While the new era of Survivor seems to present anxiety and fear around every corner, Chanelle Howell has had one mentality: Keep a cool head and a calm demeanor. When an early decision caused absolute calamity on her tribe premerge, she was able to salvage relationships and throw others under the bus to avoid being the next one out. Unfortunately, despite the game shifting into the individual phase, that reputation followed her. Knowing all eyes were on her, she again tried to remain low-key to let someone else blow up their game. But the tactic did not repeat success, sending the recruiter to start welcoming jurors as this season’s mayor of Ponderosa. True to her occupation, Chanelle started the season wrangling allies. Using her people skills, she formed an immediate tight bond with Daniel Strunk, and they found themselves the crucial votes between the two other pairs. When Chanelle was sent off on a summit before Vati’s first Tribal Council, everyone assumed she would keep her vote. But she made a huge risk, leaving her without a ballot that night. She desperately attempted to spin a split vote, but the worst-case scenario happened, as the missing votes caused things to get to a deadlock. In the heat of the moment, Daniel and Chanelle turned on one another, accusing each other of flipping. And when the chaos settled, the two went into scramble mode, continuing to throw each other under the bus. Ultimately, it was Chanelle who prevailed, as the trio of Hai Giang, Lydia Meredith, and Mike Turner found her more trustworthy than Daniel. Unfortunately, not by much. Because once the tribes came together, the former Vati members were quick to turn on Chanelle. Particularly, Chanelle throwing a vote Mike’s way had set the retired firefighter ablaze, and he was ready to take her out immediately. Luckily for Chanelle, time travel caused her to dodge the bullet coming her way, giving her safety at the expense of her former tribemate Lydia. But after that vote, it was clear the target was still on her. Knowing she was the focus of the next vote, she kept a low profile, hoping Romeo Escobar’s growing paranoia would make him a more viable option. But Chanelle’s past outweighed Romeo’s present, as the majority alliance stuck with the plan and sent her out with scattered farewells. Now out of the game, Chanelle talks with Parade.com about her decisions behind risking her vote and handling all of the fallout, what made her feel Romeo was going over her, and how she reacts to her tribe’s comments about her. We heard various goodbyes to you as you walked up to get your torch snuffed. How much were you taking those at face value versus being angry at these people for voting you out? (Laughs.) I’m like, “Screw you guys! You guys love me, but you ostracized me socially and strategically on an island.” Granted, I’m cool now with everyone now. But I think I was in the zone. I was a little blindsided, not completely, because I knew that I was on the outs. I was not a part of that core majority alliance majority. But I didn’t realize a bullseye was literally pointed at my head. I knew that people weren’t really talking to me. But I knew there was a potential that I would be safe because Romeo was really unraveling that day. It was much more than what we actually saw on camera to the point where I was like, “Whoa, this is good for me. I need just to play this chill.” So that was how I was feeling going out. I was pissed because your dreams are being crushed right in front of you. But there was also a sense of gratefulness that I played. I had been dreaming of this–obviously, not getting my torch snuffed. (Laughs.) But I just thought back to all these moments I’ve been dreaming of. Talk to me more about the mood that day at camp. What exactly was happening that made you feel safe enough to not play your Shot in the Dark? In hindsight, there are little things that you see, the connections that you missed. You see them, and you don’t put two and two together necessarily. So when we get back to camp, I’m like, “Okay, I’m probably on the chopping block.” But there’s a conversation happening in front of me where they say, “Maryanne, you’re going to be the decoy vote for Romeo.” And I’m like, “Okay, this seems believable.” But it also seems a little bit too easy. Why would someone just be like, “Okay, that’s fine.” I also connected with Omar. And he was like, “No, we’re still on the same page.” And I did trust Omer at the time. And then I spoke to Drea. And I was like, “Are you good with Romeo going? I know y’all are super aligned.” And she’s like, “No, he’s unraveling.” And then we see off to the side, Romeo is really having a moment. And I’m like, “What’s going on? Where’s this chaos coming from?” It was really chaotic, honestly. I mean, the last day is really a blur to me, honestly. In retrospect, if I could have, I would have shot in the dark. But I just didn’t realize the bullseye was right on my forehead. You speak about being on the bottom. And we saw last episode some very awkward moments where you walked up on a group, only for them to disperse immediately. How did you perceive your place in the merge? I knew I was on the outs, and they were giving me the runaround. It’s weird because I would talk with people individually and feel like, “Okay, maybe I’m wrong. I’m just on the peripheral.” And so I would say, “Oh, I’m a peripheral person. Use me. I can be a number for you.” I had that outside relationship with Omar; I had an outside relationship with Lindsay. But I was still on the outs. You see it with Hai after the Lydia vote. You see me getting back to camp, and I’m like, “Hai, what?!” Because what we didn’t see is at Tribal, Hai looks over to me and mouths, “It’s Lydia.” But in my mind, I’m reading his lips and thinking, “It’s Jonathan.” So I’m like, “Alright, Jonathan, sure.” Wow, so it comes full circle from you mouthing to Daniel to vote out Lydia. (Laughs.) Yeah. But he mouthed to me, “It’s Lydia. I’m sorry. Everyone’s voting for her.” But we’re in Tribal Council. You have so much going on. And you’re reading lips, so you can’t really tell. So I wrote down Jonathan’s name. And when we get back to camp, I’m like, “Hai, what the hell? Why did you mouth to me, ‘Jonathan’?” He’s like, “No, I meant Lydia.” And I’m like, “Why did you wait until Tribal Council to tell me?” And he was like, “It happened so quickly.” At that moment, I knew what was good. It was a play to tell me at the very last second. And for the record, I meant to say chess and checkers on the inverse in my confessional! (Laughs.) I realized everyone else was playing chess, and I was playing checkers. But at that moment, I was like, “Ooh, this is not good for me.” So I knew that my standing wasn’t great. Being told a vote at Tribal Council is very telling. I don’t care what anyone says. You can tell someone before you go to Tribal what the name is. So I was like, “Okay, the writing’s on the wall; I need to figure this out.” I want to go back to the beginning of a very chaotic premerge for me. You know what I have to ask. Why did you risk your vote on the summit with Omar? Okay, so, Mike, you guys have half of the story. Because in looking at it, I’d be like, “You’re crazy. Why would you risk your vote?” So let’s start with the first part. I was positioned so well on my tribe. I say it’s the power of my social game, and I stand by that. I knew that I could go away for the entire afternoon before Tribal, and I could come back and know that my name wouldn’t be on the lips of any of my tribemates. And I was correct. That was my social game. I knew that everyone wanted to play with me, and everyone wanted to work with me. So, in my opinion, when you take a risk in this game, ideally, you want to be in the safest place. You don’t want to be like, “Oh man, my head’s on the line, but I’m still gonna take a risk.” I was as safe as I was ever going to be in that game. And that was why I took the risk. Also, in my conversations with Omar, we decide, “Hey, if it hurts both of us, neither of us will take it. But if it helps both of us, both of us will take it.” But we never discussed the middle option, where it helps one but hurts the other. So what we see is me saying to Omar, “I really can’t be without a vote. I need a vote for Tribal.” But that’s the second part of that conversation. So when we got to the ship wheel, I’m like, “Oh, we just said if it hurts both of us, neither of us will take it. So he’s not going to take it.” And he says in his reasoning later in the show, “Oh, if it hurts both of us, she’s not going to take it.” So we’re thinking the exact same thing. And let me just say, Mike, with that challenge followed by that walk up the mountain, I was delirious at that point. I was not in my right state of mind. I see myself on the screen. I’m walking; I’m stumbling. Looking at my face, it’s glazed over. So we could have had a more poignant conversation of, “II want this advantage. Can I have it?” I’m sure Omar would probably be like, “Yes,” because he wanted to work with me. But we just did not have the right kind of conversation, which led to a miscommunication, which led to us both risking our vote. In my interview with Jenny, she told me Daniel was the only person you told about possibly losing your vote before Tribal Council. Why was that? For starters, as soon as I turned the shipwheel and got on the boat to go back to camp, I was like, “Yeah, I should have done that.” (Laughs.) “I probably lost my vote.” And so I get back to camp, and I tell Daniel because he was my number one at that point. Daniel is feeding me information. We have a good working relationship. I think that he’s sensible. I think that he is a good ally. And so, as soon as I got off the boat, coincidentally, he was down at the beach. And I was like, “Thank God.” I leaned over, and I stumbled, which goes to show how delirious I was. And I’m like, “I lost my vote. We need to reweigh our options now.” I still wanted to play with Mike and Jenny. So I needed to get them to split the votes. A lot of people have been saying, “Oh, my God, you didn’t protect your alliance.” I had an alliance with Daniel. I aligned with Hai and Lydia on Day 1 or 2. And then I aligned with Mike and Jenny on Day 3 or 4. So I had two alliances right here. But I was sitting right in between in the middle. So when people say, “You didn’t protect your alliance,” I’m like, “Listen, someone from my alliance is going home no matter what.” Again, I decided to take that to take the risk because I was very, very safe. I was aligned with every single person on the tribe. There was no protecting my alliance. So Daniel and I are like, “Alright, we need to split the votes.” So we get back to camp and what we see is I’m like, “Guys, we need to split.” And it’s funny because you see Hai in the confessionals kind of sniffing it out like, “Oh, she’s acting weird.” But the reality is, he had no clue. All of those confessionals are done the next day after the Tribal actually happened. Everyone was clueless at that Tribal. Everyone had no idea, except for Daniel and me, what was really going to go on. So I just want to highlight that no one sniffed out my game. But honestly, it was a fluke. I guess the conversation before I got there was that Hai had wanted guys on Jenny and girls on Mike. And I just came in like, “Let’s just do girls on Jenny and guys on Mike.” And I think Hai wanted to vote for the person he thought was going home, because the superfan in him wanted the perfect voting record. And so when we get to that Tribal, he switches his vote to Jenny because he wanted to have a perfect voting record. And it’s just a catalyst that sets off everything. You switch your vote like this rinky-dink, and then the numbers are all screwed. And so that’s where we landed. So what was your reaction when Daniel calls you out at that Tribal Council for telling him to vote for Lydia, and what were your tactics to recover in the tribe after that vote? To start off, I did not throw Daniel under the bus. Daniel threw me under the bus. But for me in that Tribal Council, it was just like, “If I don’t have to say a name, I won’t say a name. Let him dig himself his own hole.” Obviously, that puts me in a position where he threw me under the bus. And so what I have to do, as soon as we get back to camp, how do I use what information I have to make him seem more full of blame than me? So the first thing to do is I’m like, “Listen, Mike, this man told me you had an idol. He told me you lost your vote. He told me that you were withholding all this information from me. That’s why I didn’t tell you I lost my vote.” So Mike is naturally pissed at Daniel and makes him feel like he could understand why I would do that. My second tactic was that I could see that Daniel was very much frazzled and paranoid and all over the place. And if you just play a cool, you can recover a lot better. It’s a long game, and I didn’t think that I’m next on the chopping block. I think Daniel was always the person everyone questioned in our entire tribe. He’s a little squirrely. And what you don’t see is Hai telling me, “Chanelle, you’re my number one ally; Lydia is second.” You guys don’t know that Hai and I were actually very, very close on the island. So Daniel was always on the peripheral; he’s just a number for them. So I have this knowledge from the entire standpoint of the game. Daniel was with me, but he was the plus one that came with me. I don’t know if a lot of people truly wanted to work with him. It really did seem after that Jenny vote, you get this label of being untrustworthy that leads all the way to your vote out. Do you think that Tribal Council is why you’re talking with me today? 100%. That took my game apart at the seams. It unbuttoned the entire game in a way that I couldn’t recover from. And the reason I couldn’t recover from it was because I underestimated how emotional Hai and Mike were. In my perspective of the game, I’m super logical. And that could be my downfall, my inability to realize that people are not as logical as me. I look at the game, and I see people who are very good at playing this game. They say, “You could put my name down, and I’m going to come back to camp and be all good. I might be a little upset. But I might have to work with you to vote down the line.” I think it’s the inability of Hai and Mike to let that go and emotionally hold on to something for ten days. It’s only a 26-day game. So to hold on to one vote that happened ten days ago, I just completely underestimated how emotional they were. I thought that they were going to be more strategic. I get this rap for being the snake, this hardcore liar person. Honestly, if you look again, it’s not that sneaky. I made one objectively bad decision at the shipwheel. And then the rest of the game, I’m not like lying and scheming. I got some urge. I wasn’t throwing my tribe under the bus. There’s nothing sneaky about my game. Other than the fact that I turned the shipwheel and there were casualties, you never see me sneaking around. I think that highlights a lot of double standards in this game. You can see a woman make the same exact moves that a man makes over and over. But we’re not given the grace and the leeway that men players are given. And I’m just going to give you a few examples. Mike loses his vote and finds an idol. He doesn’t tell me. I lose my vote. I don’t tell him. We’re even. But I’m a snake. I write your name down at Tribal Council in case of Daniel’s Shot in the Dark. But you also write my name down at Tribal Council in case of Daniel’s Shot in the Dark. But I’m a snake. We do the exact same things, but I’m vilified. We see Omar turn the shipwheel and make the decision to risk his vote. I did the same thing. But then we see at merge Hai goes, “Chanelle screwed Omar. He doesn’t have a vote.” And I’m like, “Whoa, if anything, we screwed each other!” And granted, all of these are very much game takes. I love my entire cast now, and everything’s great. But it does highlight that there’s a massive double standard when women play a certain way. And it’s unfortunate. Next, check out our interview with Lydia Meredith, who was voted out in Survivor 42 Episode 7.
