on the outs with Danny, Sydney, and Deshawn. And by default, Heather and I spent more time with each other. We felt like a really, really tight friendship that is even present now. But I think the hard thing about Luvu was we were there for so long. By the end, I was so bored! We’re just put in this tribe with people we weren’t meant to get along with. Sometimes all of the days on Luvu kind of mixed together for me. We would strategize, and then a lot of the strategy would end up being inconsequential for the game anyway. You touted at the end of the season that you were able to get rid of the person you wanted out every single time. What strategy would you use to chalk up that success? With a game like Survivor, it’s important to understand where you stand and your strengths. For me, a big strength I brought into the game is that I never really had a major ego when it came to wanting to appear to be the best all of the time. I was willing to put things on the table and probe things. Help people to see that I could be a number for them. I kind of swayed the decisions one way or the other without them normally seeming that I was the one who was totally in command and totally in control. I knew that if I were in a position where it looked like I was in control, I would be toast. People were scared of me when I was just chilling! (Laughs.) But I think that there’s a lot of subtlety when it comes to playing Survivor. I’m talking about a plan, and then thinking about the best way I can position a person based on what I think this person believes about themselves and what I think this person wants to achieve in their game. Down the line, you became a key swing vote in important decisions like keeping Ricard versus Liana. How did you weigh your options in a game with so many variables? I always thought about the game not necessarily like, “What is the move that helps me right now?” But, “What’s the move that sets me up to be able to get a few moves later down the line?” Even thinking about something like Liana vs. Ricard, I really wanted to think about it. Even though Ricard is a bigger threat, I knew that it would set me up to have somebody who would be a bigger threat in front of me down the line. He was someone who was not really interested in targeting me. So even though at that moment, it might not have made sense to some people, for me, it was really the best decision. Speaking of Ricard, I’ll admit I was surprised to see him defend you so vehemently in the final Tribal Council, and that you apparently had this tight relationship. Talk to me about it. I think that the audience didn’t see that this group of Ricard, Xander, Heather, and I was actually a group that intentionally was pulled together. As soon as we merged, Ricard and I started to build a good relationship. We had really been talking a lot in the background about how we’d love to work together and how we wanted to create the circumstances to work together. So when it came to the final 10, we got put on to two different tribes, and it was Heather, Ricard, Shan, Naseer, and me. Ricard and I wanted to work together. So that was why at that point, I wasn’t really entertaining plans to target Ricard; I saw him as an ally down the line. And that vote was a trust-building one between us. By the time we got to that 3-3-2 vote, he and I had already known we had wanted to work together. I think the same goes for Xander as well. We didn’t really see it a lot, but Xander and I actually had a really close relationship. He’s a wonderful friend now. During that infamous moment on the beach, when the alliance of four walked away to leave the two of us sitting there, Xander and I had a really great and game-changing conversation. I asked him, “Do you like your position in the game?” He says, “No.” I say, “Let’s change it.” And he’s down. I positioned myself as, “I don’t really have a plan. But together, we can make a plan.” And I positioned myself as someone Xander could feel he had agency. I think that a lot of those relationships that I built with what ended up being that four-person alliance actually took a while. There was actually a lot of subtlety in building trust with them that eventually came to fruition. Let me read off some stats here. You are the first woman Survivor U.S. winner since Sarah Lacina in season 34. You’re the first Asian winner since Natalie Anderson in season 29. You’re the first BIPOC winner since Chris Underwood in season 38. And you’re the first Canadian to win, period! Earlier in the season, you talked about how important representation weighed on your mind while playing. How does that all play into the reaction to your win? Oh my gosh. You have to really try to wipe the grin off my face as you read off all of this stuff. I threw a watch party for my family and friends in Toronto. And I had a lot of people come up and talk to me before the show about how important representation is. It means a lot. I think that the funny thing is, as the audience knows, I was supposed to play Survivor in 2020. And I put a lot of pressure on myself to play the game that I thought on paper would be the best one. After going through the pandemic, we realized we didn’t have control. But we have enough to get through it. I totally changed my point of view going into the game. I thought, “I’m not going to try to be that Canadian woman of color hero. I’m just going to go and play for myself. I’m just going to be me, all of the good and the bad that comes with it. And I think that’s enough to win. Hopefully, if people like me, it’s good. If they don’t, they don’t.” In many ways, removing that pressure from myself helped me get to the end and do what I needed to do to win. I think that checking all those boxes is amazing. And checking them all off as my true authentic self is the greatest honor. You constantly spoke about playing like a lamb turning into a lion. But considering how much you played up being underestimated, how did you walk out of winning the season back into your real life? What did you learn about yourself? I mean, I don’t think I’m ever going to walk tall into situations because I stand at five feet on a good day. (Laughs.) Going into Survivor, the best relationship I had in the game was honestly the relationship I had with myself. I think that no matter what the circumstances were, no matter whether or not I had allies, or whether or not I had people against me, I was always really confident in myself and my abilities. Maybe I’m crazy, but I always knew that if I could just get a little step further, I would be able to make it to the end. And I think that getting to the end of Survivor and winning in a landslide fashion proved to me that that weird, quiet confidence I have in myself is very legitimate and can shake things up, as you can see from all of the records that I broke. I’m moving through the world like, “[Expletive] yeah, I can do anything.” And I hope that people watching will feel the same way. Next, check out our exit interview with Danny McCray, who was voted out in Survivor 41 Episode 12.
