Eva Erickson is clearing up online comments about her “Survivor” experience.
After coming in second place during Wednesday’s Season 48 finale, Erickson insisted that she got to the final three on her own merit, and not because players were afraid to vote her out due to her autism and the potential backlash they’d receive.
“These people respected me as a competitor and anyone who was saying that they were keeping me in the game because I had autism and they were worried about the backlash, they do not understand who I am and who these people are,” the 24-year-old exclusively told The Post.
“How dare you say about my competitors that they don’t have the respect for me and that I don’t have the respect for them to allow that to happen,” Erickson continued. “Not in a million years. These are amazing people. They respect me.”
“You can see time and time again that people wanted to get me and Joe [Hunter] out of the game. That they wanted me out,” the PhD candidate noted. “They were coming for us because we were the strong duo and they couldn’t do it. I was in this game because I am a good player and I built these social relationships that kept me here. I had strong bonds with a lot of people, great alliances.”
“So no,” Erickson added, “I was not being treated differently because I had autism. I was being treated how I am because of the person that I am and what I built in this game. And I think that it is horrible that anyone would say that about my competitors. That they would treat me like that because no, these people are amazing people, strong character, and we all wanted to win.”
“Squelch that. Because no, not in a million years,” she stated.
On the flip side, Erickson said that the positive fan response to her openness about her autism has been “amazing.”
“I went into ‘Survivor’ to play this game and you bring what you live with in your real life into ‘Survivor’ because it’s a reflection of our society and all the unique experiences we have,” she explained. “And so carrying this into our game and seeing the way that the competitors reacted when they got to hear my story, seeing me and Joe and seeing each of them, the people that I had never met that were on other tribes, how they reacted to my story, seeing Jeff cry. I was like, ‘Wow, like, this is big.’”
“And then as this aired on TV — the way that the broad audience, the world, has responded with so much positivity,” Erickson continued. “People who have autism being like, ‘I finally feel confident in myself and understanding that I am great, this isn’t something I need to hide and feel bad about.’ Autism is a spectrum and so many people have many, many different experiences. I’m just depicting one experience, but so many can connect to little things from what I go through.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
