On Survivor 51, Brady Booker (aka Bodhi Hayward) placed 13th out of 21 castaways. A sudden 9-4 blindside at the first post-merge Tribal Council in Episode 7 eliminated him from the game.
That vote sent him straight to the jury, where he served as a first member, and he’s been speaking out about it.
Interviews After Elimination
During his post-game interviews, the Knoxville native and pro wrestler revisited the thumb incident. You might recall that a machete accident on Day 4 left Booker minus a quarter of his thumb after a mishap chopping firewood.
Show medics treated the injury, but Booker insisted they hold onto the severed piece. It was later encased inside a resin pendant, giving him a pretty wild custom necklace to remember the experience by.
7 ‘Stages of Grief’
Speaking with Parade, the Survivor 51 star said, “When we got the little thumb cut off, I went through all seven stages of grief. People got to see me swing from emotional tree to emotional tree, dog, like I was freaking gorilla man.”
While he admitted that he understood it was “just a game,” it isn’t as easy as it might look from the outside. For him, while being in it, it felt that “nothing else matters. Your blinders are on; you’re ready to die for it. And I almost felt that way.”
On Being Blindsided
Meanwhile, in another interview with Entertainment Weekly, Brady Booker discussed being blindsided. Completely immersed in the game, he spoke of an almost dreamlike feeling. He added, “You could definitely call it a blindside. I felt it might get hairy, but it got almost too hairy, dog, and the hair got shaved. So we’ll call it burnt out, snuffed.”
While he admitted that it was an awesome experience which doesn’t come along too many times in life, it all seemed a bit surreal because of his immersion in the game.
Booker described feeling “like a flash bang went off. And it was an out-of-body experience watching myself walk down that aisle, looking at big Brody, Jeff.”
Talking About Mike
Mike seemed to get on Booker’s nerves the most because of frustration. He described how he and Carter hoped to keep Mike informed about what was going on, especially with the girls who were ragging on Mike.
They kept encouraging him by saying things like, “Hey, you know, keep trying to do stuff like that.”
The irritation for Booker and Carter was that Mike never seemed to reciprocate. While they had conversations about sports, and even a few emotional chats, Booker thought “there may be a little bit more of an understanding.”
In the end, Mike “stuck to his guns… lying to my face and he ended up Survivoring me.”
Philosophically, and not totally free of sarcasm, Brady Booker added, “I think I saw something he said, ‘It’s not my first Brodeo.’ Glad I could give the guy a personality.” Ouch!
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