It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload, the podcast Past Deep Their Life.
Hey guys, welcome back to TV Reload. I want to thank you for clicking and downloading. On today's episode with superfan Eden, the twelve eliminated contestant from this year's Astrained Survivor, which is now on Network ten, I will be talking about Eden's time in Samoa and of course what he thinks now that the smoke has well and truly been
snuffed out on his torch. Astraian Survivor Titans Versus Rebels is a showdown that pits the winners against the underdogs and the big wigs against the battlers, with each player competing for a grand prize of half a million dollars. Eden is a cinema manager from Melbourne, living out his best Survivor fantasy life. Eden's started the game on a high note, enabling his strategic prowess by orchestrating Frank his blindside.
Despite having a tendency for paranoia, he was able to keep his angst at bay with the help of his allies. After the explosive breakup of the Titans merge, Eden rallied the Titans to reunite against the Rebels. Although he was successful in his endeavor, the Rebels caught onto the Titan's duplicity and piled their votes onto him, forcing a tie.
Fans may say that Jaden is responsible for Eden's exit, who flipped on the revote to exchange revenge against him for blindsiding his best mate winner in the previous round. Eden will unpack his movie quotes and survivor references and provide us with some deleted gold that he dropped during his confessionals. We will discuss the added pressure of being a super fan and if it actually helped his game
or added just too much pressure. There was a lot of conversation about Eden covering his mouth and why he was often seen drinking water from a water bottle, which Eden will give us a very simple explanation for. Plus, we will get some insights into why winning a car could be a curse and what exactly he thinks is
going to happen with Mark's invisible hand. There's actually so much to unpack with Eden, and he's really fun to talk to, of course, so sit back and relax as we dive just that little bit deeper into the world of Australian survivor.
I'm so excited to be talking to you.
I just want to say, so, how are you and did you get any sleep?
I did not get any sleep. I was tossing and turning all night. And that would be because my seventeen month old baby does not sleep at the moment.
And on the.
Island I was exactly the same. I wouldn't sleep very much on the island. I would just be running numbers votes, what we could do, what's the backup plan, to the backup plan. I would just sit up at night just going okay, well, if they did this and they use an idol, then we need three people here to do this.
That was my life on the island.
And then I've come back and now I've got a baby keeping me up as well, so I need to get some sleep.
At some point.
You gave this show.
You're all like, if anyone that was a participant this year or castaway, whatever we want to call that, you could see it in you that you were giving this here all. And from the bottom of my heart, I want to say I was entertained answer just to answer your question.
Thank you, Thank you so much better. Yeah, no, look obviously, it's been a dream of mine. I've been watching this show for twenty three years, back from day one. It's been an absolute dream to play. I auditioned for the last eight years, didn't stop auditioning since it came back to Australian television. It was always something that I felt in my head. I'm like, I'm going to get on this show. I'm like it's going to happen at some point.
The first time twenty sixteen, I got all the way to the end of the auditions and just missed out. Then I didn't hear from them again. And then this rolled around and I was like everything just lined up and I made it on and like literally it was a dream come true. Every day out there, I had the biggest smile.
On my face. I was just like, oh, this is like this and this challenge is from here. This is really cool.
And I remember JLP actually said to me on one of the very first mat chats, He's like, this guy, this talk I hear you have not stopped smiling the entire time you've been out here. You must be one of the biggest fans we've ever had. On I was like, thank you for blowing up my bigger so.
I could see that I could feel myself living vicariously through your Survivor journey because of that, like, and I'm sure that there's so many diehard Survivor fans that would feel exactly the same way. I've been following you as well on your social media, so I just felt like I need to start by saying that. Coincidentally, and this is how I know we're best friends. Are Passic Park movie order is exactly the same.
Right we were in seeking my friend. I have the same T shirt.
It's over there if I if I paused the go and get it, it wouldn't work for a podcast, But yeah, I love What were some of the movie quotes that you dropped through your confessionals that we didn't get a chance to see because I'd heard a lot while the filming was going down that you were quite the master at your confessionals, and so I was expecting that you dropped a lot.
So maybe you can just give me your top one hundred.
No, I was.
I was loving my my movie references out there. I think every single one of my voting professionals I had, Yeah, I terminated for Frankie, I had New Girl.
You know the TV show New Girl. It's Jesses vote I had.
I had a great top gun one for Nathan about how this time Maverick isn't going to survive, but Goose is going.
To live with my mistache. I wanted to.
I just want like a like a little montage of a quotes. But you know what also really impressed the fans was your little Easter eggs as well. Throughout the show. There were things that got dropped in there. There was so much fun and so much depth into your time in the show that I felt like, You've done yourself so proud.
Honestly, that's just for I.
Like eighty percent of things that I say are in quotes, and when my friends always do it all the time, and that's like I love that. I love pop culture and to be out there and to that's just literally me. That's yeah, I will reference Survivor with my friends. So yeah, of course I'm going to say, look, I've made Merge un datable, or I'm bamboozled when I get voted out, or am I going to ruffle some feathers. These are just things that I just talk about normally, and so
it was really fun. To incorporate that sort of stuff into my time out there, and I'm so glad. The feedback from the fans were like, Hey, is that a reference to this? And Hey, did you just reference Arrested Development when you said I've made a huge mistake. I'm like, of course I did.
Of course you did.
I love following it on social media as well, because all of these different communities that people could interact with this show. Everyone was enjoying the fact that you were teasing us with little puzzle see you know what I mean, Like, that's what people want these days.
It's the game within a game.
What do you think about the way in which we got to see your time in Samoa? Why do you think some of the other storylines managed to rise to the top. Do you think it had a lot to do with who was up for elimination?
Look, I may have done too good a job of managing my threat level. Basically I was dropping a lot of seeds and doing a lot of things in the background to sort of influence votes and making sure things went the way that I wanted them to go, Like, for instance, the v vote, which is a very pivotal vote in the name.
Of the game.
That was very much me having an understanding of timing and planting seeds in Survivor, so I knew logically in that position, you don't turn on your lights at that point. You establish power, you vote off one of the rebels, and you move forward as a Titan group, and then the next vote you probably turn on each other. I knew Mark was a superlogical player, that's the logical thing to do, So I knew at that point got to
strike early before they think that it's happening. And all I had to do was just mention it to Kittie, like, hey, do you think we shoul do something now, like we could maybe mix things up a bit. Then Kitty then goes sells it to Caroline. Caroline then comes back to me and goes, this is what we're doing. This is this is the plan, and they ran with it and they got everyone else involved. They built it up and
at the end of the day it worked perfectly. I chopped Mark's legs out from under him, so he was more sort of reliant on me in the game because me and Mark did have a really good relationship. But at the same time, no one was talking about revenge against Eden. It was all revenge against Caroline and Kitty, and that's sort of what I wanted. So a lot of the game I was managing my threat level in a way that maybe didn't translate as well, but it kept me in a really good position in the game itself.
I also felt that You've got some big characters and some big storylines with Mark and Caroline and Kirby and Ferris, and I was doing a lot out there strategy wise that didn't sort of make its way through. Some of the relationships I had sort of fell away, Like me and Charles were super tight, super tight the Big Daddy alliance. We both knew dads, and so when Charles left, that sort of impacted me, and so that sort of falls away.
But honestly, for a pre jury boot, which I am now, I'm going to claim the best player to not make jury their merch merch to basically get to where I got to and still be entertaining and still have those moments like a lot of people that go out pre merge maybe don't have those moments and don't have their things.
So I'm super happy that I got to share my love of the game, and there are a lot of key points in the show, Like I think I was sort of narrating us through the swap, through the merge, to the very first vote, to the start of the thing, So I think I was that voice sort of get us through those points and then not necessarily some of the big wars going on, and I was fine not being in the war. But ultimately maybe if I had lasted longer in the game that would changed a bit.
But I am.
I'm super happy that that people saw my love of the game out there and it was really great. A lot of feedback that I did get was you know, it's so great like out there on the island, and when I got back home, they're like, you know, it's so great about watching you in We're literally watching someone live out their dream on live television, and.
It does beg the question is it easier or harder to be a super fan when it comes to how far you can get in the game, Because I could imagine being as big a super fan as you are, there is the possibility of getting inside your head or the pressure of the realities might become quite hard.
I completely agree. I think there's a couple of things. One is you can get really worried about.
Going home early. This is the dream of yours.
You've been wanting to get on the show for so long, and to go out first or seconds and only be out there for a couple of days is like, I just don't want that to happen. I don't want that happened. And you can almost manifest it. You can be worried about it so much that it starts to come through. But it's all about sort of managing those expectations. Then what happens is people know you're a big fan of the game, and so you become sort of that oracle
of hey En, what usually happens? Now, Hey, Ian, have they done this challenge before? Hey Eiden, when did this happen? I'm like, did it it? This happened on this episode and this time. They've done this three times. They haven't picked rocks before, but they've done this verreer And that's great up until a point when people go, you know what, Eden knows a lot about this game. He's a threat. We've got to get rid of him at some point. And so then it sort of flips to become really dangerous.
But at the same time, because I've seen so many episodes because I've been aware of the moves in the past. You can pick things up and Okay, so in this situation, the best way forward is to do this, and logically, in this situation, you would do this. And so I felt myself drawing on that knowledge a lot, which was great, but a lot of people out there knew I was really switched off.
It made me wonder whether or not you thought the same thing as me. But in the history of these shows, the person who gets the car doesn't win the show.
The car curse.
Yeah, so when I saw Mark win that, I was like, my bitch, you know. Yeah, it's so bizarre because this anomaly has happened through so many shows. Like it's not just Survivor or Big Brother or The Block or anything, it's all of them, all of them. If there's a car on the table, if you get that car, drive home now, because you're not getting the main prize.
The car curse is real, and I think subconsciously it does work into people's understanding of who you are in the game. They go, well, he's won a car. He's already won the car, so like, let's just get rid of him. Let's just get the same and like even winning the They're Set for Life sixty k, like that starts to get into people's heads. Oh well, she's just one sixty k, so if we vote her out now, it's not so bad sort of thing. So that does play into people's psychological profiles of people.
I think it does. Where did you find that hideous tracksuit? What the hell it's but I mean it's iconic now, right, it's iconic, and you know.
I can see it in the background to the background.
Yeah, yeah, it's hideous for people listening because this is a podcast, the hideous track seit is in the background. So I kind of want to ask you about the thought process of what you chose to wear on in Samoa, Like how do they go?
Basically, any big fan knows that people have these iconic items of clothing, whether it's like Russell's hat or yeah, or a Boston Rob's Boston cap or Dave sarong from Australians, but like things like that really stand out. So I definitely wanted to go out there and I wasn't going to be wearing something suitable.
No, I was going to be wearing something.
That popped that showed that I was fun that I'd like, I was colorful, I had an up and about personality, and that's what I wanted to I wanted to show my pop culture ness. I wanted to like do all that at the end of the day, Like I had jeans out there for the first seven days before I got my bathers, which was wild. But that was my look, this nerdy pop cultue sort of guy with his Hawaiian shirt and his fun dinosaur hoodie and that hoodie. Yeah,
that hoodie's getting to work out. It's seemed better days now. But where did you get it? What is that?
Though?
It's like, it's just it's just online. I bought it.
I bought it a while ago, a couple of years ago actually, And every time I've worn it, it's from this company called Freshwoods, And every time I've worn it, people be like, that is the greatest jumper of all time.
I love that jumper.
Did you feel and I guess this is the question that's going to haunt you for the rest of your life. It did seem like your scramble was a little too hectic, it was a little too obvious. Do you think when you're in your hindsight, in your Sunday Morning quarterbacking of your time on the show. Do you think that was an edit like that's how we just saw it, or do you think that you probably went a little too hard.
No, actually, I think the play was sound, But what there was a couple of things that sort of let us down that point.
Look, I love Kitty. Kitty was my right or die out there.
Kitty was so like I knew she was always going to be honest with me, and I was like, I love that. I can trust that Kitty's going to tell me the truth. But the flip side of that is then when you ask her to lie about stuff, she struggles, and it was a big hurdle for her to just flat out lighter people and be like yeah, no, no, no, this is all fun. This is all fun. Same with Carrot. Those guys, they took a lot of convincing to get
on board. If we had just gone, this is a plan, it's going to reform us, we're going to have the power, we're going to have the majority we can before it in this game. And if they had just gone yep, cool, we're doing it, and then we'd all just separated, it actually would have worked fine. But we had to sort of keep going back to the girls and being like, hey, are you fine with this? Like are we on board? And there was a little bit of work to do.
I just feel like, and you can see Ferris from the episode, he went and interrogated both of them to really sort of drill down on them, and they did. They did a really good job, but there was just enough there that just sent up enough of a little warning sign. So ultimately, look, it didn't pan out. Logically.
Interestingly, though, Ben.
It probably should have worked because in that situation, in a six on six vote, you want to put your votes onto someone that people will flip. So you actually don't want to put votes on me in that point, because I had a lot of support from the group, I had a lot of relationships. You actually want to put it on Carrow or you want to put it on Valeria, because those guys are not going to rocks
for each other any time. So that's the play that you should actually do, because then we would have flipped on each other and it would have got one of them out. So to put it on me was super risky. I think Ferris had a good read, but I think logically and from a game perspective, it was super risky and it was probably the wrong person to put the votes on. I'm not sure whether those guys actually knew that they were going to go to Rocks for Like. I didn't think Kirby and Ree were willing to go
to Rocks for Ray. They didn't have a relationship with Ray. Kirby had spent twelve episodes trying to get rid of him this entire time, so I was like, look, if worst comes to worst, they're not going to go to Rocks for Ray.
I think it all happened so quickly and hectically.
I don't think people were really thinking about it at that level of like, hey, I'm going to go to Rocks for this person. The only person and ironically the person that really wasn't thinking about was jaded.
He just was Oh, cool, I'll just do this. Yeah I can do it.
Because the first vote he was on board, he was voting with us. It's not like there was some big conspiracy that this was, Oh, we're going to I'm going to manipulate everything and I'm going to get my revenge. It was just literally, cool, I can change my vote now, Oh I'll just change my vote cool, have fun, and it robbed us.
It robbed us of going to rocks first time.
Straths of over history would have gone to Rocks and it would have been probably one of the craziest tribal councils of all time.
I reckon I think.
It would have been.
I mean, it was interesting you said a few things there. I mean people noticed online. I didn't notice this as much, but people noticed that. They were saying that you were covering your mouth when you felt anxious or when you were lying. Did you I guess I'm not really interested as to whether or not that's true and whether or not the diehard fans picked up on that, But I guess I'm more interested about what you worked out about yourself and who you are when you watched yourself back.
Did you notice some weird things like that?
Yeah, A lot of that stuff is everyone because the scramble happens. Everyone is around, everyone is seeing who's talking to everyone, so everyone knows what's going on. So you do sort of have to people read lips, people see like vote for this person. So a lot of the time you actually have to do stuff like that. You see in tribal council people are covering each other's mouths when they talk. Because of stuff like that, everyone is
super aware. We've got a great bunch of players. All it takes is for someone to see someone say ray and then you go, oh, they're voting for Raye. So things like you literally need to think about things like this, you need to be like and so my one was, Yeah, I'm just going to be like putting my drink bottle up to my mouth all the time and drinking and doing things like that. But for me, I'm able to have chats to people. I think my tells when we're
sort of fluctuated. Sometimes I think people were like, oh, Eidan's really nervous. But then I got I think I got more control of that. The further in the game.
People kept saying that right about the water bottle, Like I kept reading the comments every episode. They're like, oh, Eidan loves to drink water.
Even keeping hydrated. He's really hydrated out there.
But that's the rational. That's like you've just explained it to them, you know what I mean. Like, people can now listen to my podcast and they can find that out.
Yeah, exactly exactly. It's an educational podcast after all, this one bet.
It's so funny because people who apply and get on the show often message me or while they're through the application process, I get people writing to me saying, I'm applying for the show. I listened to the podcast, I'm taking notes. So we have to always bear that in mind that you know, when you're releasing a podcast like this and doing a deep dive on Survivor, that there's going to be those people in future seasons that are going to mind this stuff.
You know one percent, and as you should. I exactly what I did. I've for twenty three years. I would just consume all Survivor content. I even came up I've got my nine Pillars of Survivor Excellence that you can use to win the game that I went through before I went out there, and I'm like, this is what I'm going to do.
This is how I'm going to win the game. And so I was.
I was in the zone. And what's interesting is I was actually an alternate. So I only got on at the very last I got on with two days before we left. I was told on Friday night, and I was like, when do I go? And I go Monday morning.
But you've got like a good job, like you're a cinema manager, like an area manager.
Yes, but what did you do?
Did you ring them and say, hey, look I can't come to work for and explainable amount of time time.
Yes, exactly. And I was just like, this is an opportunity to come up that I have to do. And I've worked at that company for twenty one years, so i had a lot of long service leave left up and I'm like, I am cashing in.
That's an awkward conversation to have with your boss or the powers that be on a Friday.
It was and look, my boss and my work are so so amazing and so great, and they were like, yeah, cool, this is this is something that's happening, Like go for it all the best. The real hard thing was leaving why my wife Rachel and Phoenix at home. That was I really and like she's the one that made the sacrifice, like she looked after Phoenix that whole time. I actually missed Phoenix's first birthday because I was.
Out on the island.
Yeah I know, I know, but Rach was just like she knew it was a dream come true for me. She's like, you have to do it, and I'm so thankful for her for have.
You been a nightmare since you've gotten back? Like, because you know when you're go and do these shows, they can be really stressful. Have you been a nightmare? Have you driven her insane? It's been it's been really tough.
I think she honestly was probably waiting until I got voted out to now like, okay, that's done. Now let's get back to reality. Let's get back to tell her that's.
Not going to happen.
There's multiple deaths that you die with reality television, win or lose, And yes, there's when is it going to be on television? And then it's like when is my elimination? And then oh now I've got to get my life back together. In some ways, your life doesn't get to go back together. But the advice I have for you is just find the people that want to talk to you about this untilr blue in the face and I'll put my hand up.
Honestly, I could talk about Survivor all day. So it's a matchmde in heaven. Then yeah, same, same. What do you think is going to happen with this middle age mafia moving forward? Like, have you got any ideas about what's going to happen with that. I mean the silent hands looking very silent, all the invisible visible. Yes, it's very invisible at the moment. It's almost kind even see it anymore. But me and Mark, we literally had that agreement that we were never going to vote for each other.
That we were all like, we'd go take shots at each other's alliance alliances, but we were never going to go for each other. I think moving forward in the game, I think Mark's actually in a pretty good spot. I think Mark, I think Ferris likes Mark. I think he's not really he's managed to escape by enough. I think the threat levels are going to move around. Remember there's still idols in play at the moment. That could be another big target. You've got Alex and Ferris that on idols.
It doesn't take very long to people go like, hey, we need to flush these idols. So I think there's still there's still some options there for the Middle Age Mafia to move forward. There's a lot enough floaters in the game.
It's interesting.
There's a lot of peers, Ree, Rie and Kirby, Ferris, Earleen and Ray. Alex is sort of a floater, Mark and Valeria, Kitty in Caroline. It's very interesting. You have so many movable groups like that, so there's so many different machinations that you can have. So it's going to be a really interesting next couple of episodes.
But you've read the super fans and you know, like even talking Tribal, you know, there's just so many people talking about how it's anyone's game at this point because it's really hard to read into but not seeing things being repeated, so it's really hard to pick you know, what is actually happening and who is going to align with who, and you know, like some seasons you'll say it's a it's a Kirby versus Fairest type scenario, but then that's kind of come and it's gone, and then
are they going to be together?
Like yeah's I think the Cold War with those two got to a point and I felt it out there. I felt the fact that they weren't going for each other straight away sort of raised my alarm bells about Rebel Strong. I did feel that those guys were going, Okay,
we need to keep each other in the game. We need to keep some of these rebels in because we don't want the Titans to take over and I did feel that, and that was one of the reasons why I did start building a different alliance with the Old Titans, because I felt those guys, the fact that they weren't immediately going, guys, let's get Ferris out.
They weren't trying to take control and do that.
I was like, yeah, warning, warning, and ultimately yeah, it's sort of what happened.
That barbecue was a missmash of you know, players who had so many problems.
It was like the.
Worst family dinner dynamic. If you've ever been to a Christmas lunch where there's been tension in a family dynamic, that's what that looked like. And you know, Mark saying he had a good time while he was there, it's like me saying that I don't know, I enjoy clipping my toes like I just I did.
There was a great confessional that I did that didn't make it, but I literally compared that us to a dysfunctional family.
It was that Mark was like the dad that was never home.
He was like the distant dad, the mom that Caroline that works all the time at home for everyone, never sees her partner. And then you've got like Jaden who's like the bench pressing uncle. You've got a couple of us kids out there that are just like, like, why.
Can't like mum and dad get along? So it was fun. Yeah, it was really so good.
There are some archetypes that happen in storytelling when you're trying to, you know, put the tapestry of a show together. You know, producers are thinking about that in the way that you know they're telling a story so.
Perc Yeah, I know exactly. So you can accidentally stumbles.
Across the secret formula. You're like, oh, wow, I've got the script in front of me, but the whole script in front of me.
Anyway, I honestly had seventy five other questions and I'm going to have to wrap this up because we're running out of time. Do you actually think that Jaden's claimed that you were his revenge seemed a bit silly? I mean, I don't know, like when he said, oh, this is for you, I was like, what.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, it was like at the end of the day, it was Fairris that actually want to win her out and I actually wanted a Valeria out. I think it was just sort of misplaced. I think it was more just he could actually do something because if you look about it, he voted for us the vote before. If he really wanted revenge, he would have gone to the
other guys and be like, hey, let's do something. Let's take out to one of these people that like you would have gone to a curby or something like that, like this is what I wanted to do, but it didn't happen that way.
And look, Jaden is Jade's Jayden.
He's gonna play the game in an unusual way, like it's been dormant.
Like I've seen volcanoes go off more than that man, and I've never seen a volcano go off anyway in the game of survivor, in the game of Australian Survivor. If you can put that in a sentence and say, what you learned in the.
Game of Australian Survivor, You've got to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and always be thinking one step ahead.
See this is why it's so good at these confessionals, because it's just so succinct. Everyone who joins the podcets asked this question, what is something from behind the scenes, something we didn't get a chance to see, something of like a behind the scenes moment for you.
Look.
A lot of my voting confessionals that didn't make the air. I was really happy with one where I sent Rere over as the as the spy to the other side. It was an entire mission impossible miss is your mission if you choose to accept it thing, and I've put it out there. There's so much fun stuff like that. I think the stuff that me and Charles did together was wild. I'm not sure whether you heard about Charles
sabotaged all the fishing equipment because he's a vegan. Yeah so yeah you heard that, Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, it's so good. And the time that Charles got attacked by a scorpion out there.
There was a scorpion on that one.
But I definitely, you know, I actually while he was telling me the story about being the vegan and sabotage and all the fishing, I was actually really angry.
It's like, because I was loving Charles up until that point. I was like, I was so excited.
Yeah, and then then he started saying about how he was a vegan. He didn't let because I mean, that's what happens in these shows. You always get a vegan and like the vegan you become friends with, but then you have this confluence because you're like, think about.
All those fish that people didn't get to eat exactly. I think me and Kitty's relationship didn't come through.
Me and Kitty were like tight as tight could be.
She's like, she's an amazing person and so she's got such a great outlook at her life and we got on really really well out there. So there's a lot of things that were left on their edit room floor, but we'll have to talk.
About that another time. I think then that podcast. Enjoy chatting to the media. This is your moment, this is your time to shine. People like myself are so excited to be able to have access to.
You and unpack the game and just enjoy the ride.
Thanks mate, thank you so much. Hopefully we get to talk again, as we'll win absolutely