Every season of Survivor needs a controversial player, and in this season, Ace Gordon stepped into the role perfectly. Viewers either loved him for the drama he created or hated him for his condescending attitude towards the other players.

The minute he set foot in Africa, the 27-year-old world traveler with the ambiguous accent began manipulating the other players to follow his own desires, orchestrating the eliminations of several contestants and convincing Sugar, the beautiful-but-naïve pin-up model, to follow his every move. But as Fang's numbers dwindled, those outside of Ace's influence realized they needed to get him out before he got rid of them. The remaining Fang members persuaded Sugar that her alliance partner was only interested in her immunity idol and, sure enough, she voted with the majority of her tribe to eliminate Ace.

The wannabe Machiavelli explained why he thinks Sugar turned on him, why viewers have such strong opinions about him and how he was outsmarted by the "smaller players."


To be honest, I wasn't expecting to interview you for at least another few weeks. It didn't seem like any of the other players were going to get it together to vote you off.
I walk down the street here and people shout at me, "Never trust women!" I'm like, "Not exactly what I was going for."

What had been your plan, as far as your alliance with Sugar?
That was my own fault. Never align with idiot savants.

You think she's an idiot savant?
No, that's being mean to savants. [Chuckles] No, I think she's a very good person but she had no idea what Survivor is about. It's my own fault. I really don't blame anyone that much, I just take full responsibility upon my own weak shoulders.

Why did you put so much of your game play on Sugar and her Exile Island immunity idol?
I don't think I necessarily put my game play on her; I just needed some allies and when we went over to secondary Fang. It was just... I had limited options. I had Kelly, which wasn't going to happen, and then I had Crystal, Kenny, Matty and G.C. and they were viewing me as a big threat and a big rival and they all thought I had alliances on prior Kota. Which was somewhat apt, so I had to do something.

Why do you think that Sugar switched her allegiance so quickly?
Honestly? Because she had no idea what she was doing. She's a great girl; I have no criticism about her, it's just the fact that she had, you know – at one point she said, "I don't know what I'm doing." I said, "I don't even know if you know you're in the game."

To be fair, she was in very little of the actual game.
Yes, she spent a lot of time in Exile, and I think that was grating to her, I must admit. The fact that she got to be eating in a comfortable place with no idiots. Sounds devastatingly hard.

Were you planning on taking her all the way to the end?
Yeah! Why not? She's the perfect person to sit next to.

Don't you think you would have lost against her? It seemed like everyone loved her.
It's amazing what editing can do.

Are you saying she wasn't loved?
I'm not saying anything.

Are you happy with how the show was edited or how you were portrayed?
I'm not complaining. It's reality TV. It's not like they're going to portray exactly who I am. We all have depth of character. It's a small facsimile of who we are.

How did you plan to win?
Probably the same manner I was doing. Play well, play hard. Help people and, on the same note, be in the right place in the right situation in the right alliance at the right time.

You've been the most polarizing figure on this season of Survivor. Did you intend to be so controversial when you first went into the game?
No, I didn't. I promise you I would have rather been a forgettable character and won my million dollars, but I don't seem to have the capacity to blend into the shadows as well as I thought.

You specifically clashed with Paloma and Kelly quite a bit.
It wasn't that I didn't get along with Paloma; she just didn't want to interact with the group. When Paloma was [voted off], I didn't suggest her name to be gone. That was the group and I just went along with the group. It was obvious I wasn't against it, but it was just that she alienated herself from everyone else. And the obvious other choice to be voted out was someone in my alliance, so I wasn't going to start bashing the person in my alliance, so she had to go. With Kelly, by that time she had animosity towards me because of the fact that her quote-unquote best friend in the show was gone. Her and Sugar were like oil and water and I was trying to still protect Sugar at that point, so I had to go against Kelly. In real life, I like Kelly as a person.

In the immunity challenge right before Kelly was voted off, it looked as though you were responsible for Fang losing because you couldn't put the flagpole together, but it didn't seem like you would admit that.
Oh, no, I definitely think I took the brunt of the responsibility for putting it together. But at the same point, I was saying, "Guys, try to put the other pieces together; just let me try to get the bottom piece and we'll take it from there," and nobody wanted to put any of the pieces together.

Really? Because the show made it look like you wouldn't let anyone help you.
No. Why would I be in that manner? It makes no point to completely distinguish myself as the fall guy when I'd rather stay in the background. Just like I played the game otherwise, why would I do that to myself?

Why do you think that you've had such a polarizing effect on Survivor viewers?
I don't know. On the same note, it's true: I bring out strong emotions in individuals. You either love me or you hate me; there seems to be no middle ground. I think it's because, you know, I have the capacity to get down to the essence of individuals and myself. It's sort of a strong personality, I guess you could say, so you're either enticed by it, inclined, or turned off and it all depends on who you are and how happy you are with yourself and if you like sort of strong personalities.

You say strong personalities, but right now you seem very calm and subdued, especially compared to how you appear on the show. Is this more of how you act in everyday life?
Oh, completely. I'm a very relaxed person; you'll never hear me raise my voice. I laugh all the time. I'm always smiling. It's just that I expect people to have the same ability or at least have the capacity to understand what I'm saying. If I'm talking about Cicero or Machiavelli, I don't really want to be talking about Burger King or McDonald's or the differences between them or what every type of fast food is or why you think a Big Mac is better than a Whopper. I don't care. I understand that we're all hungry, but on that same note, if you talk about it for 15 hours a day, it doesn't make you any less hungry; it just makes you realize that there's no food.

What made you want to go on Survivor in the first place?
The challenge of it. I've always been a fan; I think it's a brilliant show. The fact that Mark [Burnett] created it is just unbelievable. It just seemed so interesting. I've done most of the things that you can possibly do to put yourself out there on my own, but I needed some kind of controlled environment to have the challenge and things. I've put myself backpacking through the jungles in Burma or camel tracking through the deserts in Rajasthan. Survivor is just a complete microcosm. It's almost like a biosphere, I would say, of reality. Not just reality TV but reality in relationship to – if you could combine five years of your life. If you met a guy and you started dating and then you fell in love and all this other stuff, you could combine that. It's the same way for me, if I met a girl, you know, Sugar – it's just moving all the situations just crushed. It's like taking a trash compactor to your life and just spewing it out immediately. Those relationships that you'd have and it would usually take time for you to dislike that person – this way, you instantaneously know a couple of days later. Days or months, weeks or years in just a matter of days.

Viewers have debated about your accent, which many people think faded in and out on the show. How would you describe it?
I don't know. Maybe mid-Atlantic? Both my parents are English; I lived there for eight years. I spent two years in Asia, one year in Hawaii, a couple of years in Colorado, a couple of years in Florida. I've sort of been all over. It just sort of comes and goes.

If you hadn't been voted off, what would be your next move?
For me, it would depend on whether we were going to merge or not. I always said there would not be particularly strong loyalty to prior Kota; my loyalty would be to my two strong people, which would be Matty and Sugar. And we would have gone in that regard – tried to pull in Bob and maybe pull in Randy or keep Kenny there and try to get our numbers up until we had dominance in the game and just cut back and forth between old Kota and old Fang until we were whittled down to our power of five.

Did you study any game theory or group psychology before you went on the show?
No, not specifically before the game but I've always studied psychology and I’ve done martial arts for 20 years. I like strategy and I've read Machiavelli and...

Were you looking to be a Machiavellian character on Survivor?
Was I trying to be The Prince? Well, it's better to rule than to serve, as they say. But not necessarily – I didn't have the capacity to be one of those players who just sneak by and suddenly they're sitting there in the final two and everybody's like, "Oh, how'd they get there?" I sort of stick out a little too much. I'm too much of a physical presence. I sort of have the capacity to talk my way in and out of any situation.

Almost any situation.
Well, at that point I knew I couldn't talk myself out of it so I didn't even attempt it.

Do you think you could have stayed longer, or even won, if you'd pulled back on your strong personality?
I thought I did a comparatively quiet game. They didn't show the irritated Ace, which is a much less pleasurable experience. I think physically, last season, it was the men who were in trouble; the season before that it was the women that were being knocked down. I think this season it's going to be anyone who's a truly physical player or has a different alliance. I think it's become a haphazard game and on the same note, there's no stereotypical or choreographed way how to play the game - and a lot of the players in the game right now don't know the game. So you have half the players are people who really loved Survivor and watched Survivor and thought, "We should play like Yul," or "We should play like Richard Hatch." And then there are people who are like, "Oh, I've never watched Survivor." You're playing against people who have no idea what they're doing and it's like having a game of Russian Roulette going on while you're playing chess. Every time you make a strategic move, someone spins the barrel and says, "OK, pull the trigger!" I think I had my men lined up on the board well but then I got the revolver in my hand and I blew my own head off.

Do you wish you'd done anything differently?
Of course! How could I say I didn't? I don't really blame anyone; I was dealing with people who I respect to a certain extent but... not truly. The end-all person that I blame most is me. Without question, it all comes down to you in the end; anyone who says different is wrong.

Throughout your whole time in the game, which player did you consider your biggest threat?
You're going to say this is the most arrogant thing I possibly could say – or "egotistical," depending on which one you want to use as an expression or an adjective. I really didn't think anybody was a terribly large threat. I thought – I always knew I'd be pulled down by the minions. You know? It would never be one person I'd be worried about. There wasn't a Tom or a Yul or even an Ozzy, you know. It was a combination – I knew I could not fight off two or three of them, and that's what happened. Three of them took me out in the end. Three small players took out a larger player. And good for them.

Who do you think should be voted off next?
I don't know, to tell the truth. There's a lot of people who should be voted off for – well, it depends on how you define the parameters of who should be voted off next. Honestly, I really don't care. You know, take a hat, put everyone's name in it and pull out a name. That's what the game has come down to.

So now that you're off the show, do you even care what happens?
Of course. I'll always be a fan of Survivor. I think it's a great show, quite honestly. It really has something captivating about it. But do I care which one of them wins? Absolutely not.


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

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