By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

Survivor 49’s final tribal council saw Savannah Louie crowned as the Sole Survivor. What fans and viewers apparently didn’t see according to castaways including Sage Ahrens-Nichols herself is how much the jury raked Sage over the coals for the collapse of the majority alliance after the tribes merged. Although there were seven people in that alliance, the jury laid the blame at Sage’s feet.

According to Sage, the bitter jury members didn’t take responsibility for their part in the epic downfall and were blinded by their desire to get their pound of flesh at the final tribal.

John Powell: Sage, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. Has it been a very emotional day for you?

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: It’s so, it’s so hard, because I think if we look up the definition of “emotional” all it means is literally feeling and expressing an emotion. It’s not synonymous with being emotionally dysregulated and I think a lot of times this society, when they’re saying or describing somebody as emotional, what they’re really saying is they’re emotionally dysregulated.

There is a huge difference between crying and punching somebody in the face. (laughs) One of those things is indicative of emotional dysregulation. So, all that being said for me, I don’t this is not a dig towards you by any means, but I’m I’m good. The game is over. Yeah. Life moves on. I try to embody and live by the motto of being detached from the outcome. So for me, it’s like, you’re on to the next thing right?

John Powell: We’re beginning to hear a lot of stuff come out in the last few days about the finale and that the final tribal was a lot worse for you than we are led to believe. Tell us a little bit about that.

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: So I’m very intrigued. I try to stay away from social media stuff, right? So, I’m very intrigued to hear, I know you don’t have time to tell me who’s saying the things, but it’s intriguing to me that people are speaking to that because the way tribal was edited I was kind of bummed.

Now people that I still haven’t like spoken to…not because I don’t want to speak to them but because I’ve tried to make space. People aren’t comfortable with uncomfortable conversations and I’m not. I’m super easy to talk to but people are usually intimidated because I do enjoy uncomfortable conversations but I’m going to handle them with care.

A lot of people haven’t had that experience so they’re not used to somebody like being able to “hold space” in that way. My concern was I always just want resolve things. I always just want to move forward, reduce tension, but everyone has different paces for getting there and when tribal wasn’t shown in the way that it it happened for me, I was like: Dang! Now some of these people are never going to own or acknowledge how really intense and hurtful it was because they don’t have to. There’s no evidence of it! They can stick to the narrative of like: “Nope. Sage is just emotionally manipulative and she’s a villain and she deserved it.” I can’t make them change their minds on that.

John Powell: We saw the after show you broke down. Was that due to tribal or was that just all the stress hitting you at once after the fact?

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: Partly, but not all of it. So, a lot of what what you saw during the after show was due to what happened during tribal. It’s not depicted in that way though. For me, I was painfully aware of the fact that these people want to hurt my feelings and if I’ve done something to hurt them…My default is not defensiveness. I want to understand but I was getting so much push-back I’m like: “Wait. Hold on and help me understand.”

Nate’s like: “You cannibalized the seven person alliance.” I was like: “I’m sorry. That’s brand new news to me.” Also, if I did, where’s my million? That’s impressive!

I have a hard time tolerating confusion and I so badly wanted to understand but the more I tried to understand the more push-back I got. I became aware very quickly that there’s hurt feelings here, which I’m not judging. It makes sense. It makes sense. You’re sitting on the jury bench. You want to be up here, of course you would have feelings. I would never judge or shame anyone for that but I do judge you when you’re not actually giving yourself permission to feel those feelings and instead you’re trying to project them and pawn them off onto, in this case, me.

All throughout tribal I did not want to give them the satisfaction of seeing that I was hurt so I had to hold back tears and I again I knew that they perceived me as an “emotional player”.

It was really important to me, outside of the like emotional question that Jawan asked, not to cry during final travel, not because I’m ashamed of crying, but because unfortunately I’m painfully aware of how it’s perceived by the general public, like in this case, the jury.

When we get to the after show, yes to what you said, I am just overwhelmed. Oh, my god! It is 12 midnight! I’m hungry! I’m tired! I’m overwhelmed! I don’t like big groups. I’ve been very vocal about this. Now, there’s all these cameras and lights and lights and the jury surrounded me. They just annihilated me up there.

What made it hurt more is they would smile and laugh at Soph and Savannah when they would talk but then when I would talk, they were like rolling their eyes and arguing back. It was so hurtful but I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me hurt but I’m also not going to give up!

There’s a certain point where a question was asked, and we don’t have time to get into it, where I actually had concerns that Jawan thought that our relationship wasn’t real. My relationship with Jawan is something that is so special to me and he was the one person that I gave myself permission to get close with on a personal level. I would have sacrificed my game for him and so to to even for a second that he was questioning if anything was real? I don’t want to be in tribal anymore. When they asked the question about: What’s your best move? I just blanked. I just wanted to talk to Jawan. I just didn’t want to be there. Yeah, sorry, that was a lot.

John Powell: If the destruction of that majority alliance is being put on you, you didn’t vote alone. There’s other people there that are there and it seems, at least in my mind, they should be taking responsibility You couldn’t do it on your own. It’s a numbers game.

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: That’s what I’m saying! If I truly cannibalized the seven person alliance then I think that’s very impressive and I should get the million.

I am one person. I literally just one person. I do not have that kind of power. There’s so much that isn’t shown. I pushed and pushed. Like the Nate vote is the perfect example of how I pleaded. I said: “Guys, I need you to trust me, that if we do not get Savannah out right now in this moment tonight, she is going to win! I just need you to trust me.” Kristina and Alex were the two people who refused. They strong-armed the vote. They said: “No, it has to be Nate!”. Alex was upset that Nate told people about his original idol or something like that. I don’t know if he was actually upset, if that’s just an excuse he was given, but I’m like: “Guys, we can get Nate out next! It has to be Savannah!”. Every vote after that it never went my way. I tried but you can only try so much before it gets flipped on you and I’m not going to sacrifice my game.

John Powell: It’s surprising to me that people are calling you “emotional player” because what we saw there was a lot of plotting, strategizing, all that stuff, from you.

Obviously you do want to make amends and do truly care about making things right as you did with Shannon. She spoke gratefully of how you travelled to her and she got that hug she wanted.

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: Yes! Oh, my gosh! Shannon, what a woman! She is the epitome of grace.

When we get home there’s like a group text or whatever and she’s holding weekly Zoom meetings to hold space for folks.

I texted her aside, and I said: “Hey, I want to let you know I’m not going to be attending the Zoom meeting because I would love to just have an individual conversation with you before we’re in a group setting because obviously there’s stuff to talk about. I said I am not in an emotional place where I can talk about this right now but I just wanted to at least put it out there and acknowledge that absolutely I want to talk to you.

When we did eventually talk, this is why I love Shannon, she just listened. She didn’t get defensive. She didn’t try to change my mind. She said: “I understand why you felt that way and why you saw it that way.”

I am very intentional with my words, right? I said repeatedly, I don’t know Shannon outside of this game. I am strictly speaking on who I’m seeing in the game which I have no way of knowing if that’s who she is outside of this. For me, it is confusing and frustrating. I don’t understand. So, when I talked to her outside the game, I told her: “You’re going to see if I hugged you I felt like that was just such a fake slap in the face, that you’re gonna watch back. You’re going to see me making faces behind your back. You’re going to see me talking about how I was uncomfortable with the way you were talking about religion. It would be so in-congruent if I hugged you in that moment. Giving her fake hugs would make me sick because that feels so morally and ethically wrong to me. I had to prioritize the game, which is not how I operate in my day to day life. I don’t care about outcomes. I care about people.

John Powell: Another person who obviously stood by your side the whole time was Jawan. We had our Pokemon conversation when we chatted. What did it mean to you to have him there because you’re out there on the island, no support system. Your friends aren’t there. Your family aren’t there. The people that you usually turn to when, even just to vent about you day, they’re not there. What did it mean to you to have Jawan there?

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: Jawan is such a light in my life and what wasn’t shown with original Uli…there is a lot that happened. I’ll probably talk about this on my Instagram eventually but there was a lot that happened on the original Uli that indicated I was not in the majority alliance. Right just through like, data collection on people’s words, their actions, their like body language, how they’re interacting with each other. I was like: “Ah, crap. It’s me and Jawan are on the outs.”

I loved Jawan so much on a personal level very quickly. I knew Jawan was on the bottom because every single person came up to me trying to plant a seed of like: You see Jawan kind of walking off by himself?”. I’m like: “All four of you said the exact same thing!”. So, actually, Rizo did not say a name. He’s like: “I don’t want to say a name but there’s somebody.”

John Powell: Just speaking to everybody else I’ve learned a new appreciation for Jawan.

You mentioned that in your in your private life you help other people. You put other people’s before yourself. Did you have a lot of conflict when it came to that in the Survivor game?

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: No, no. Because, I wish I could talk to my siblings, they get so frustrated when it comes to games. I am lethal! I’m not saying I’m the best game player at all, but it’s so funny. If I’m playing a game with my siblings and we have somebody else joined, like Jawan for an example…Him, me and my sister were playing Among Us, and my sister and I went through a huge Among Us phase, and so she was telling Jawan you have to not you cannot trust sage.

When I’m playing a game I’m compartmentalized. I’m like, we’re playing a game and the problem that is I assume everybody else is too?

People keep saying they keep game and personal separate. They don’t. You can see that in their actions. For me, I do actually feel really confident and being able to do that most of the time, right? I’m a human being, so I’m not saying I’m perfect at it, but it is really easy for me to be like: “I’m playing a game. What is the ‘why’ here? Okay, the why is to win.” So, I’m revolving everything around that but if I’m in my personal life, I’m going to show up entirely different when it comes to decision making and the motivations behind that.

John Powell: Was there anything else besides the final tribal council that we didn’t get to see about your journey on Survivor?

Sage Ahrens-Nichols: There are feelings for different parts of the journey but when I think about my journey overall, it’s going to sound so corny, Jawan’s face is at the centre of it. I can’t tell you how much I love this man! My dream going out there was I hope I can find one person where we can game together but we can also be human together, because I need that. It’s hard to not be able to just fully say what I want to say. Even though it looks like I just say whatever is on my mind, I am actually very intentional about which parts I’m saying out loud. I could be 100% myself with Jawan. I didn’t have to filter myself at all. So, I think back to my Survivor experience, and I just, there’s just so many moments with Jawan where I’m I would do it all over again exactly the way everything played out. If it’s because that’s the only scenario that guarantees I have Jawan with me in the end. It’s not a super direct answer but to answer your question: Just picture Jawan’s face. That’s my moment.