Fan-favorite player, Christian Hubicki, was perceived as the biggest threat for several weeks on Survivor: David vs. Goliath, and the tribe was finally successful in voting him out during the Dec. 12 episode. Before tribal council, there were plenty of names being thrown around about who to vote off, but Mike White was insistent that Christian should remain the target, and he rallied the troops to vote with him. Davie Rickenbacker stuck with Christian to vote for Alison Raybould, while the rest of the tribe split the votes between Christian (3) and Davie (2), just in case Christian played a hidden immunity idol.
“I was more confident that I wasn’t going to get votes this time, because the previous times I knew [before tribal] I was getting votes, so in a way, I felt like I had a chance to squirm through this one without immunity,” Christian admitted to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “More threats coming out of the woodwork is a good way to put it. Everyone talks about people being threats, and that can mean so many things. For me, that meant people were worried to take me to the final three. I called that being an ‘abstract threat.’ I’m a threat at some point, and will have to go. But there’s also imminent threats — the people who want to see you gone. Those are threats to you staying in the game right now…immediately. I hypothesize that people tend to act on these imminent threats more than abstract threats, and that’s what happened. Nick [Wilson] was worried about Davie, Davie was worried about Nick, and however it broke down. But Mike was focused on that abstract threat of me, and managed to rally the votes.”
Before tribal, Nick crafted a fake immunity idol so other tribe members wouldn’t go looking for the real immunity idol. Since Nick already had a real immunity idol, he had a note to go with the fake necklace, which really threw people off. “I would’ve gone looking for idols, but Nick’s trick to finding the [fake] idol in front of me was very compelling,” Christian explained. “I have to give credit to Nick. It was great deception. I didn’t know he had an idol to begin with, and the whole circumstance was very suspicious, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to put two and two together. Davie did know he had the idol, so he had the clues to know Nick could’ve been faking this. It was astute of him to notice.” Since Davie was onto Nick, he knew to go look for the real idol himself, and he found it. However, he had to play it at that next tribal council, which he did just in case (as it turned out, he didn’t need it anyway).
Give a little more insight into what was going on on the beach before tribal. It was a scramble because new information kept pouring in. Davie told me about his final 7 idol that he had to play. I didn’t want Davie to go, but he was named as a potential target that night. Nick had an idol — or, what I thought was an idol, and it turned out he had a real one, too — and we wanted Nick to play his idol. Davie and I schemed to get that out of play [which worked]. That didn’t leave many targets left. Davie, Nick and Mike were immune [in my mind], so Alison was the only logical one because she was also perceived as a threat, which was unfortunate because I would’ve preferred her in the game. So, yeah, it was total scrambling — it was the craziest buildup I had seen.
Was there more to your relationship with Davie that we didn’t see? You guys always stuck together and he even saved you earlier in the game. Davie and I were quite close.It’s something that wasn’t on the show very much. I had a lot of relationships, and some hit the cutting room floor. We met on day one, and we decided…let’s just talk once per day, in secret somewhere. We talked game, then went back to camp, and no one would know we were working together. So at the John [Hennigan] vote, I already knew Davie had an idol. Nick had the great idea to split the vote with the minority — I have to give him credit for that — and no one would have thought that Davie would play his idol for me!
You were obviously perceived as a threat in the game – was there anything you think you could have done earlier on to have not gotten that reputation? I completely miscalculated it when I was going into the game. I didn’t know how well received I would be around camp. I live and work in academia with engineers and scientists, so I get along with those people because I can talk about algorithms or data science or whatever. I didn’t know how that would work with “the mayor of SlamTown” or “Carl the Trucker.” I thought my charms would be diminished out there. It turns out, I just annihilated that! People liked me, or at least they seemed to. I didn’t realize how much to the point where I became threatening. If I had to do it again, I’d be like…Christian…maybe you don’t have to make EVERY joke you’re thinking of [laughs].
Anything else you wish we saw? At the final 8 vote, when Gabby [Pascuzzi] tried to take me out, I wasn’t just tipped off [about the plan] by Davie. There were other people who told me about the vote before the vote — Mike, Nick and Angelina [Keeley] all told me. But none of them knew that the other had told me! So I had all this information and power going into final seven that I thought I’d be able to leverage. People seemed to think that I read at tribal that Gabby was going to vote for me [and that’s why I played my idol,] but that was a deception. In some ways, the truth is more interesting — in spite of me being a target four different people STILL told me I was on the chopping block!