Foa Foa continued to crumble last week on Survivor, as dwindling numbers and low morale led to yet another crushing loss for the tribe. Jaison, who originally seemed to be one of Foa Foa’s strongest members, gave up halfway through the challenge, unable to overcome his exhaustion and disillusionment with the game. But when it came time for tribal council, the rest of the tribe valued Jaison more than Elizabeth Kim, who had done little to gain the trust of her fellow players. The 33-year-old attorney from New York City was voted out, leaving Foa Foa with only four members.

What was it like to watch yourself get voted out last week?

It was bittersweet, because I knew that if we had just won a single challenge, I would have made the merge. That was kind of disappointing. But it wasn’t the blindside Jeff [Probst] said it was. When you’re down to five people, you have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know that there’s a good chance you might be going home. Especially when you cross somebody like Russell. I just had a feeling. Plus, I had spoken to Mick right before tribal council and he couldn’t look at me in the eye. When I was talking about the vote, he couldn’t even look at me, and that’s when I was like, “OK, I think there’s a good chance I could be going home.”

Why wouldn’t Foa Foa have gotten rid of Jaison? He’s proving to be a major liability.

That’s the million-dollar question, because he was practically asking to be voted off. My theory is that Russell is a male chauvinist pig and he would rather keep a dead man walking, like Jaison, than a live wire, like myself. And only because of gender. For him, he’d rather control a man who is weak than a strong woman, and at the end of the day, even though Jaison has practically given up in that challenge, Russell was like, “I can’t rely on Liz and she’s threatening me. She’s too smart for this game.” That’s literally what he said in the episode. That’s why he ended up trying to make sure that I got sent home.

You were suspicious of Russell early on. Why didn’t you try to band together with the women to vote Russell off?

I actually did. When we had three women and three men, I went to Ashley and Natalie and talked about forming a girls’ alliance. I wanted to force a tie vote. Ashley and Natalie didn’t believe me. They trusted me less than they trusted Russell, if you can believe it. I don’t know if they’re the smartest tools in the shed. They thought Russell would seriously take them to the end and I couldn’t get through to them, even though I told them that Russell had the hidden immunity idol. They did not believe me and Ashley got sent home. It was really difficult to tell people.

Ashley said that she didn’t trust you because when she came to you about voting Ben off, you went and told Ben about it.

Sure, yeah. Because I wasn’t trusting anybody. Why was I going to keep a secret? Why was I going to keep Ashley’s secret? I don’t know if she’s lying to me or not. At the time, I had nothing going on with Ashley, so there was no real loyalty there. But it’s her sense. She made a wrong call and I ended up staying and she ended up going home, and Ben ended up going home. You can replay these scenes over and over again, but the point is, the one person she should not have trusted was Russell, you know? If she hadn’t trusted Russell, we could have gotten together and taken him out before he took both of us out.

Do you think the collective distrust was what made Foa Foa self-destruct?

I think so. It was so weird. I think we were cursed. I like to say that we were Murphy’s Law personified. Even when we caught a break or a lead, something would go wrong and we would lose it. We’d lose the challenge. It became so astonishing because I’m not a loser! None of us are losers! We came to win and to lose challenge after challenge? Jeff said at one point that we had lost eight out of ten challenges. We have to be the world’s biggest losers when it came to this game. And on top of that, it’s pouring, there’s no one in sight and we’re starved and sleep deprived. The morale was really rock bottom on Foa Foa. It just made it hard to pick up and play the game.

Let’s talk about Ben. Of the castoffs this season, some think he’s racist while others just think he’s arrogant and oblivious. What’s your opinion?

I actually think he’s racially insensitive. I think it’s one thing to think the things that he said, but you don’t say them out loud. You certainly don’t say them to people you’ve never met before. To witness that, I was astonished. There’s a scene where we’re all sitting in the shelter [while Ben and Yasmin yell at each other], and we look like kids while their parents are fighting. We don’t know what to say. All of us are shocked that Yasmin and Ben are duking it out, and we’re like, “Is this really happening? We’re adults?” I thought some of the things that were said were very racially insensitive.

Do you think you could have done anything differently in the game?

Oh, absolutely. I wish I had worked on forming a stronger alliance with Mick and Jaison. I wish I had formed the girls’ alliance that I tried to form with Natalie and Ashley. I wish I had found the idol myself; I went to look for it, too, but Russell had found it so much sooner than any of us could have anticipated.

Are you happy with how you were portrayed on the show?

Absolutely. The facts speak for themselves. I was eliminated because I was a threat, pure and simple. I played the game as smart and as strong as I could have and I was easy-going, so I lasted, even though I didn’t have an alliance with Russell. I wasn’t part of his “dumb-ass girl alliance,” and he didn’t confide in me that he had the idol, but I was still there. I think that’s a testament to my strength: I was there because I was good at the challenges, and that’s what we needed. It just wasn’t enough because we kept on losing, so it was really, really difficult for me to come to terms with that. That’s the lesson that I’ve taken away from this: even if you give 110 per cent, sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes merit isn’t enough and it boils down to who you know rather than what you know. In this case, I didn’t make nice with the one person you wanted to know on my tribe, and that was Russell.

What would you have done if you had made it to the merge?

I would have flipped! There’s no doubt about it. There was no love coming from Foa Foa. You have Russell, who has Natalie wrapped around his pinkie finger, and then you have the two guys, Mick and Jaison, who are like lambs being led to slaughter by the evil shepherd, Russell. I would have no choice other than to flip, and I was happily going to do it! Galu is eight members strong. I could have been a crucial swing vote, definitely. I was really looking forward to the merge so I could do that and so I could change the shape of the game. It’s unfortunate.

Who do you think is going to win Survivor?

I hope somebody from Foa Foa wins.

Even though you would have flipped your alliance to Galu?

Yeah, because I like to think that I was the sacrificial lamb. I love to see underdogs come out on top and if we won, that would be poetic justice. I hope Mick or Natalie wins. I don’t think Jaison is going to make it and I think Russell is going to have his day of reckoning. I think he’s going to have a big fall because he’s making one too many alliances. He’s spreading himself out and you can’t take everyone to the end, and he’s promising everybody he’s going to take them to the end. So he’s going to get found out sooner or later.

Survivor: Samoa airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on Global and CBS.

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