While Drew Basile is known for sharing some words of wisdom and thought-provoking analogies on Survivor 45, it looks like the Philadelphia native is a bit more of a pessimist than we saw on our television screens all season long, with a deleted scene posted by Entertainment Weekly spilling the beans.
Spliced with clips of Drew moaning and groaning over rather minuscule tasks around camp, castaways like Jake O’Kane and Julie Alley dished about the graduate student’s behavior in a series of confessionals that are sure to give you a chuckle.
Jake got the ball rolling, sharing with the camera that “He’s a little stuck in his ways, you know? He has a real problem with authority. He doesn’t like being told what to do,” prior to imitating Drew’s reactions to finding out they need to go to a challenge, they need to make rice, and more.
“He’s a little bit of a pessimist, but he’s funny, you know? I tease him about it… If someone’s going to find a way to complain about something, it’s going to be Drew,” Jake concluded with a beaming smile.
As for what Julie had to say about her tribemate, she explained that Drew gets insanely “hangry,” and she was constantly worried that his hunger would cause his whole game to crumble — how wild is that?
“Survivor‘s no rodeo. I mean, it’s no cruise. Survivor sucks. Survivor‘s freaking hard,” Drew dished in the video, garnering a roar of laughter.
In an exclusive interview with Dalton Ross at Entertainment Weekly post-elimination, Drew reflected on this deleted scene, admitting that the clip captured exactly what he was feeling as soon as Survivor 45 began to near its end.
“At the end of the game, I was pretty grumpy. I think that when you’re tall, I’ve heard the food deprivation hits a little bit differently. It becomes a lot harder, and I was feeling it in a major way,” the “Reba Four” member spilled, sharing the explanation for his behavior.
Drew Basile then proceeded to reflect on the comments that Jake O’Kane made during this deleted scene, which showcased the contrast between the former’s pessimism and the latter’s optimism.
“Jake is this wellspring of positivity — ‘I’m on Survivor!’ But for me, ‘I’m on Survivor!’ was like a millstone around my neck. It was like, ‘Oh my god, another day of no food. Struggling man against man.’ I’m trying to think of the Thomas Hobbes Leviathan quote, but yeah, I was a little grumpy,” he gushed with a grin.
While the 23-year-old is already greatly missed on our television screens, to find out who takes home the title of “Sole Survivor” and the million-dollar cash prize at the end of Survivor 45, catch the highly-anticipated finale on December 20 at 8pm ET/PT on CBS, or the following day on Paramount Plus.