Hai Giang reacts to learning about Omar's big lie on Survivor

Hai Giang was determined to come in and play Survivor hard. If that meant strong-arm Tribal Council negotiating tactics, so be it. If it meant voting out an ally after being willing to go to rocks to save her just a few days prior, so be it. If it meant nonsensically smearing blood all over his chest for no good reason whatsoever, so be it.

But maybe Hai played Survivor 42 a little too hard, because he was identified as a big threat to win the game, and it was that identification that ultimately did him in. Sensing an opening to take out a potential winner, Omar Zaheer straight-up lied to Mike Turner, telling him that Hai had bragged about his ability to manipulate the former firefighter like a master puppeteer, and Mikey no likey.

That move at the Survivor Sanctuary separated Hai from his biggest remaining ally and set the stage for the tribe to almost unanimously vote him out. What does Hai have to say now that he knows about Omar's big ruse? What happened out on the island that never made to TV? And how the heck did he explain all that amulet blood smeared all over his body? We spoke to juror number four to get his reaction to everything that went down.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What happened, Hai? How did all go wrong? Why are we talking right now?

HAI GIANG: We're talking right now because I think that I got outplayed, right? As simple as that. I think the edit was very spot-on in its retelling of that afternoon. I was extremely comfortable, and I'll tell you why I was comfortable. The edit didn't show my relationships with a lot of the people in the majority. Drea, Omar, and I were extremely close. Drea was my number one. Mike and I had been working together since day three. So I really did not have a clue that the tide was turning on me, and they did a really good job at making me feel comfortable that afternoon. So my reaction at Tribal was exactly that of someone who got blindsided, but was understanding to the fact of why I was targeted.

I think Lindsay said it best when she said "We have to even the playing field tonight." And as the votes were being read and my name kept coming up and I realized it was me, it was like when you hear about when people die and they see the light. It was literally that. Everything was slow motion. Every conversation that I had that afternoon was rushing back to me, and every subtext of everything that people were saying that Tribal made sense.

Lindsay was not talking about evening the playing field to take out Jonathan. She was talking about taking me out. And I was like, "Oh my God, that brilliant." The answers were brilliant. Everyone was really on top of how they were making me feel that afternoon. And I was just really impressed.

So you didn't know it at the time you were blindsided, but what was your reaction when you found out about Omar just making stuff up about what you had told him about controlling Mike like a puppet?

[Watching the episode] was actually the first time that I learned in depth about his lie. Over the last 10 months or so, we kind of put pieces together, but for me, hearing it explained by Omar in the episode was a little shocking for me to see how Mike just kind of ate up the lie, because he lived with me for 19 days. He's lived with me longer than all of these other people. He knows the way I speak. He knows the way in which I carry myself.

So for him to think that I'd just be out here saying, "Mike's my puppet. I control his vote." First of all, that doesn't even sound like me. So I was a little embarrassed for him watching it back, like, "Dude, you should have known, I would never talk like that." But I'm also very impressed by Omar and his ability to kind of unravel people's games so quickly. He unraveled my game in one short conversation with Mike. So, very confused for Mike, but very impressed by Omar.

Obviously there was a very strong reaction at the second Tribal Council last week once that group saw that you all had voted out Rocksroy. I was looking forward to seeing what happened once the two groups were back together at camp, but they never showed it. So what did happen when both groups were merged back together in terms of each group explaining to the other what had happened and why?

Well, I'll lay out the atmosphere that night. They got back and it was the wetest, coldest night that we had the entire season, and it was pretty miserable. So when they came back and we saw that Tori was missing, we cheered at first because she was the target for so long. And we started asking what happened, and they would not tell us anything because I think they had just gone through a very traumatizing night and they did not wanna speak about it.

But the next morning we all sat in the shelter, all eight of us, and shared our Tribals. And honestly, when I learned about the second Tribal, I was really distraught. I was blindsided by some of the reactions. I completely understand why that Tribal unfolded the way it did.

Drea and Maryanne, as two black women in Canada, go through a lot of experiences that shape who they are. So when they were reacting to Rocks' blindside, that was authentic. That was genuine. That's how they felt in that moment. And I felt like that Tribal really [turned] into something that it never should have become because people could not have the empathy and capacity to listen.

So the thing that I did when Drea and Maryanne were explaining the outcome of that was that I was listening, even though I was a little confused about the strategy. Because I will also share that I approached Drea that morning and I told her, "Hey, Rocks is forming an all-guys alliance and he's coming after us. I think it's time to target him." And while she did agree at that time, I think maybe a part of it was like pacifying me and making sure that I felt comfortable long enough so that we could all have a conversation later.

But because we got split up into two teams for the challenge, I never got that opportunity to regroup with her. So her feelings of genuine shock when she saw Rocksroy voted out was part of the reason that I became enemy number 1 this Tribal, because everyone felt as though I was steamrolling the alliance and the conversations. And unfortunately, that's what did me in.

Tell me about your relationship with Romeo. because we saw you all have a really moving personal scene together talking about his journey as a gay man, but then you two were also really coming for each other and there was some name calling, so what was going on out there?

So the thing with the edit that is fascinating, it's always told from the perspective of the person on the bottom to get you to understand the hardships in which they're going through. But for me watching it back, it was kind of shocking to see the edit portraying Romeo as someone who is paranoid because he's at the bottom. That's not the case. Romeo wasn't paranoid because he was at the bottom; he was at the bottom because he was paranoid.

So right after the conversation in which he comes out to me, I'm telling him — because at that point in the game, he was one of the people that were vulnerable for Tribal — I told him Chanelle would be a great target because no one trusts her. He immediately took that piece of information, went back and told Tori and then Tori told Chanelle. Chanelle brought that information back to me. So somehow the information that I told Romeo was relayed back to me.

So immediately all trust that I had for Romeo was broken. There was no way I was going to work with him again. Similarly, he really did not enter the merge the same person as he was pre-merge. And as a result, no one wanted to be associated with him. But the edit only showed you that he was paranoid because he was at the bottom.

It's interesting because you took your blindside so well but got really up in arms about that one stray insignificant vote that Romeo put on you a few Tribals back. Why get so upset there?

I love Romeo today, but he really played a game tied to his religion. And as someone who is an atheist, I came out there saying that no one is going to use their personal beliefs to persuade me. And when I confronted Romeo about the information being relayed back to Chanelle, he was swearing up and down on his faith that he did not tell Chanelle this information. Same with that night. I asked him straight up. I'm like, "Did you vote for me?" "No, Hai. I swear on my creator. I did not vote for you."

I took that very personally. I'm like, "Don't do that. Don't use religious whatever to persuade me because I don't buy it, first of all. And second of all, it's really out of bounds." So that was part of where my intense reaction was coming from because I felt as though people were trying to use their personal beliefs to gaslight me. And that is something that I did not appreciate.

It's interesting to hear you say earlier that Drea was your number one, because the one thing I've been struggling to figure out this season is who's aligned with whom. So did you wanna go to the end with Drea? Whom did you envision as your final three?

My final three were Omar and Drea. Omar and I shared a really special moment fake merge night, where we literally sat at the campfire as everyone was talking around us. And he really bonded with me on a really deep level. We both love animals, so immediately when I found out that he was a veterinarian, I was like, "Oh my God, I love this guy." That conversation really made me trust him. The next morning, they didn't show it but I was like, "Omar, I would love to go to the end with you. I think you are such a lovely person. You have so much empathy for animals and other people. And I really resonate with that. I would love to go to the end with you."

And Drea was the same. Right after we got the amulet together, I was like, "I wanna play with her. She is fearless." What you didn't see in the edit was Drea and I spent literally minutes trying to convince Lindsay to take the amulet because Lindsay did not want to take it. But Drea, on the other hand, was fearless. She was like, "Oh yeah, absolutely. Let's take this amulet." And that is someone that I was so attracted to. I was like, "This woman is strong, determined, fearless, and she's here to play and I'm going to play with her"

So as soon as the merge hit, I was like, "Oh, these are my Canadians." We are going to the end together. Mike was always in the plan as well. But the thing with Mike was while we were very close socially, strategically, we couldn't have been more misaligned. Because I wanted to play with empathy, but Mike was really driven by his emotions out there. And that was really hard to reconcile when it came to making strategy happen.

You fought to keep Lydia in the game and identified her as your number one ally, but then voted her out at the pre-merge and we never got a chance to hear why. What happened there?

That afternoon, it was too late to save Lydia because the train had left the station. Omar had spent a large part of the afternoon laying the foundations for a Lydia blindside without telling me. I think his lie about Lydia trying to turn on the majority eight is what did her in with everyone else. And, as a result, by the time I had learned the information, we were going to Tribal in 30 minutes. And on top of that, like I mentioned earlier, my relationship with Omar at that point was much stronger in two afternoons than the relationship that I had built with Lydia in 12 days, which is a testament to Omar's social game. I was so infatuated with him as a person that I was willing to forego my strongest ally and have her eliminated because I trusted him that much.

Speaking of Lydia, what if Daniel does not open up that negotiation by saying that he did not want to go to rocks? What happens then?

If Daniel did not open with "I don't wanna go to rocks," honestly, as a math person, I knew that the probability of me drawing the white rock was low, but I knew the probability of me going the very next Tribal Council, because I'm in the minority, were high. So at that point for me, it was math — emotions aside, even though I wanted to save Lydia as an ally. I also knew that if I were going to go to rocks, there was a chance that I would've stayed anyways. A lot of people online were like, "Oh, Hai, that's a lot of BS. You wouldn't have gone to rocks." I would've gone to rocks, because at that point I would've been next.

Okay, my favorite moment of the season and perhaps of any season ever is you smearing blood all over your body during that amulet twist. Did it occur to you at all in the moment that explaining why you had blood all over your body with absolutely no gaping flesh wounds might be a bit of a problem?

[Laughs] Honestly, me putting blood on myself was fun. I am a very camp person. I wanted to do it. And immediately afterwards, as I was running back towards my tribe and Lydia was like, "Why are you bloody?" it dawned on me. I was like, "Oh my God, I don't have an excuse. I was overzealous with the blood and now they're going to catch me in a lie!" But honestly, no one asked about it except Jenny, so it worked out in the end.

That's amazing. What did you tell Jenny?

I told Jenny it was part of the challenge, and here's the thing: Miss Jenny had to go because she asked me twice about the blood and I realized that she was so perceptive and I was like, "Oh, she's a threat." [Laughs]

What's something that happened out there that you wish had made it to TV but that we never got a chance to see?

I wish they would've shown more of the relationship building at early Vati. Those are some of my favorite memories ever. Our first night, we didn't have a roof over our heads, so the six of us just laid there looking at the stars. And we went to bed telling each other our gratitudes, and I am so grateful for those early moments.

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