Chatting to POPSUGAR Australia the morning after her elimination from Australian Survivor: Blood Vs Water, Amy Ong said she wouldn’t have changed anything about her game… except maybe telling Shay about her plan to blindside Jordan.
“She ratted on me!” Amy said, “but I still would’ve wanted to make that move, I knew that I wanted to split them up. They kept throwing Mel’s name around because she was weak in challenges, and I was like, if Mel’s your target now, I’m next.”
Going into the game, Amy said that she “definitely wanted to go in and play, not just sit back and follow”, and play she did, taking a swing at two-time winner Sandra Diaz-Twine, and then attempting to split up the Red tribe’s other duo, cousins Josh and Jordan.
“I know people pre-merge are scared to make big moves, but you never know when it’s gonna be your last day in there, so why not make big moves now?” she said. “People are like ‘oh I’m gonna make big moves when I get to merge’, you don’t even know if you’re gonna get there!”
She added: “If I didn’t do what I did, I probably would’ve regretted it so much, honestly.”
Before Blood Vs. Water, Amy was a fan of the show but had never considered applying to be on Australian Survivor.
“Khanh is obviously a huge fan, that’s like his dream to be on Survivor, and then one day I got a phone call from him like ‘hey can you please do me a favour?’… and the favour was being his partner for Blood Vs. Water,” she recalled.
“I’m his only sister and I knew mum would never do that,” she explained. “I thought about it for about an hour, which is quite short! I knew he really wanted to do it, so I was like, ‘I have to do this for him, this is his only opportunity to do this and I don’t want to hinder that’.”
Of course, when they landed on the mats at Charter Towers, they were greeted by one very familiar face, two-time winner Sandra Diaz-Twine, who was joining the show with her daughter Nina Twine.
“Oh my God, when I saw Sandra, I was like ‘oh s**t’,” Amy laughed. “Honestly, she knows how to play, she’s won twice, she obviously knows what she’s doing! It was a bit intimidating, but honestly she is so sweet.”
Although Sandra was a clear threat, Amy said that she also offered her tribemates a ton of Survivor wisdom collected from her past experiences, which is why they “didn’t really want to get her out too early”.
Going into last night’s Tribal Council, Amy said that she thought she had the votes to blindside Jordan, but soon realised that something wasn’t right.
“It wasn’t until midway through Tribal Council that I realised that the questions were all being directed at me,” she recalled.
Unfortunately, by the time she realised she was on the chopping block, it was “too late” to do anything about it.
“When you realise, that’s when it’s too late, unless you have an idol. If I’d had an idol, I would’ve played it then,” she said.
“There was one line from Nina that really confirmed it, when she said ‘I know who I want to wake up next to tomorrow’,” Amy recalled. “I was like ‘Nina sleeps next to Josh. That’s who she’s gonna wanna wake up next to tomorrow’.”
Now out of the game, Amy is of course rooting for her brother Khanh to win the title of Sole Survivor, and the $500,000 prize money.
“Oh my God, he definitely has the ability to win,” she said. “He has all three things. He’s social, he’s physical, he’s strategic. He’s gonna go all the way.”
Australian Survivor airs at 7.30pm, Sunday-Tuesdays only on 10 and 10 Play on Demand.
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