Genevieve Mushaluk reveals the one part of Survivor 50 that truly frightens her

What happens during an interview with someone who hates being interviewed?

Genevieve Mushaluk doesn’t like the attention. Which makes her something of an anomaly among reality television contestants, who never met a camera they didn’t want to make passionate love to. Also, people who don’t like attention generally don’t sign up for a TV show once, much less twice. So what gives?

That is simply how much Genevieve loves playing Survivor. She’s willing to endure the pregame interviews she describes as “painful.” She’s willing to put her face on television even though she finds watching it back absolutely “terrifying.” She’s even willing to — SHOCKER! — finally set up a public social media account after hiding in private during her previous season.

So why did a woman who doesn’t like talking about or watching herself come back for Survivor 50, the most heavily publicized season in franchise history? That’s what I aimed to find out from the 34-year-old fifth place finisher of Survivor 47 when we sat down in Fiji for yet another torturous stop on her pregame press tour. And it turned out to maybe be my favorite interview of all.

(This is one of 24 deep-dive, on-location interviews with the Survivor 50 cast. Links to the other interviews will be posted at the bottom of this article as they become available.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I know it hasn’t been long, but any updates since you last played Survivor?

GENEVIEVE MUSHALUK: I got a dog. That’s it. It was because I was so anxious in the fall while [Survivor 47] was airing and I was like: We need an animal in this house. And then it worked out perfectly. Now my husband isn’t coming back to a house all alone. He’s got Booker. And that’ll keep him busy.

Tell me why you’re going to win Survivor 50, Genevieve.

I’m going to win Survivor 50 because I have learned a lot from my time on season 47. I came from a very diverse cast with lots of great players with different strengths, and I had the luxury of actually getting to know them once the game was over and now they’re good friends of mine. But if I can take all the strengths that existed on 47 and blend it together and apply it to Survivor 50, I think I can outdo anyone here.

Why come back and do this again?

I was honestly torn, and I don’t mean that to sound ungrateful. I think Survivor is amazing. It’s a two-part experience, which you don’t appreciate as a fan because you come out and play, and then a significant amount of time passes, then you watch it on TV and it’s different than the experience of playing. I really like one side of the equation much more than the other.

But I had applied for the better part of a decade and kept hearing no, and I don’t have it in me when Survivor calls me to say no to them. So I’m back here. I’ve got a lot of concerns. I’m not excited for a year from now when it’s on TV, but I’m so excited for a day or two from now when we get to start.

When I did a series of Survivor Quarantine Questionnaire interviews with players talking about what it was like after playing, I was struck by how difficult it can be for folks after the game, especially the anxiety as the episodes begin airing. Cochran told me it completely took over his life.

Totally. You don’t sleep on Tuesday nights because Wednesday is the worst day of the week, where as a fan, it’s the best day of the week. It’s really tough to be a fan of the show when you’re on the show for some of us, and Cochran’s totally right in saying it takes over your life.

And then you kind of feel like maybe not the best partner or sibling or child or coworker because you’re being so self-obsessed, and it’s because your anxiety is in overdrive because you’re going to be exposed and vulnerable in such a dramatic fashion in a way that you can’t control from all of your best and worst moments out here. So it’s terrifying. I’m scared just thinking about it. Is it too late to send me back to Winnipeg?

It’s impressive that you can handle it, even if you do struggle with it. We all know your previous arc in terms of playing this sort of intentionally cold, connectionless game, and then finding yourself getting emotional. That’s the way you entered the game last time. How are you entering the game this time?

So you all didn’t get to see too much of this because you sort of met me in episode 4, but that’s actually not how I entered the game. I did not enter the game with that strategy. It was born out of the game sort of surprising me from an emotional perspective, so that’s definitely not how I wanted to play.

When I entered the game, it became a coping mechanism for the challenges of the game. And so this time I want to be a lot more intentional in the other direction now that I know how it’s going to play out and how I’m inclined to react to that emotionally. And then what that triggers in me in terms of shutting down, I’m going to be a little better prepared to recognize it and redirect that guilt or anxious energy into something more positive.

So it’s going to be different. And if it’s not, then I’ve failed because I have two goals: win, and learn from that specific mistake and do things differently. So I’ve got to at least do one of those.

How do you think other players here see you?

I think they’d be like, “Who?” They’d be like, “Seriously?”

Why do you say that?

Because there are so many more impressive people who are going to sit in your tent today and yesterday. And I partly say that as a joke, I partly say it because of imposter syndrome, but also because one of the things I love about Survivor is it takes ordinary people and puts them in these extraordinary circumstances, and you see what ordinary people can do.

But there have been people who’ve played survivor like Ozzy, who I would say is not an ordinary person. I don’t know many Ozzys in my real life, these people who fit in the jungle, I don’t know many Ciries, who are just infinitely charming and able to maneuver in any social circumstance. So I feel like I’m surrounded by not a lot of regular people, and then I’m just the regular girl from Winnipeg. So someone sitting in this here tent might overlook me, but I might be able to use that.

I mean you had a big, branded move in Operation Italy. Great marketing on that, by the way.

Oh, I’ll give that one to the guys. That’s Andy and Sam. I just had the red coat.

You don’t think that hovers over you as you hit the island?

From my experience, it was so much Andy’s incredible deception and acting and Sam’s creativity and willingness to make a move happen and I just did the arts and crafts. I was just making the fake idol.

I know that you and Sam had discussed that move before Andy brought it to you and that you had already talked about something very similar, so I think you’re selling yourself short — intentionally so. Self-evaluate for me. What’s your biggest weakness in the game?

My biggest blind spot is myself, because my self-image is plagued with my own insecurities and I think it prevents me from being able to accurately assess and then manage my threat level in the game or how people see me. All your questions about me, those should be the easiest ones and they’re the ones that I struggle with the most. So I’m going to have to work on that in a way that doesn’t feel like icky to me.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and usually people come back for a returning season and you would think, “Okay, they’re going to be a lot more confident. They’ve been told, ‘You’re worthy, you’re an all-star.’” But you’re also going against other all-stars, as you’ve been talking about. So how are your insecurities as you enter the game opposed to when you entered season 47?

Good question. I’d say they exist, but they’re totally different. I’m not afraid of the things I was afraid of before. I’m afraid of new things this time. So when I came out for 47, so much of what I was afraid of was, Can I do this? There are so many unknowns about just the game that I haven’t seen it before. I haven’t been out here, I haven’t experienced it. And that’s what I was afraid of before.

This time, I’m calm. I know I’ve got the skills to do this. But ignorance is bliss the first time you come out, and when you come back, you’re like, Oh no, I remember exactly hard this is. I know I can do this, but I know it’s totally going to kick my ass. And I know there’s an element of luck and things I can’t control. And in a returning player season, there are relationships, some of which I can guess at, some of which I’m sure [are] under the surface that I have no idea exist.

And so there are new concerns that exist in a returning player season that don’t exist when you come and play your first time. It’s like when you’re in university, it seems so hard, and then you get your first career job and you’re like, “God, send me back to university! Those were the good old days! I was sleeping in and everyone else was just as scared as I was.” You never know you’re in the good old days until they’re gone.

Anything on a personal level that you regret from the last time you played?

The thing that jumps to my mind when you say that is I spent a lot of time beating myself up over, specifically, voting out Kishan, because that was a significant personal relationship to me then. And now, we would get along, but it’s not a significant personal relationship to me now. Whereas Sol, I couldn’t stand him in the game. I had such a negative experience and impression of him out there, and now it’s a very significant personal relationship to me.

So I regret thinking the game was real life, because it has a way of fooling you because it’s your real life in that moment and it’s real in the sense that you’re touching it, experiencing it, living in it, but it’s not the real you or the real people you’re playing with. And so it’s difficult to balance doing the right thing with the brain you have that’s built for the real world when you’re in the Survivor world.