A Motley Fool Exclusive Interview With Survivor 45 Villain-Turned-Fan-Favorite Emily Flippen

Motley Fool host Mary Long caught up with Motley Fool analyst — and Survivor 45 contestant — Emily Flippen to debrief on her time as a castaway in Fiji.

They discuss:

• Emily’s best-case scenario path to the final three.
• Conversations at camp (plus, whether she now believes that aliens built the pyramids).
• Life at Ponderosa — before the game and after being voted off.
• What she learned from players including Kendra.
• What stocks she’d gift to the remaining castaways.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Dec. 13, 2023.

Mary Long: What stocks would you bring to a deserted island? Motley Fool Money Survivor Takeover starts now.

Today we’re setting stocks to the side, and instead we’re sitting down with the sole survivor in our very Foolish hearts, financial analyst Emily Flippen. We’re talking Fiji, Ponderosa, all the good stuff. Emily, thanks for taking a minute to hang with us for a Survivor Takeover of Motley Fool Money.

Emily Flippen: Thank you for indulging me. I always love to talk about it.

Mary Long: So it didn’t happen right off the bat, but pretty soon after the start of the season, you did start to become a fan favorite. What has it been like seeing people support you as a player throughout the season?

Emily Flippen: I always appreciate support. I will say, I think the experience from going maybe the most hated Survivor contestant recent memory to what I think some people would describe as a fan favorite, has been really jarring, honestly. Because you get out there, you never really know how you’re going to behave, how you’re going to respond in a stressful scenario. You do your best to prepare yourself, but you never really know what’s going to happen until your feet hit the sand. I learned the hard way (laughs) that sometimes you need to adjust to pivot and change the way that you communicate and strategize with people. But I’m so happy that I had the opportunity to have as long as I did out there, to learn those lessons and move forward.

Mary Long: Another element that I would imagine is, we maybe don’t see so much of as viewers is just like constant anxiety and wondering who you can trust. Because you literally are on this beach with strangers initially. Yes, you get to know each other quite well over the course of your time there, but you’re still playing a game. I wonder just how much do you feel that it is truly constant game play or is there ever a reprieve from that constant spinning that’s happening in your head about wondering who you can trust, what move you might have to make next? Do you ever feel like the game is paused?

Emily Flippen: Sometimes. I think your brain is always thinking about what move you want to do, what other people could be doing. But you don’t have a lot to say when you’re out there. Oftentimes, you don’t spend hours and hours and hours talking to people about strategy. In fact, you spend most of your time just getting to know people as humans, which is what makes it so challenging when you ultimately do have to play a strategic game and make a decision to send somebody home, vote somebody off who you really like as a person, but doesn’t work to your advantage of your ability to get to the end. But one of the things I really loved about the people I worked with or got the opportunity to play with, I should say, especially with somebody like Kendra. While I was so afraid to ever be alone, Kendra and others were so open to just walking away from a group of people that were talking and say, I’m going to soak in the moment in Fiji. I’m going to go out and sunbathe or try to fish, do these individual activities that can be so scary and threatening. When you’re on an island and you know that people could be talking about you behind your back. It’s a level of self confidence and self assurance that I didn’t have going into it, but now I want to emulate in my everyday life.

Mary Long: Were there aspects of the game that you expected to be difficult going in that actually weren’t as tough as you thought they’d be?

Emily Flippen: I think the lack of food actually expected to be a lot more difficult than it was. Especially those first few days when everybody is having that initial experience of, oh my God, I’m really hungry. Because your stomach will shrink, and then eventually you adjust to the reality of not eating. But for those first few days, you’re coming off of eating meals at Ponderosa pre-game, and you’re like, oh no, I’m really now starving. For those first few days, for me, I was in such a bad headspace, I was obviously struggling with my original tribe so deeply, and with myself and this internal conflict. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about the fact that I was starving. (laughs) I was surprised.

Mary Long: Good side bad side.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, exactly.

Mary Long: The flip side of that was what was more challenging than you expected?

Emily Flippen: The challenges were way more physically challenging than I was expecting. I wasn’t in still not in great shape before I went on the show. Didn’t have a ton of time to prepare in my defense. But I remember thinking all I have to do is just not be terrible. I don’t draw eyes to me. I don’t need to be this really big buff challenge beast. I just need to skate by. Skating by was a lot more challenging than I thought it was going to be. If I could go back, I would certainly spend more time trying to build up muscle, especially because I had such anxiety heading at the challenges, especially when they were group challenges knowing that my performance could pull somebody else down. I had took solace and knowing that if I failed in an individual challenge and I was just hurting myself, I could live with that because that was a choice I made. But when my physicality held somebody else back, that’s when you started to feel really bad and guilty about your decisions.

Mary Long: Oh, there are challenges that I watch as a viewer, I’m sure everyone does this where you just think, oh, God, no, (laughs) there’s no way I could do that. I have felt second hand just watching, like exactly what you’re describing of, oh, I would never want to be that person that is holding back the rest of the team while others are excelling. That’s just so heavy to have to deal with. I want to talk about some more strategic decisions. Do you regret telling the tribe about your role in Bruce’s blindside?

Emily Flippen: Oh, certainly. I made a lot of silly mistakes during my time on Survivor, and that was a big one. I don’t know if it ultimately would have changed the outcome, maybe it would have, I can’t say for sure. But I remember thinking at the time that I felt the need to explain myself to Julie whose name was written down. I remember also feeling really insecure about my game. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of autonomy. I felt like I was playing under the thumbs of other players for most of my Survivor experience. I was proud of myself for pulling off what I perceived to be a big move for me at that point, and I wanted people to know. I think that was insecure on my part. I think I obviously could have held onto that information, and my game would have been better off for it. I do wish I had not made that mistake, and I feel even worse that it came at the expense of Bruce, who was such a kind and incredible guy.

Mary Long: Early on I feel like you were just kind of fighting to literally survive and make it past the Lulu tribe and onto the merge, et cetera. But as that merged tribe started to narrow down, did you start to see a clear path to the end? If so, what did that path look like in your best dream?

Emily Flippen: Every single day that I was out there, I knew that I was not going to win. After I was almost voted off first, I was in the mindset of, wow, I really screwed this up, really messed it up. There’s no way I win until it started getting down to about the point where I was sent home. I remember I think the day that I was voted off, I had the thought to myself, oh my God, I could win this. It’s hard to feel real. So it’s funny because I do think there’s a trend when you get to that point of a little bit of confidence in Survivor, and you think yourself, oh my God, is this actually happening? Am I potentially getting to the end? That’s about the point where you get sent home. (laughs) So it was a really cool experience and I’m happy that I did have that chance and I was not the first person voted off. But I realistically, most of the time that I was out there, I did feel like I was just trying to survive, not try to win. It wasn’t until I was voted off that I started to feel that how close I was to the end.

Mary Long: There was a moment, I think it was the episode that Bruce ultimately did get voted off. But when it’s seemingly 44, and one set of four is that original Reba tribe. As I’m watching, all I could think is like, hello, you guys have to band together and knock one of the Reba people off. This is like your only opportunity to do it and then be on top. Why is it so hard to get people together, to knock out an obvious alliance? People that have that same clear connection as the Reba tribe did.

Emily Flippen: Yeah, I think it was clear that there was a connection between the four Reba members, but I think what was also clear to everybody that was out there on the beach was that that group of four would eventually have to turn each other. This isn’t a game where there are four winners. This isn’t even a game where four people can sit at the end together. I think a lot of us were expecting that the two sides in this case, Dee and Julie or Drew and Austin would need numbers in order to turn on the other side.

There’s also just this lack of trust that I think I personally had built up with other previously Belo members. Bruce, Jake and Katurah for instance, we never really had that trust, that loyalty from working together the way that I did with perhaps Drew and Austin. I was always afraid that if I approached one of them with a plan to genuinely blindside a Reba member, that not only could that information get back to a Reba, which would then make me target number one. But even if that plan did happen and let’s say we did blindside a Reba member, I myself would have just betrayed what I had been telling or perceived to be my core alliance at that point, which would make me target number one for my alliance. Then the lack of trust I have with the Belo members who could potentially be threatened by me. I would be an easier person to cut as opposed to the Belo who had been more closely working together through that game. I remember thinking I was a little bit, I don’t know if it was accurate, but my perception was a little bit stuck between a rock and a hard place and my hope was that I could be a swing vote if and when Reba turned on each other. Reba did somewhat turn each other with the Julie vote, but obviously I messed it up with the idol as well.

Mary Long: On the first episode, there is a confessional in which you say if I’m not winning the game, I might as well be voted off first. It’s a complete waste of my time to be here at all if I’m not the sole survivor. As we said, that almost wound up happening, but it didn’t. Was it all a waste of time?

Emily Flippen: No, it’s definitely not. I know that now. My mindset in that commentary was I felt like I was giving up something by being there time away from the portfolios that I helped manage at the Fool, for instance. I remember feeling a lot of stress and guilt around, what was going to happen with the businesses, that the obligations that I have, my coworkers, and putting the onus on other people to potentially have to make decisions for my portfolios. That was stressful. I remember, you know, I was missing out on this big life moment which was my partner and I buying a house and missing the opportunity to help move into it and organize all that.

I knew it was not a costless opportunity being there, and I didn’t want to be on TV necessarily. I didn’t want to go out there. I wasn’t trying to make a career out of this. I wanted the opportunity to play and win a million dollars. But if I wasn’t going to do that, then I would have rather been fulfilling the obligations that I have back home. That was my mindset. But I did not expect to grow as much as I did as a person.

I think the level of clarity and self awareness I have now as painful as it has been, it is so incredibly valuable and I think it’s going to serve me very well long term in my life. I’m thankful to have that opportunity. Would I do it again? If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, definitely would I do it again moving forward, maybe not. (laughs)

Mary Long: Looking back, what do you think your biggest strength as a player was?

Emily Flippen: That’s such a good question. It’s hard to answer because I don’t know if I had the clarity of what it was like to play with myself as other people did. But I remember thinking that, I felt like I was a very transparent and honest person. I think I’m pretty easy to read. In terms of a strength as somebody to work with, you always knew that I was being straight with you when I told you something and when I wasn’t, you could generally see it on my face that I felt, terrible about whatever conversation was happening where I was having to lie. I think perhaps my transparency there.

Mary Long: I think that is such as a strength like, it’s so easy to watch this game and to think, the only way that you get ahead is by being deceptive or manipulative. You played a game that was lauded by many people that were watching it. Obviously you were a strong player and if you can check that box and still feel like I was honest and I wasn’t really deceptive, that’s such a strength. Will you probably be genuinely devastated if I don’t ask you about the aliens? Have you been convinced that the aliens built the pyramids or?

Emily Flippen: I want you to go on to record and say that there was lots of fun, I think lighthearted conspiracy conversations that happened at Lulu. I think the aliens were just the straw that broke my back. I was shocked about the amount of conversations I had as I went to the game that I had about aliens. I think I need to be more open minded, not just in life, but also about aliens. Because clearly, my closed mindedness is not doing me any favors.

Mary Long: I’m sure there are plenty of other interesting theories that came up over the course of the show. 

Emily Flippen: There were plenty.

Mary Long: You were on Ponderosa before the show and then as a jury member, you returned to Ponderosa. Is it amazing?

Emily Flippen: It’s the returning back is the best part because the vibe of Ponderosa changes. Pre-game, it’s all strict business. You’re sitting down in your chair, no talking. You only do what production tells you to do, and read a book. Sit down, that’s it. No phones, no electronics. When you come back, they’re playing music, you can have darty of food and drinks, you just hang out pool time, you can go kayaking, then you’re surrounded by people who have been voted off prior to you. Which for me at this point where all the people that I felt really close to just tons of fun people. I felt so welcome and as sad as it is to be voted off the game, it was made that much better because I knew I was going back to a group of people who are just going to have a blast and try to make that disappointment feel less bad.

Mary Long: We are at the end of the day, Motley Fool Money. I have an investing adjacent question for you. If you could give the remaining castaways a stock and we can be loose here, it can be an individual stock, it can be a basket of stocks. What are you gifting them?

Emily Flippen: It’s a good question. The one that comes to mind, thinking about the fact that every single person out there was starving. I feel like that doesn’t come across when you watch the TV show. You are starving. You are not eating anything. And if you try to eat a coconut, you’re probably going to throw it up anyway because that’s how sick of coconuts you are. If I could send them anything, I would send them, let’s say DoorDash or Uber Eats. Look at those types of companies. I will leave them with those stocks. Stocks that I think are not only great investments, but also incredibly useful if they could deliver to an island in Fiji.

Mary Long: Yeah, that delivery driver would get quite the tip, I’m sure. Emily, you had a whole lot of Fools rooting for you throughout the game and you’ve still got a whole lot of Fools rooting for you now. Congrats on a job really well done and a game very well played. Thanks so much for hanging with me today and for giving Motley Fool Money listeners a special peek into the season. I can’t wait to see you at Loza where I think there might be a Survivor watch party happening.

Emily Flippen: I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Mary Long: As always, people in the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don’t buy yourself stocks based solely on what you hear. I’m Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you tomorrow.