Edgardo Rivera
Early Show Interview Transcript

Transcript by James Barber  - 4.20.07

TRACY : On Thursday's "Survivor: Fiji", the Four Horsemen alliance broke down. As Tribal Council approached, it looked as if Alex was on the chopping block. Mookie tried to save him, but a disloyal Dreamz blew their plans.

(clips)

TRACY : ...and Edgardo gets the boot! Edgardo Rivera, good morning.

EDGARDO : Good morning.

TRACY : Sabotage!

EDGARDO : I know, I know.

TRACY : What did you think of Dreamz. He was supposed to be your buddy, right?

EDGARDO : I knew from the beginning Dreamz was kind of a rat in the game. He was going to switch over to whoever covered him. I expected that, and that's actually why we played the Idol yesterday.

TRACY : Cause you knew he was going to be a rat?

EDGARDO : Yeah.

TRACY : When you say you played the Idol, just for people who didn't see it, what happened is - Mookie had the immunity idol. He gave it to Alex because you guys thought Alex was going to be the one voted off, and then Dreamz screwed the whole plan up.

EDGARDO : Dreamz saw Mookie give the idol to Alex, and he told the other tribe. I tried to warn Alex. I said, "If they're writing the names really long, that means it's my name. So give me the idol."

TRACY : Oh, so you could tell. You also said you could tell because people weren't looking at you.

EDGARDO : When you're sitting at Tribal Council and people aren't looking at you, you know you're in trouble. They're afraid to look in your eyes because they're about to vote you out. When I saw people not looking at me I was like, "OK, so I think it's gonna be me right now."

TRACY : But you must have been shocked because this totally came out of the blue.

EDGARDO : I was shocked because I expected people to vote Alex off because in the challenge they said he had a sense of entitlement and he thought he was running the game. I think people hated that about him, and the fact that he graduated from Harvard and all that stuff. People saw him as a threat.

TRACY : So people seemed to resent him, right?

EDGARDO : Yeah.

TRACY : That was an interesting challenge because we found out a lot about how people felt about other people on the game. (Edgardo laughs) They talked about the person who smelled the worst, who was...

EDGARDO : Dreamz.

TRACY : Dreamz. Was that true?

EDGARDO : Yeah.

TRACY : I think even Dreamz said he smelled the worst.

EDGARDO : Yeah. He smelled terrible.

TRACY : We also found out nobody liked Stacy, and Stacy was the one who came up with the plan to get rid of you.

EDGARDO : That was really upsetting, and at the same time, Alex and I defended her 'til the end. At the Tribal Council before we agreed we weren't gonna vote her out, we were gonna keep her, and she kind of backstabbed us.

TRACY : What do you think of her now?

EDGARDO : I'm not allowed to say that on TV.

TRACY : Oh my goodness, Edgardo! (Edgardo chuckles and grins) Wow! You know what, on that note, before we get to Mookie - because I have a feeling you have nasty things to say about him as well - we have a Secret Scene where Mookie doesn't do what you want him to do either.

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[ EDGARDO : What happened? What did Mookie say?

ALEX : When I talked to Mookie last night, I was like...I was like, do we not trust each other? I told him we need to rotate the immunity idol...between the four of us. I told him we found the immunity idol, the three of us. Right now, what you're basically telling me is you're not willing to part with it cause you don't trust me. If you don't trust him, how am I supposed to trust you?

EDGARDO : I'll go up there and steal it, dude.

ALEX : Well, that doesn't...you can't steal it. The thing is that Mookie's shady. Because he's shady, he doesn't trust anybody.]

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TRACY : I mean, come on, should anybody really trust anyone in this game? Didn't you learn that lesson?

EDGARDO : You can't trust anybody, but you have to have a little leap of faith on somebody, because the game is like a poker game, a little trust and a little bit of strategy.

TRACY : Do you regret...you really played it as a team player. You see it in that scene. Do you regret that?

EDGARDO : No, I didn't. I don't. I was being a team player but at the same time when I decided to include Mookie in my team-playing move, it wasn't the right one. He was a gossip queen and he started telling everybody about the immunity idol.

TRACY : "Gossip queen." I love it.

EDGARDO : Yeah, he was a gossip queen.

TRACY : OK, we just have a few seconds laugh. One of the questions last night was "Who would you trust with your life?" - would you trust ANY of them with your life?

EDGARDO : No, I don't think I would trust anybody. When a million bucks is on the line, don't trust anybody.

TRACY : That's a tough lesson to learn. Edgardo Rivera, thanks so much.

EDGARDO : Well, thank you.