“I should’ve turned on Aubry before she turned on me,” says Debbie Wanner. “I should’ve known she would do it to me when she took out Peter.”
After following Debbie’s Survivor journey over the last couple months, BCL caught up with her one final time. Now the third member of the jury, Debbie has lost her chance at the $1 million prize. She will, however, have a vote in deciding who wins the game.
Now, almost a year after the season was filmed, Debbie has had a lot of time to reflect on her experiences out on the beach. She says she doesn’t have any regrets, but admits there may have been more she could have done to save herself.
“I just really knew deep down that the guys were going to take out Cydney. If I would’ve just leaned over to Joe [at tribal council] and said, ‘hey let’s make it Cydney,’ Aubry would have had to pick up the pieces from there,’ she said.
“I really wasn’t [shocked,]” she says of the decision to vote her out. Joe had told her that her name was being tossed around, plus Aubry had been acting suspicious. Debbie knew Aubry wanted to target Julia first. So after Julia won immunity, Debbie asked Aubry who she was targeting now. “[Aubry] couldn’t come up with another name.”
“I still had a little bit of hope that the girls would find some testicles and take out Scott,” she says. She wanted the rest of the women to see her reasoning. That Julia wasn’t going to flip, and that Scott wouldn’t be saved by Tai or Jason’s super idol. She believes the men weren’t going to put their necks on the line to “save a guy who is already a multi-millionaire and brags about it” often.
“I think that she [Aubry] put herself in a worse position,” she says. Noting that the idols are still in the game and Tai now has all the power. The super idol may change things up, but guys aren’t going to play nice -- something they demonstrated several times this past episode with acts of camp sabotage. They doused the fire with water, twice, and hid the machete and axe.
Her time in Cambodia, both on and off screen is over. So we asked, would she do it again? A list of potential cast members, created by Martin Holmes, has been circulating with Debbie’s name on it for either the 33rd or 34th season.
“If you don’t have thick skin, don’t go on a reality TV show,” Debbie says. Producers want “the best storyline, that’s the most entertaining, the most exciting, the most dramatic” and viewers will make “snarky comments” while not being “privy to 95 percent” of conversations.
“It’s a lot more difficult to stay as focused as people think out there because there is such a tremendous amount going on.” Besides the social game, you’re crippled by exhaustion as well. “Bamboo is not conducive to sleeping on…I would say that the lack of sleep was maybe as bad as the lack of food.”
For all its faults and challenges, Survivor remains magnetic. “Yes, I am on that short list,” Debbie says. This won’t be the last you see of her.
Until then, Debbie will remain in Berks advocating for both women and animals: encouraging pet adoption over pet shops and self-confidence.
Next weekend, April 29, she and her motorcycle will be at the Camelback Resort, Tannersville, Pa., for the Harley Davidson ‘Ride for Life’ event to benefit muscular dystrophy.
