“Survivor” season 46 lost its Atlanta representative last week when Tim Spicer got blindsided halfway through the game.
“I was utterly surprised, I was shocked, I was hurt,” Spicer told Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly. “I remember just having to take a moment after he snuffed my torch.”
Spicer, a 31-year-old Atlanta-based coach for prospective college students and married father of two kids, was the seventh contestant out.
He didn’t get that much airtime relatively speaking, but he played hard and was seen as a likable threat. He also offered up some amusing banter with host Jeff Probst during the last challenge where he also boosted morale by namedropping family members of various competitors.
After the merge, Spicer was juggling a couple of different alliances. When Q Burdette, who had a tenuous final six agreement with Spicer, tried to get him to vote out Ben Katzman, one of Spicer’s original Siga tribemates and a close friend, Spicer resisted.
Instead, Spicer targeted Hunter McKnight, a more viable threat in his mind from another tribe. But this didn’t go over well with Q, who turned against Spicer and set up the blindside.
In a separate interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the April 18 episode after he was voted out, Spicer said he is befuddled that Q is still in the game. “Quintavius is a quitter. It’s annoying,” he said. “I couldn’t even get through the episode.” (Q talked about quitting during the April 17 episode but was convinced not to do so.)
He also never took Q’s idea of taking two players from each tribe to make a final six out of 13 seriously and never took to his aggressive style of play. “He talks too much,” Spicer said. “Some people think they can influence through brute force. That’s now the way I lead, not the way I act in life.”
“Survivor” is shorter now than it used to be, condensed to 26 days instead of 40. It also means less food and Spicer literally didn’t poop at all over two weeks. “I wasn’t eating enough to pass anything, honestly,” he told EW.
He told the AJC that even though it’s shorter, that doesn’t make the game any easier. “You don’t have any time to sit out there and chill,” he said. “You have to play hard every moment.”
And he has no regrets about his gameplay. “It’s important to be authentic with people,” Spicer said. “That was me the whole time. I was true to myself. My biggest fear going into the jungle was losing myself. As a Black man on television, I represent something bigger than me.”
He just missed being on the jury, which means “Survivor” sent him home early to be with his wife and two sons. “I mean, it is some relief you are going home,” he said to EW. “We were like 14, 15 days in, plus getting there to Fiji is a long haul. But I came back on Father’s Day, so I thought that was full circle for me to be with them on this day.”
Spicer attended Ron Clark’s annual “Survivor” party at Ron Clark Academy two weeks ago along with many of the cast members from seasons 45 and 46. “It was a blast,” he said. “Ron took time to decorate the place. He had the ceiling with all our faces on it. We all marched out one by one and got to interact with the fans. The fans were the most humbling piece. Many said they had never met a ‘Survivor’ player before. We’re not Hollywood. We didn’t get paid.”
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Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Atlanta is home to many notable podcasts such as “Stuff You Should Know” and “Up and Vanished.”
A much smaller one “Second Act Stories,” which is co-hosted by Cumming resident Scott Merritt, was recently nominated for a Webby Award in the “Advice and How-To” category. He is up against much better known podcasts: Michelle Obama’s “The Light,” “The Sarah Silverman Podcast,” Slate’s “How To” and TED Audio Collective’s “How to Be a Better Human Being.”
“Webby’s are high profile and super prestigious,” Merritt said. “My partner Andy [Levine] and I produce a really good show. It’s small and super independent and fully bootstrapped.”
The format is Levine and Merritt each interviewing both famous and regular people about life and career shifts. Their subjects range from “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan and Brian “Q” Quinn of “Impractical Jokers” to a woman who left real estate and now hunts pythons in the Everglades. They fly across the country to interview subjects on their own dime.
Indeed, this is a hobby for both Levine and Merritt, who are publicists by trade. The podcast, which airs new episodes twice a month, doesn’t generate enough traffic to receive sponsorships.
Merritt, 50, said he enjoys doing the podcast because “I’m genuinely interested in people’s journeys and stories. I’m naturally curious.”
You can vote at webbyawards.com.
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
SCAD is partnering with the Writers Guild Foundation on a special day of programming on campus with an exclusive pop-up version of its legendary library of scripts, show bibles and episode outlines.
On Friday, April 19, movie and television fans in Atlanta will be able to view scripts and show bibles from Oscar-winning and nominated films such as “Barbie,” “American Fiction” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” as well as Emmy-winning and nominated series including “Friends,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Game of Thrones,” “black-ish,” “The Sopranos,” “Golden Girls” and “Star Trek.”
The viewing is open to the public at SCADshow, the university’s new theater complex in Midtown Atlanta at 1470 Spring St. NW on the second floor from 2-5 p.m. Friday. There are also sessions about screenwriting that day and each one is $10 apiece to attend at scad.edu. SCAD alum pay $5 and SCAD students get in for free.
