by Thinus Ferreira
Shaun Wilson (40), the IT-entrepreneur from Johannesburg now living in Cape Town, eventually couldn't wriggle himself out of a tight corner by persuading the remaining castaways in Survivor South Africa: Immunity Island on M-Net (DStv 101) not to vote for him and he got his torch snuffed.
We saw you said after the video message from your mom that you entered to win the money to make her life better. Did you enter because you wanted to play the game or because you wanted to win money?
Shaun Wilson: Playing Survivor has always been a life-long dream but at the end of the day my main goal was to play Survivor for me and win the money for my mother. So it was two-fold - I wanted to play Survivor SA and have that little benefit of giving my mother a nice Christmas present.
What was your strategy before you entered, how did you think you'd try and win?
Shaun Wilson: Initially I wanted to be mischievous and a bit of a villain but I realised within the first few day that people didn't know how to take care of themselves.
Being the oldest person, not only in the tribe but of this season, it sort of turned into this dad role where I was looking after everyone.
I went from wanting to play a mischievous and naughty game to being this person who ended up being a dad figure, being a carer and nicknamed "Pappa Shaun". That changed the whole game of what I wanted to play.
Do you think that you maybe talked too much?
Shaun Wilson: Look, hindsight is the worst superpower in the world.
Tribal council is actually three to three and a half hours long - it's a very long process. If I'm looking after my family, I will go head-on first and I'll take all the burns because I'm making sure my family's getting through.
At the end of the day, before merge, it was more about looking after my camp as much as possible, so you'll see at the double-tribal the whole plan in that tribal when I went in was - the first thing was to make these people that I've looked after feel so bad that they gave us back the machete.
Secondly, it was to throw Dino under the bus.
So there was always a method to my madness. There was tribal Shaun, there was challenge Shaun, and there was camp Shaun - three very different individuals. But what you see highlighted most during this season is tribal Shaun.
In the first tribal council at the end of the first episode you spoke a lot as if you thought you were going home, meanwhile, nobody even voted for you. Do you think you overdid it sometimes by speaking and what you said?
Shaun Wilson: So the first three days there was a huge target on my back because everyone thought I had an idol and the best way I thought of playing it - and I told Qieän - was "listen, I'm going balls to the wall in this tribal". I'm going to be throwing so much shade at everyone - I want people to think I've got an idol, so that they don't vote for me.
And that's genuinely the way you act at tribal council so that people think: Why's he doing this? He must have an idol to play for someone else.
In those hours at tribal I just couldn't get enough information from people because everyone said "we've got a plan, we've got to stick to the vote" but nobody wanted to tell me about this plan.
What was Survivor SA that you didn't expect it to be?
Shaun Wilson: I didn't expect to care for these people. I didn't. Not even close. Not even remotely. I thought I'd be able to backstab - well, look, I backstabbed a few people. I'll be honest. But they weren't part of my core circle. And you don't think that you'll care for these people.
It seemed as if you got backed into a corner and there wasn't a lot you could do eventually. How did it feel to be in that position where you're part of a smaller alliance and now you have to try and reach out to someone, hoping they will turn and not tell their alliance?
Shaun Wilson: I was always playing as if I was in the bottom.
Initially, I was at the bottom of Zamba, and then I was at the bottom of Zamba 2.0 because we were down 6-3.
So my whole gameplay was to stick to my core alliance and to throw people under the bus. I did it with Mike, threw Mike successfully under the bus. I did it with Paul. I spread the rumour that Paul had stolen the Futurelife bars. Threw him under the bus.
Threw Dino under the bus - and that was the plan in the last episode, to throw Santoni under the bus because I've been playing with her from day one of Zamba 2.0 and we were really close.
So I knew everything about her game and I realised that the only way for the five of us to get through is to throw the person who they suspect would flip the most, throw that person as much as I can under the bus.
Even though we were in a good alliance, we weren't in alignment. It worked really well when we were on Zamba 2.0 because we were 3-6, so any crazy strategy would work.
Getting to merge, the assumption is you've got the numbers but you can't play it like you've got the numbers. So in the last episode it was "Hi Santoni, here's the bus. Go for it."
The problem was that Amy had one idea, I had another idea, and unfortunately Amy's idea is the one that got executed.
When you spoke to Santoni, she stood with her arms crossed in front of her. When you do these little one-on-ones how certain can you be that you have trust and what you're saying is resonating with someone and that you have convinced them?
Shaun Wilson: I think you see it by my confessional after that section. I was at 50/50 on that because the last two and a half days I've been throwing Santoni under the bus with everyone! Everyone!
I knew her game plan, I knew everything. A lot of people didn't know it all but I had information available. I was not convinced that that would work but unfortunately, when you work in an alliance you have to try and succeed in reaching the outcome that the alliance wants.
Santi knew my game, I knew Santi's game. We both wanted each other out.
When you left tribal the first thing you did was go "aaaaargh".
Shaun Wilson: So a couple of things on that final tribal. I came across as defeatist purely because I'm trying to stick with my alliance and not ruffle feathers because if I had gone off it would have caused problems with Santi there.
So when I left that tribal that was the reason for that "aaaaargh" because I know if we had stuck to my plan and got rid of her I would not be the one going home. So that was the reason for the "aaaaargh" - the frustration that things didn't go according to the plan I had cooked up in my head.
Wanting to stay there - believe it or not - once you're in this environment, is a truly remarkable experience.
I constantly travel a lot, I work a lot, and being able to get into nature, with my hands, and not focusing on anything else but that moment is life-changing and leaving it means it's the end of that journey.
As much as you try to put yourself in those situations in real life - you're not going to stop yourself from eating every day. You're not going to go build a camp. You're not going to go chop firewood. You're not going to do things when you can walk across the road to go get luxuries.
Even though it's miserable and raining, even though it's cold, you learn so much more about yourself in those moments than spending time in front of a computer.
What were you surprised by to discover happened or that was said that you didn't know about?
Shaun Wilson: I knew everything, I knew that Renier was going to be throwing me under the bus.
I had a conversation with him earlier during the day, saying I don't think Amy's plan is going to work, if that's the case, throw me under the bus so that you can get further - I really had a father-son relationship with the kid.
But the biggest surprise for me was what Wardah said in her confessional, everything else I knew was happening but what Wardah said was a surprise because I didn't expect it.
Even though there are alliances we were extremely close and I looked after her - not just on a game play level but on a personal level. I thought that was a bit disappointing. But that's it - nothing else surprised me.
We're going to see you right at the end but we're also going to see you at the end of every episode now as the second member of the jury all cleaned up. How was it to be back in civilisation but not quite out of the game?
Shaun Wilson: It was still Covid-times. Still lockdown, so there wasn't much to do.
You're not really taken out of the game but you're not going to the shops! We're all still living in this bubble. So I think you didn't really get taken out of the game, we're still in it until the very end.
I remember the first time I got to the airport and I went into Woolworths and that was the first time I had been in a shop and it was just like ... that became like, "oh, I'm out of the game". I was back in the real world and it almost felt just too much.
When I left for the jury I still felt part of the game. You're still in game mode. And you don't have all those comforts of home. You can't see what's on the internet.
Survivor SA: Immunity Island is on M-Net (DStv 101) on Thursdays at 19:30
ALSO READ: INTERVIEW. Marisha du Plessis on her Survivor SA: Immunity Island exit: 'It's a great blindside.'
