Halfway through Survivor 49, Savannah Louie received an advantage that set her on the path towards an eventual win. A crucial Immunity Challenge victory (the first of a record-tying four) gave her a secret Extra Vote, as well as the ability to drop in on the people who were voting. It was enough to scare them away from targeting her number one, Rizo Velovic, and it helped pave the way for the two of them to do the impossible and make it to the end. Who would have thought, less than a month later, that not only would Savannah make a return appearance on Survivor 50, but arguably another secret advantage would prove to be the nail in her coffin rather than her saving grace.

Savannah knew she was (in) trouble when she walked into Season 50. As one of the two biggest unknowns, she garnered plenty of opinions about her in the preseason. Hoping to abate their fears, she came clean about her win almost immediately upon hitting Cila’s beach. Unfortunately, a fear of the unknown continued to be the headline for the former newscaster. Savannah went on a journey on Day 4, where she got the incredibly surreal experience of beating Colby Donaldson in a challenge, earning a secret “Block-a-Vote.” Not trusting any of her tribemates, she refused to disclose anything about it. But, like Christian Hubicki’s soiled pants, everyone saw right through it, immediately clocking she was dangerous.

Whether she knew this perception or not, Savannah sallied forth in trying to create a majority. She looked to form a foursome with Rick Devens, Joe Hunter and Ozzy Lusth. But any aspirations of that dream team quickly turned into a nightmare, as Rick’s reticence to play with Joe came to a head, as the two men got into it during a tense beachside chat. Pivoting the way any good “new era” player should, she instead focused her efforts from working with Ozzy to working against him, flagging the increasingly obvious duo between him and Cirie Fields. But despite Ozzy being a perennial target and Joe seemingly rankling the entire tribe, the danger that Savannah presented in theory outweighed it all. At Tribal Council, she got teary-eyed, discussing how she was able to be vulnerable to this group of returnees after putting up emotional walls in her original season. And those tears would soon douse her torch for the first time, as she was taken out unanimously.

Now out of the game, Savannah talks with Parade about why she chose to lie about her advantage, her reaction to the Rick/Joe argument, and how she looks back on a full year of playing and being watched on Survivor.

You end up not playing your Shot in the Dark at Tribal Council. What did you think the vote would be? How safe did you feel before the votes came in?
Dude, I’ll be real with you. I literally forgot that the Shot in the Dark existed. No one played it in 49. And then when you start playing Survivor, they don’t make a big announcement. They don’t say, “Hey, here’s your Shot in the Dark.” They just literally put it in your bag. And so I forgot it existed.

And so going into Tribal Council, I wasn’t super confident that I was going to make it out on the other side. There’s a moment in Tribal Council where I start tearing up, and I get kind of emotional And that’s really the point where I come to terms with, “I feel like there’s a 1% chance where I’m gonna survive this thing.” Just because the narratives and the words that I was hearing from my tribe mates at the time weren’t really aligning with the narrative that I was hoping they would have that would get me through that Tribal Council. And at the end of the day, a 1% chance of me getting through, that belief I’ll get through this, is enough. But, yeah, I really had no idea.

What were some of those narratives you were hearing at Tribal Council?
I can’t really give specifics. And part of it too, is my memory during that time, it’s awful. I have such a hard time remembering that period. But I just remember sitting there and listening to people like Christian and Emily talk. And I’ll be real; they’re a lot smarter than me. Sometimes they will talk and I have no idea what they’re talking about. But in that Tribal Council, they would talk, and I’m like, “This isn’t making sense.” Not just because they’re smarter than me, but because they’re thinking something that I’m not. And that’s where things really felt like there was a disconnect.

Well, let’s talk about something you had in your pocket besides the Shot in the Dark. You chose not to reveal the Block-a-Vote you had won on the journey. What made you decide not to disclose this to anyone? And did you get a sense that people were seeing right through it?
I guess I’ll give you a little background, a little context. After we voted out Jenna, I was very confident that I would be up next on the chopping block. And so when we had the opportunity to go on a journey, I wanted to go. Not just because maybe I’ll get an advantage, but because, if I only have a couple more days out here, I don’t want to just sit on the beach with these people. I want to go experience Survivor. I want to go and see if I can meet other people from other tribes. Playing against Colby, that’s literally so freaking cool.

My mindset coming into Season 49 was “I’m going to do this to win.” My mindset going into 50 was “I’m going to experience and have fun and do everything that I can.” And so when I went on this journey, I came back and I won, and I had that advantage. And my mindset is like, “Okay, well, if I tell one person, the entire tribe is going to know.” There’s no one who I implicitly trust on this tribe, and I didn’t want everybody to know I had an advantage. It is something where, if over the course of the couple days, l did feel comfortable and make a connection with someone, where I felt like, “Okay, I can trust them,” I would open up to them. But I just never really had that.

Did you have any big plans to use the Block-a-Vote if you survived Tribal Council?
No. I mean, you can only plan for so much, right? I don’t even know if I’m gonna be on the same tribe with these people after the Tribal Council. I think going into that Tribal Council, though, I was like, “There’s no way this is gonna be a close vote. I want Ozzy to go home, but it could very well be everybody on me or something like that.” And unfortunately, that’s what it was. My Block-a-Vote wouldn’t have made a difference. I knew that.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the season. You choose to seemingly immediately open up about winning Survivor 49. Was that always going to be the plan? And did you feel people look at you differently after that information became public?
No. I mean, it felt like everybody already knew I won. And so that’s kind of why, when we’re out there on the beach, I asked, “Do you guys want to guess how I did?” Because I wanted to see, A, who would actually own up to knowing that I won. And B. I also had a good idea that some of these people were working together. There had been a lot of talks about pregaming before we even got into the game. And if I say, “Do you guys have any guesses about how I did?” and I see two people look at each other, that means maybe they’ve shared information. Maybe that means that they’ve pregamed, or they have a connection that is stronger than it might appear.

I know you also didn’t reveal everything about Season 49. You actually told your tribe that you and Rizo were largely on separate pages after the merge in your season. And I’m not sure if you know this, but when I visited the Vatu camp, I saw Rizo tell Colby that he was so loyal because he locked in with “his girls” and went to the end together. What’s your reaction to how discrepant those stories are?
That’s so funny. We actually didn’t really get our story completely straight about how we would tell our relationship and everything. What I did ask Rizo, I was like, “Please do not tell everybody that I won four challenges.” But when I was out there, I really tried to stress my relationship with Soph from 49. Like, “Me and my best girlfriend, we went to the end together. It was us, Final Two.” And I was telling people that because I’m like, “Okay, hopefully you’ll think that if I’m your girl, we can go to the end together, just like I just did.”

Well, let’s talk about some of those people you were trying to build that connection with. Who were you clicking with the most during your time in the game?
I mean, me and Jenna connected right away. And I think part of it is because we’re both women who are strong and confident, and we can be a little assertive at times and just aggressive game players. But I also think it’s because a lot of the people on the beach seemed like they already had maybe stamps of approval or comfortability with one another before we got too deep into the game. It was wild to see how quickly some of these people connected when we were out there. But Jenna for sure.

And then, other than that, I looked up to Rick Devens when he played his first season. I talked about him in my Survivor application video. So I really wanted to work with Rick. I loved watching Joe in 48, just how loyal he was to his people. I really respected that as someone else who also played a pretty loyal game in 49, so I wanted to work with him, too. And then with Emily, we’re kind of the same age. I think there’s something so fun and beautiful about two women who can just be badass and work together. So I was hoping I could connect with her too.

You mentioned Jenna. She told me that she was in a confessional when the Ozzy plan was coming together in Episode 1, and that you and Joe had maybe reneged on it. How close was it to being an actual Ozzy vote at that first Tribal Council?
I don’t know. I feel like it was always kind of Jenna. And I say that because, I mean, you have Christian, Devens, Emily over here, and then you have Ozzy and Cirie over here. And Cirie was also aligned with the trio over here. So I think at that point, whatever Cirie wanted to do, it was kind of the ball was in her court. And if Jenna is going up against Cirie, Cirie is obviously trying to get Jenna out of the game. And so while Ozzy’s name was thrown out, I don’t know how serious that plan really would have taken hold.

Speaking of Ozzy, let’s talk about this foursome you attempt to form with him, Joe, and Rick.
No. No, no, no, no, no.

Oh, correct the record for me!
This is actually irritating to me. I feel like these people think I was an idiot or something. But Ozzy comes up to me and Devens, and he’s like, “We should do a foursome with the three of us and Joe.” And in my head, I’m like, “This is the most random hodgepodge group of people, Ozzy. Why would you approach us? None of us are working together at this point.” From my perspective, if Ozzy came up to me and said, “Hey, we should do something with the three of us and Cirie,” I would have been like, “Okay, I’ll buy into that.” But it just felt so random. But at the same time, it’s Survivor. I’m not gonna say, “No, you’re full of BS.” I’m gonna say, “Yeah, let’s do it.” I’ll be in any alliance that I can be in, especially when I’m feeling like I’m at the bottom.

And so that was Ozzy’s plan, and I think it was his hope. You hear him talk about in Episode 1, how he wanted to get a group of four, and then kind of bring that along with Ciri eand make everybody feel comfortable. And so I think that was his attempt at doing that, but it just felt so inauthentic to me. And so that’s why, when I ended up writing Ozzy’s name down, I kind of wanted Cirie to go home. But I knew no one was going to vote for Cirie. So I’m like, “Alright, well Ozzy, I know for a fact, is trying to BS me. So I might as well try to go after him. He’s Cirie’s number two at this point, so I’ll fire a shot at them.”

One of the reasons why that foursome fell apart was because of this argument that Joe and Rick had before Tribal Council. What was the mood like at camp once word got around as to what had happened?
Dude, it was wild. It was actually wild. Nothing like that happened in my initial season. I haven’t seen a blow-up like that on Survivor in a while. And what you saw on the show was a lot more tamed down than what happened in real life. And I think you can tell that too. I mean, you have seven people total on the beach, and six people were really concerned about their ability to work with Joe in the future.

And these six people, we’re fairly reasonable people. We’ve all been in tough moments before. Survivor doesn’t bring out the best in anyone, I don’t think. But for this amount of people to be this concerned about the possibility of working with someone closely or at all in the future, I think that speaks volumes to how intense that conversation was. You even hear Jeff make a comment about it at Tribal Council. That mood carried and lingered not only through the whole day, but into Tribal Council.

You mentioned during Tribal Council that you were being more vulnerable than your previous season, and were surprised with some of the people you were connecting with. Talk to me more about that.
Oh my God, I’m gonna get emotional now. had a really hard time in between 49 and 50 just with some stuff that was happening at home and coming back and everything. And when you’re out there, you don’t have your mom that you can call and bounce ideas off of. You just have these seven other strangers on your initial tribe.

And, boy, everybody was so great just listening and being so supportive. Because Survivor is this wild experience that maybe 751 people can understand. But it feels like very few people can understand. And so to just be out there when you do feel alone, but you have people who are able to listen to you and provide that kind of support, it meant the world to me then. It means the world to me now. And not only people who were so supportive out there on the island, but even after, at Ponderosa and everything. And then even when I got home and just continuing to check in on me, it has meant the world.

Thank you so much for opening up about that.
I get so emotional. I know people think that I cry because I want people to feel sorry for me. No, I’m just like a huge baby! [Laughs.]

[Laughs.] You had this unprecedented turnaround time between seasons, only coming onto 50 less than two weeks after playing 49. Were there more benefits or drawbacks playing back-to-back in such quick succession?
I think for me personally, it was a lot of downhill. [Laughs.] I mean, just physically, it was so hard. I remember that first challenge, the marooning challenge, trying to run through the sand and feeling like my legs weighed like 200 pounds each. This mindset of being constantly paranoid and not being able to — I mean, I guess I couldn’t really trust anyone. But I really didn’t feel like I could trust anyone in the game, either.

And I think a big thing too. My game for 49, it was pretty straightforward. If you watch 49, you know exactly how I play. I’m really not a scary player. I’m “what you see is what you get.” I’ll tell you straight up. And I think that if my season would have aired, and if I had more time to kind of digest everything that happened in 49, and other people see that too, I think I would have done a lot better. And I think people would have trusted me a little bit more, and I think I just would have performed a little bit stronger.

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of you kicking off Survivor 49. When we were out there in the preseason, you said it would be the “Year of Savannah.” But I don’t think you realized how that would encompass the entire year. So now that we have finally reached an ending — at least for now — how do you look back on what the past year has been like for you?
It’s so crazy. I woke up this morning and I know I just cried. But I feel overall very happy. And I feel like I can finally just celebrate my entire Survivor journey. There have been hard moments, for sure. But there have been so much, so many good things to come out of this. And it goes beyond just winning. It goes to fulfilling a childhood dream. It goes to making connections and best friends that I’m going to have for the rest of my life because of this. It goes to being part of something that is just greater than myself. I feel so grateful and just so happy. It’s like a weight has been lifted off, and now we can celebrate. I’m going to a Lady Gaga concert tonight! So we’re really going to celebrate.