‘Survivor’ Contestant Blames Alcohol for Loss: ‘I Was Wasted’

Survivor: David vs. Goliath fans watched in horror Wednesday night as Carl Boudreaux barked out orders at his fellow David teammates after a few too many sips of beer during a feast, which hastened his exit from the reality show.

Instead of allowing any sort of input from his partners, he delivered orders, showing a lack of collaboration, which teammates cited when voting him off.

Boudreaux, a truck driver, told Entertainment Weekly on the magazine’s SiriusXM morning show that he was “wasted,” which may have led to his demise.

“Oh my God, man. Honestly, I have to say after that reward I was wasted,” he said when asked how drunk he was. “I regret it now, but I was having fun. I mean, c’mon, I was on an island in Fiji drinking beer and hanging out with people! You get lost in the moment,” he added.

“Yeah, I was wasted. I was wasted. Every time there was alcohol involved, whether it was me or whomever else, we all came back to camp drunk. Everybody did,” he continued. “It just so happens that the edit for me showed me as being the guy who got drunk. But, hey, it made for great TV.”

He spoke about the immunity challenge that he sat out, reaching instead for nachos, margaritas and beer, saying his alliance was on board with him skipping out.

“I had talked to my alliance and we discussed it. And they knew that I hadn’t had anything to eat other than the merge feast. So I told them, ‘If it looks like a challenge that I know I don’t have the strength or energy to even put up a fight to win, then if there’s food, are you guys okay with me sitting out?’ And they all said yes,” Boudreaux explained. “So when it came to it and I seen it I was like, there’s no way I can stand up there and beat two of these people let alone all of them. So I had to make that decision to get some food.”

Boudreaux caused a bit of a controversy among Survivor fans when he played his Idol Nullifier in the pre-Thanksgiving episode, resulting in SWAT cop Dan Rengering’s elimination.

Host Jeff Probst explained that because Boudreaux played the Nullifier “on the right person, at the right time,” as the rules dictate, it was fair game.

“If Dan had a second idol, he could have played it, and barring another Nullifier with his name on it, he would have been safe. So that attempt to save Angelina by playing his first idol, thus maintaining the numbers advantage for the Goliaths, proves very expensive,” he added.

Rengering later said that he felt “that he would have had to play both [of his] idols at once to escape nullification,” but Probst argued why that would be unnecessary.

“He certainly could do this, but there would be no need since he could wait and play it after a Nullifier was played,” Probst said. “This is the great thing about the Nullifier: Its mere existence adds another layer of uncertainty to the game.”

In a separate interview with EW, Probst called Boudreaux’s Nullifier move a “historic Survivor moment.”

“It was the first time a Nullifier was played and Carl played it correctly. That’s all we could have ever dared dream when we put the Nullifier into this season. The other side of the moment was the confusion shared by Dan and the Goliaths,” he continued. “They had no idea there was even such a thing as a Nullifier so their shock was compounded by a lack of information. And that lack of information connects to the third and perhaps most important element in all of this — the reminder that the Survivor gods are the ones who are truly in control of the game.”

“The Survivor gods have a wicked sense of humor and they love a healthy dose of irony. So, this was a match made in Survivor heaven. Dan’s confidence was growing by the day. He had just played an idol for Angelina and still had one in his pocket,” Probst added. “There was 0.0 chance of him going home if he played it. He was already looking ahead, making his next move and planning how to get out of camp to go find another idol.”

Survivor airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.