By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

Gridlock. Deadlock. Consensus. Diplomacy. Political Communications Director, Alex Moore, is used to all of this and more on Capitol Hill which is possibly why he was so comfortable on a Fijian island playing Survivor, a game of gridlock, deadlock, consensus and diplomacy. The comms chief’s skills got him to the final nine. So, what went wrong? Alex explains.

John Powell: Alex, it is wonderful to be talking to you today. How you doing?

Alex Moore: I’m feeling really good. I wish it was under better circumstances, but alas, here we are.

John Powell: Did you have any idea going into tribal council that you were one of the targets?

Alex Moore: I knew. Jawan had told me and I knew that Rizo, Savannah and Soph were always going to write my name down. We were on opposite sides even though I’d worked with Soph for the whole game up into this point but they were such a tight trio and I was just that person who was willing to take a shot and so I knew that it was likely that they were going to be coming after me.

John Powell: Obviously part of your plan was to play the middle to see who got the advantage numbers-wise. Rizo said you were playing a “messy game”. What went wrong?

Alex Moore: So it’s funny because a messy game to them just meant that I was friends with everybody. They didn’t like that. I would go from having a conversation with Rizo on the beach to going to have a conversation with Kristina. People were like: ‘Oh, he’s being so strategic’. Yes, I was. I was getting all this information from them but I wasn’t starting rumours or doing any of that type of stuff. It was more so that Rizo saw my connections as a threat and he saw that basically I was going to be the one standing in the way of him making it further in the game. So, game recognizes game and I have no ill will towards him because he did what he had to do to make it to the next round.

John Powell: Now, you were able to watch it all back, things that you didn’t get to see on the island. Were you surprised that he was pushing so hard and that people weren’t listening to Rizo?

Alex Moore: I guess Riz has a lot of Riz. (laughs)

It was just so shocking to me that Jawan could go from saying: ‘I don’t trust this guy!’ to buying every single word that he said about me. It’s like: ‘Jawan, we’ve were able to work together on the Nate vote. We were in an alliance together. Why we were in an alliance?’. Like everyone who was on the Nate vote wasn’t an alliance together so as soon as we got out, as soon as they got out, MC I were like: ‘Oh no, this is falling apart.’ Why didn’t people just want to stick to the numbers? It didn’t make sense to me. It was seven versus three and they just were continuing to eat our own and so I was shocked that they were buying whatever Rizo was selling.

John Powell: How did that make you feel knowing one side had the numbers and seems to be throwing that advantage away?

Alex Moore: I think ultimately it comes down to people wanted to be liked by Rizo and Savannah. They were seen as these leaders which, to me, is like, all right, let’s get them out!…Jawan just had this relationship with Rizo from the beginning and it was that’s what ultimately he decided to side with. So, Do I think it was the right decision? No, of course not.

John Powell: You’ve talked about relationships. You and Soph were quite close. We saw in recent episodes she even tried to kind of realign with you, kind of bring you in. Why did you not follow her lead? Why did you choose to take a different direction?

Alex Moore: I think something that wasn’t necessarily seen is that basically Nate was targeting me because Soph had told him about my idol. She was basically kind of using any information she could to get in good with that Uli group.

I knew that I needed to get Nate out and I couldn’t loop in Soph on that because she would just run back and tell us Savannah and Rizo, and there was no infiltrating that group. That group was so tight. I knew she was a lost cause.

Did we still talk and were we still friends? Yes, but she had just been on that with them for two tribe swaps where it was already going to be deeper than what we had built. I didn’t want to just go be a lap dog. I was there to play the game as well. So, no, I’m not just going to go curl curl up to them. Do I like them and would I have wanted to work with them? Yes, but they just weren’t on the side of the votes. They didn’t have the numbers. I knew Jawan and Sage weren’t going to vote with them on that Nate vote and so basically never recovered after that where she couldn’t trust me and so I’m not surprised she ultimately ended up voting me out.

John Powell: You mentioned several times on the show that you’re on Survivor to prove something to yourself. You played one of the wisest games, very pinpointed games out there. Did you end up proving something to yourself because you seemed like a strong player throughout the whole season.

Alex Moore: I appreciate that. I’ve been told wise beyond my years but I wanted to prove that I can push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve always had to fight for what I want and fight for in my job and fight in real life. So, it’s not that I didn’t have confidence before. I definitely did. I thought I could win the game and I still think I could have but what I proved is that when I do things that are uncomfortable they still can go well.

When I’m out there having to step up, like it was no question that I was going to step up and be the one to kill the chicken but is that ever anything that I actually thought I would do? Would my friends tell you, ‘Oh, Alex is going to go out there and chill a chicken?’ Absolutely not and so the reaction has been so awesome because it’s showing exactly what I wanted to prove. That I am this person who can step up and do hard things.

John Powell: Speaking of the chicken, I’ve been watching and covering Survivor since the very beginning so I’ve seen it all. Sometimes you have to do what you need to do. A lot of people don’t understand that. How are you feeling about the whole thing?

Alex Moore: Well, let me first by start by saying I understand why some people aren’t happy with it. Did I want to have to do that? No, I didn’t, but I think what people need to understand is the whole first week I probably had a total of one coconut. I am starving at this point and I didn’t kill the chicken because it was some fun thing to me. As you can see it was very hard for me to do that but it was out of necessity. Some people do this every day in their life. I know some people would be against it, in general, or vegetarians, I respect that. This is not something that was just like a ‘fun Survivor thing’. This is we’re starving and we need all the nutrients we can get if we want to be able to compete.

John Powell: Here in Canada, most of our political parties hug the middle. We don’t have the separation that you’re kind of dealing with there that we’re seeing unfold. Did any of your political know how your diplomacy skills come into play and how did that work out? Did you ever think about telling the other players what you do for a living?

Alex Moore: So there’s never a point John that I thought: ‘Let me tell people that I work in politics and that I especially work in political communications.’ They might feel that a lot of my interactions were not genuine but I think it really came into play because you have to know how to build these connections with people who are different than you, who have different ideas and I really use that as a way and knowing even how to use information when you get it. I don’t want people to not tell me things because they thought I couldn’t be trusted. I just felt that really my work set me up perfectly. I mean, you hear me talk about it every five seconds, but it’s because it is so applicable to everything, the social strategy of the game.

John Powell: Is there anything that fans didn’t see that you wish they did?

Alex Moore: From what I’ve read online people were kind of wondering where I was on the merge vote and wanting to hear my thought of why Nate? Why did I not side with Soph? I wish it would have been shown that Nate’s coming after me and basically it got to the point where Rizzo had sent Nate out to go make amends with me and I wasn’t buying it. I could see it from the very beginning and that’s why I’m sitting here right now, it was what Rizo was doing…I just wish my perspective would have been a part of that. I think it could have been helpful for fans to see why I sided with Hina instead of going with Soph and the Uli members.

John Powell: Obviously you can’t say who you’ve voted for as a member of the jury, but you have a big decision ahead of you. When you were approaching that decision what were some of the things that you were looking for in a winner?

Alex Moore: I had to play the game from day one and so I didn’t want someone who was just sitting around. I didn’t want someone who was just getting carried to the end. I was looking for someone who was also a competitor. I want someone to win who has the all-around package. Someone who can win competitions, win challenges, have a social game and isn’t afraid to own it. We’re here playing a game! Rizo got me out and I have nothing but respect for him. That’s what I’m voting for. In the end, it is just someone who played the game that I wanted to play.