I recently had the chance to talk to the ‘hot mom’ on Survivor: Fiji, Rita Verreos. Rita opened up to me about her relationship with Michelle, her wardrobe choice on the show, and Mookie’s desire to quit.
Murtz Jaffer: It’s Murtz, how are you?
Rita Verreos: Good. How are you?
MJ: Good. Ready to get started?
RV: I am.
MJ: One of the themes of this season has been how shocked people have been at tribal council. Were you surprised at what happened?
RV: Yes, I was surprised. I had a gut feeling just because shortly before we headed to tribal council, I had schemed a little bit there with Michelle to try and get Anthony to come with us on voting either Mookie or Rocky off and it backfired on me. He went straight to Mookie with it and told him. I said to Michelle, ‘I think it’s going to be me.’ And she was shocked and said ‘why?’ She said in the worst case it’s going to be Anthony because that’s what you and Mookie and I and Yau Man decided and we are the majority. And I said ‘hmm, I don’t know. I get a feeling that Anthony told Mookie about me coming up with this plan and there are more boys than girls out here, Michelle, and I think that they are going to stick together as boys. I am sure it is going to be me.’
MJ: In the first episode, you said that Jessica was flying under the radar. Was this just you trying to remove the target from yourself because weren’t you trying to use the same under the radar strategy?
RV: At that point did feel that Jessica was doing that. I adore her. It was nothing personal because at that point we really had had such little time to get to know each other. I didn’t see an effort to communicate with the rest of the tribe members that I had made. I had already been very communicative and made contact with the players and in fact was already in an alliance with Mookie, Michelle and rocky from the very first day that we landed. And Jessica was not. I think Jessica was (just) aligned with Erica at that point. So you know, I felt that maybe it was portrayed that I might have been flying under the radar, but no, in fact I was playing the game very much. I was playing, however, a more mental game and trying to be smart about knowing when to be visible and knowing when to stay out. I was making (what I thought were) smart choices.
MJ: Similarly, in her interview, Erica said that she noticed that you talked to a lot of people and always had the same gameplan. On Survivor Insider she said that you were all about the looks. What was your relationship with her like and what really was your strategy?
RV: My relationship with her was always really positive. Really good. In fact before we were even divided, I approached her to be kind of my partner in building the outhouse so she and I spent a lot of time together doing that and then we started to spend a lot of time together, going out trying to find crab and do whatever we could because we just ended up doing it together, even though strangely enough, we did not talk about making an official alliance between each other, my strategy was always that it was a people game. Get to know the people. What they are all about. What makes them tick. And then take it from there and see who you can align with and who can and can’t trust. That’s how I was playing the game. I am very good at listening to people. In fact, all the press that came out afterwards, very ironically now that I think about it, the editing portrayed me as an annoying talker that was very interesting to see because I had become known as ‘The Ear.’
MJ: Rather than ‘The Mouth.’
RV: That’s correct. I was the one who was always there to hear you out when you felt bad about something and yes, perhaps because I am a mommy, I do like to nurture people and I do like to make them feel better and I was doing that sincerely. I think we needed that. That’s part of my I think a great part of my stock is that I brought an emotional strength to our tribe at a time when we really needed that. I was the one who (unlike Rocky who had negative outbursts where he would remind us of how crappy we were and how terrible we were doing and how we sucked at this or that), I was the one who would turn that around.
MJ: And make it positive?
RV: Yeah. Remind us of how you know, we’re still in this. We’re still Survivors. We’re in it. Come on! Focus here!
MJ: Why do you think all of the pretty girls have been targetted so early? Jessica, Erica, Liliana, and now you. Do you think it was just a coincidence or do the men just feel inferior?
RV: Well, first of all, thank you for the compli for the double compliment for me because you called me a girl and I love you for that.
MJ: (Laughs).
RV: I am almost 40 so thank you, thank you. I have so much love for you right now. And I think that we did have some insecure boys on our team (laughs). I think that they were feeling a bit threatened by not only the pretty girls but also the smart girls. I think ultimately that is what they were the most fearful of.
MJ: Speaking of pretty girls you definitely wore some memorable outfits while you were on the show that actually kept slipping off during challenges. How much of your strategy involved playing up to the guys or was this just a stereotype or editing based on the fact that you work in the beauty industry?
RV: Well, I think it was a little bit of both. I did say pre-game that I heard that I was getting tagged or labelled as the ‘hot mom’ on the show and I was very flattered that all the young guys out there certainly were very generous with their compliments.
MJ: Did you expect that going in or were you shocked by it?
RV: I didn’t expect it. I really am always humbled by any compliments that I get, although the editing took place in the press beforehand. They did it make it sound like I thought I was the hot mom and I thought I was going to go out there
MJ: So when you normally go to the beach, those are the ‘normal’ Rita clothes that we saw, it wasn’t sort of put on for the guys?
RV: I will say this. I am very proud of the genes that I have been given by my parents.
MJ: (Laughs).
RV: I am proud of it. I think it is a good thing. I am a woman who presents herself with sex appeal and I am comfortable in my skin. I like feeling sexy and pretty within my type. But you know you can’t please everybody all the time. On the other hand, I know that I have that sex appeal as a tool and I did use it but I tried to be subtle about it. By that I mean that yes, although my wardrobe had a few malfunctions that went on, you will defend me in that they did happen mid-challenges where I was really unaware
MJ: (Laughs). That’s a great answer! That is a great answer.
RV: By that I mean, for example, Liliana purposely was putting out her sex appeal during that whole massage session. So you see what I mean? I never was blatant like that about my sex appeal. I made it known. Here I am! But I never hid. I am 38, but I do have something going on for me here and I am proud of it. (Laughs). Every girl likes to feel admired.
MJ: Do you think that having kids helped you in the game?
RV: Oh my gosh. Yes and no. Yes, because it gave me that will in those times where I might have felt really defeated to go on. No, because I have so many choices that I had to make that perhaps I would have made differently and so I might have been able to get farther in the game. I was setting an example for my children. I really had to be careful about conniving a certain way where I could explain it later to them. Perhaps I would have been a lot more deceiving and I certainly did scheme but they didn’t show a lot of that. I am kind of sad. I hope maybe there will be an All-Stars where you can see that side to me because I am quite feisty and have a much stronger personality than what was shown out there. And as you pointed out earlier, it could have looked to many like I was flying under the radar but I didn’t want to do that. I really was trying to stay visible when I needed to be and out of the way.
MJ: Michelle didn’t vote for you on last week’s show and she is the only female that remains on Ravu and one of the only cute girls left. How did she manage to avoid being a target and what was your relationship with her like because you seemed very close?
RV: She and I were inseparable. She was my, I would say my right-wing girl. Right there for me anytime. She looked up to me quite a bit and was the first one to say whatever Rita says, I trust and I am going to do and she did. I think that she was able to stick longer than I was for many reasons. She has many qualities that deserved her moving farther in the game. And you know, I hate to say this but for example she has been pretty quiet. When you see her in camp, you don’t hear her voice. So she has been able to not be heard by the boys which is something obviously positive. The minute I said three sentences, I was voted off for that. I would think that is one reason she has stayed on there. And as I said, there are many other reasons. She’s intelligent. We needed her size for challenges where we had to lift because we were so weak. We needed somebody who would be tiny and didn’t weigh much because we didn’t have much strength to lift anything heavier.
MJ: Why wasn’t she blamed for the whole lip gloss thing and was she shocked to see you go?
RV: She was not blamed for the lip gloss thing. No, that’s a good question. I don’t remember at this point, who initiated the conversation. I know we both were talking about fashion because of the fact that she is a fashion design student. And we both participated in the conversation about lip gloss. Would you repeat the tail-end of that question?
MJ: Was she shocked to see you go?
RV: I think she was more shocked than I was. There was a moment there that they didn’t show where she was wearing a bracelet and she took it off and gave it to me with tears in her eyes. She really really had no idea. Minutes before we boarded our raft to go to tribal, I told her that I thought it was me.
MJ: On the show, it looks like Mookie is the Ravu glue with the way that he performs in challenges, holds the tribe together and basically decides who is voted out every week. I have seen other interviews you have done where you said that he did ask to be voted off. My question is who is the real Mookie?
RV: Mookie did ask several times and a lot of people are calling me delusional. That where did I come up with that? He will at some point, when you ask him to confirm that, that he did ask to be voted off. He was feeling very depleted. And you know, it’s funny that you should point out that he had (prior to my episode) been the one to decide the votes but in my episode, you heard him say that ‘I don’t want to be deciding anymore. I am tired. Why don’t you guys decide for a change and I will go with it.’ And that’s when Michelle said ‘well, let’s vote Anthony.’ And I noticed a different Mookie than I knew (not the Mookie that I knew from when we started) when he was out there on that raft. That Mookie that you speak of, that was that glue, was starting to fall apart. I saw him saying ‘whatever’ whereas the Mookie I knew before would have said ‘Rocky, shut up. We have decided it’s Anthony and get over it. Go have a drink with Rita later and work it on out and Anthony must go.’
MJ: Now what’s next for you Rita?
RV: Well, I have a pretty high goal that I am setting for myself. I would like to get an opportunity I do have some TV work that I do locally in San Antonio (I have a segment that I do here). But I am hoping that this opportunity will open a door for me on The View. They have yet to feature a Latina point of view on that program. They have had Asian, and black and Jewish and homosexual and conservative and I am maybe looking for a spot on there as the first Latina.
MJ: That’s great, thank you so much Rita.
RV: Thank you. Thank you for your time. Great questions!
Born in Venezuela, Rita Verreos moved to San Francisco when she was eight years old. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles. She graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor’s Degree in Italian and French Literature.
Verreos has traveled extensively through Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. After college, she moved to Mexico City where she lived for 11 years with her then husband and two children. She was a contestant in the Miss Venezuela pageant and walked the fashion runways of Venezuela, Mexico and Los Angeles. In 1990, she appeared in the film “Marked for Death.”
In 2003, Verreos moved to Texas with her two children. She currently juggles being a single mom with working part-time on her business as an image consultant who specializes in coaching girls for the Miss Texas, Miss California and Miss USA Pageants. She is also a television spokesperson for a local supermarket chain in San Antonio and Austin, Texas.
Verreos enjoys playing with her children, cooking, listening to “world” music, reading and writing in foreign languages. She also enjoys playing basketball, football and walking. She describes herself as persistent, tough on the outside tender on the inside, considerate and respectful.
Verreos currently resides in San Antonio, Texas, with her children, her parents, and their golden retriever, Blackie. Her birth date is July 19, 1968.
– Survivor: Fiji airs on CBS on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
– Survivor: Fiji airs on the Global network in Canada on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Please credit Murtz Jaffer & RealityDish.com when using this interview. If reposting, please post just an excerpt and link back to the rest of the piece.
