To the other players, Gabe Ortis will just be a barback. But the 26-year-old is hiding a comprehensive cocktail of a background, having hosted his own talk show and served as communications director for a mayoral campaign. Though he had to leave those worlds to come to the island, it's clear Gabe has a platform when he speaks to me. He wants to play as a "reclamation" and "love letter" to the seasons that made him fall in love with the show. And that includes him channeling the electricity and surprising loyalty of legend Russell Hantz .
Read on for my interview with Gabe, and check in with Parade.com daily for interviews with this season's contestants and other tidbits. Survivor 47 premieres on September 18 with a two-hour premiere on CBS.
Related: Meet the Full Cast of Survivor 47
Interview with Gabe from Survivor 47
To start, give me your name, age, and occupation.
My name is Gabe Ortis. I'm 26 years old, and I'm currently working as a barback in Baltimore City.
How did you wind up behind the bar?
So I was actually working as a communications director on a mayoral campaign in Baltimore City. And, right before that, I was hosting my own talk show on the radio in Baltimore for about two years. And then I ended up having to leave those jobs to prep for Survivor. So my stop-gap in between was I've been working barback gigs for the past couple of months. And I figured that's going to be a much easier sell to people on the island, is that "I'm just a barback, man," than "I've worked in politics and I had a talk show" and all this and that. So I'm not lying, but I'm not telling the whole truth.
Well, let's get into that resumé. Talk to me about what got you into both politics and media. Between that and working in Baltimore, it sounds like you're straight out of The Wire !
I knew back in high school I always wanted to work in broadcasting. There was a day where me and my buddy went up to the press box at our high school during a soccer game. And they would livestream all the games for the alumni and the people who donated to the soccer team. And we found two headsets in a box one day and just plugged it in and just started calling the game. And the Director of Athletics or something like that came in and just started reaming into us, and was like, "What the hell are you guys doing? We have donors on here. We have alumni on here. What are you saying?" And then he looked in the little comment section of the livestream, and everybody was like, "Oh my God, these guys are great. Why is this the first game that they've been here? Blah, blah, blah."
And so from that moment, I always knew I wanted to work in broadcasting. So I went to college for it in Maryland. And, through a series of odd jobs in that industry here and there, I ended up landing my own show in Baltimore. And three days a week I was talking politics and current events. And two days a week, I was talking sports. And I did that for two years, and it's, to this day, probably my favorite job I've ever had. It was awesome. I took callers every single day. I've never felt more in tune with my city than doing that. And just getting to talk about the city and all the cool things going on. And eventually, I thought, "Hey, I could use a little bit more cash coming in for how long I've been doing this." And we weren't able to figure something out.
But, within a week of me leaving that, somebody reached out and said, "Hey, this big mayoral candidate in Baltimore is running again. And she's looking to build her team, and she puts you on the shortlist for comms director if you want to come interview for it." And I got the job, and I did that for pretty much the entire campaign. And I had to leave to come here weeks before Election Day. So I'm gonna have no idea what happened on this project I was working on for seven months of my life. And then when I get back, I'll get to see if she won or not. So that's gonna be very exciting, but admittedly not where my mind's at right now.
I would imagine that the skill set of being able to talk to so many people, combined with a knowledge and immersion in politics makes you a natural for Survivor . What's your history with the show, and what made you decide to put your name on the ballot as a player?
So I mean, I was one of the kids who, every Thursday night back in the day, me and my family would be huddled around the TV. We'd be watching every single Thursday. And then I fell off of it for a while. And I think it's pretty interesting, because you have this group of fans who are with the show from the beginning. They're watching it weekly on TV since Richard Hatch won in Season 1. But then you have this new generation of fans that's watching all the same episodes but through the streaming services and binge-watching it. And I find myself in a very unique position, because I have both sides of this coin. When I was a kid in my childhood, I was watching it weekly as the show was coming out. And then all the seasons I missed over the past couple years, I've caught up on through the streaming services and through binging it. So I mean, I've seen every season one way or another, whether when it came out or whether it was on long binges in my living room with my roommates.
So I'm just about as big of a fan as I think you could be. I've seen pretty much every season of the show, sans a couple seasons. And I mean, I love it, man. And I love the game. You mentioned The Wire . One of my favorite quotes from The Wire is, "I don't do this for the money. I do it because I love the game, man." I love it so much. And that's my mentality when I'm out here. I want my game to be a reclamation of the game that I fell in love with when I was a kid, and that I'm sure a lot of people out here fell in love with when they were a kid. I want it to be a love letter to people who have been watching the show since the beginning, and look at the foundation of Survivor . And some people see the bits of it that have survived, and some people wonder where some of it still is. And I want people to say, "Oh, that's where it is. It's with Gabe and the way that he plays the game."
Let's have you pen your own love letter to Survivor past. Give me one winner and one non-winner who you identify with the most.
So I'm happy to answer this question. And my one–I don't want to say issue–caveat with these kinds of questions is that I really don't want anybody to look at my game and say, "Oh, he's like, X, Y, and Z. He really played like this person." I want people to say that about other people, in regards to me. After I'm done, I want people to say, "He played like Gabe. Wow, that was a Gabe-style game. Clearly, he's trying to be like Gabe." So I want to make my own story. I don't want to be on somebody else's player tree. I want to start growing my own tree of players that come after me, that try and emulate me.
But to answer your question, because it is a fun question, there's no doubt, and I do love answering it as just a fun brain exercise. In terms of one winner, Jeremy. Jeff always says, what's his biggest piece of advice he gives every season? "Play Survivor your first time like it's your second time." I don't think there's any player in the history of Survivor that had more growth from their first season to their second season than Jeremy. Obviously, he's the first merge boot, the mayor of Ponderosa in this first season. His second season, he goes on to win. But you can see the small intricacies of how he changed his game from one to two. I mean, it's like a completely different person got casted to go play. And his winning game is by far my favorite winning game I've ever seen. He pioneered so many different things that are now commonplace in Survivor . And, more importantly than that, he was able to so acutely look at the weaknesses in his game the first time and either eradicate them or turn them into strengths the second time around. Jeremy I hold in very, very high regard in my Survivor lore, if you will.
In terms of a non-winner that I'd like to emulate, this one's always tough for me, you know, because there's so many good answers. I mean, the Hall of Fame of Survivor is littered with players that you know have never won and probably could win if they make it all the way. I mean, when I look back at my childhood, the player that I was the most excited to watch every single week was definitely Russell Hantz. So even if my attitude, and maybe my strategic approach isn't quite the same as Russell's was, I hope that I can give that excitement to people that are watching. He was must-watch TV. He completely dominated over the course of two seasons. Maybe not necessarily in gameplay, depending on who you ask. But in terms of screen time and cult of personality, he dominated Seasons 19 and 20, one of those, a lot of people say, is one of the best seasons ever. So, I mean, I hope that I can emulate that idea, that energy, that electricity that he brought to the game, and, most importantly, the fun that he had playing. I mean, one of his quotes from Samoa is, "I didn't come here to work. I came here to play." So I kind of want to bring a bit of that, and I want people to have fun vicariously through me watching. So I'll give that as my other answer.
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To that point about wanting to bring the electricity and your unique voltage, what is your biggest superpower and piece of kryptonite that you're bringing into the game?
My greatest superpower, I would say, is my ability to read people. I think a lot of folks you know who meet me and probably are [reading] this interview one day would assume that I would say my ability to talk from working in politics and having a talk show and all this and that. But I think the reason that I have a lot of confidence in my ability to talk is because of my ability to listen. And I think that, ever since I was a young kid, even dealing with adults, teachers and parents and things like that, I always kind of had this ability to meet them at their level. And I think that's something that I'm bringing into this game that a lot of other people aren't good at, or aren't as good as they think they are. And I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying that.
But my ability to read people, and my ability to kind of tell those little body language things. When people kind of squint their eyes, or when they look away, or when they shift their posture, or when they start fidgeting, or things like that. Or just in the way they talk, their cadence. All these things is a treasure trove of information of what somebody's thinking, if somebody's telling the truth, if somebody's lying, [if] somebody is telling the truth, but isn't giving you the full truth. All these little things are really important, and these are things that have come to me very innately since I was a young kid. So I would say that's definitely my biggest superpower.
My biggest kryptonite, I'm sure a lot of people struggle with this answer, I would say it's…[ Pause .] not living presently enough, thinking too much about what's going to come next and thinking too much about what came before. And I think Survivor is a game where you have to absolutely be present all the time in an absolute way. And people who don't do that, if they think too much about what went wrong the night before, or are so enamored with what went right the night before, or constantly thinking 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 days ahead, then the present escapes them. And when the present escapes you, anything can happen, and you don't even see it coming. So I think that's something that I'm gonna have to really be consciously thinking about all the time, "Be present. Be present. Be present." What's happening right now? Forget about what happened yesterday. It's gone. It's over. Don't worry about what happens tomorrow. It hasn't happened yet. What's happening right now? Try and figure it out, and then worry about your next move.
Well, let's put your people-reading skills to the test. As you've been around your competition, who are you picking up good vibes from in the preseason?
The older woman on the cast, older blonde woman, I'm really hoping she's on my tribe Day One. I really want to work with her. I think just any older people, in general, don't get so caught up in their emotions. Because they've experienced more, they lived more. And I think that would be good for me as a younger guy, because I can kind of ground myself with that. And I think that, in a cast of predominantly younger people, they're gonna naturally feel like an outcast Day One. They're gonna say, "Oh, well, I'm 20 years everyone's senior here. Where's my place with all these fresh out-of-college kids?" And I want to be the first person to extend that olive branch and say, "Hey, I'll be your best friend on this island if you ride with me to the end. So I'm really hoping that that she can be on my tribe Day One. That would be my number one overall draft pick, if you will.
And then I'll throw one more person out there. There's an Asian gentleman who, just through chance, we've kind of been sat next to each other in a lot of different things that we've done out here so far. Obviously, they've been very strict, no communication and nothing like that. But there seems to just be an aura of of familiarity. I've sat next to this guy more than anybody else so far. Just the other day, as a little behind the scenes, we had a bird swoop down on one of the other contestants' tables, and it started picking at her food, and then it flew away. And everybody kind of silently laughing to themselves. The first person I looked at was this guy, and we both kind of just gave each other, like, "Could you believe that that just happened?" And I don't think I would be able to do that with anybody else. Again, of the limited amount of time we've spent out here, I've kind of spent the most in that guy's region. It's such a hard question to answer because we don't know anything about each other. We haven't spoken, and we're all kind of just looking at each other sweat by the poo. But I would probably say those two are the two people who I early on have pegged as potential allies.
What about on the other side? Anyone you're not picking up good vibes from?
So again, this is tough, because, God forbid I have pregame enemies going in. And then they could be great allies, but I'm so stuck in my ways of like, "No, this person needs to go." There's a younger blonde girl who's been walking around who seems like a great person, but has been writing a lot, and kind of has this tendency to look at somebody and then write. And so I'm like, "Okay, clearly, you're making a lot of judgments about people, about every small thing that they do." And I don't know if it will necessarily translate into a productive game, but I think it will prove to be an erratic game. I think something like, "This person got up and they turned away from their table in this way. What does that mean?" And I think sometimes when you get caught up in all of those tiny little details, you kind of miss the bigger picture of what's going on. And it's like, "Oh, well, is this person signaling that they don't want to work with me? Is this person trying to form an alliance with this person by turning that way in their chair?" Those people are erratic.
And when erratic people and when chaotic people enter the game…I mean, 46 is on TV right now, so we can all see what erratic and chaotic people can do in a game of Survivor . They can blow up other people's game, and, God forbid, my game. So I'm kind of looking at the people who are taking a lot of notes pregame. And I've done my fair bit of it. But I think when you're analyzing every little thing, and there's been a couple of people who have been doing that, I'm like, "That's not a good mindset to take into this game," because it just causes chaos. It causes paranoia within yourself, and paranoia within yourself spreads like a virus to everybody else. And I want to avoid those people as much as possible, or at least I want to avoid them in the folks I want to work with. So even if I don't necessarily take them out, at worst, I'm trying to get them out of the game. At best, I'm utilizing them as tools to create chaos to further my game.
What's your hottest Survivor take?
I mean, he's made two appearances now in this conversation, but Russell Hantz. Everybody looks at him–and I wasn't there. Everybody has their stories about his attitude towards other players, again, I don't know. But in terms of loyalty, everyone pegged him as this sneaky, conniving player. In both games that he played–his third season, he didn't make it deep enough to have much of an impact–he took his premerge Day One or Two alliance to the very end. With the exception of Sandra, because he had to trade her out for Danielle, because Danielle had her breakdown at Tribal that led to her her boot. But if you were part of Russell's alliance early in the game, he was taking it to the end. Now maybe it wasn't because he liked you, or because he wanted to be friends with you, or he respected you. He probably just saw you as a tool. Regardless, that loyalty was unbelievably strong.
And I don't think that he gets that perception very often, if at all. He was a very, very loyal player to both of his alliances in both Heroes vs. Villains and Samoa . But, because of his missing tooth smile and Southern drawl and idol sneakiness and the way that he went after opposing alliances. Yes, he was very sneaky, and yes, he lied a lot, and yes, he was very conniving when it came to opposing alliances. But that's what you're supposed to do, right? You're very untrustworthy and unloyal if you're doing the people who you told on Day One, "We're going to work together." But, if you're trying to get my people out, yeah, I'm gonna lie, cheat, and steal to do anything I can to get you out. So I think he deserves a little more credit for being a loyal alliance member.
Finally, what celebrity or fictional character would you bring out for a loved ones visit?
Sugar Ray Lewis, no question. Number 52, the General from the Baltimore Ravens. Greatest player in Baltimore Ravens history, best linebacker in the history of football. That is a guy who, I mean, he could get me pumped up to eat a ham sandwich. The speeches that that guy could give and the ability he had to get people to run through brick walls for him and for themselves, more importantly, is unparalleled. And obviously, you got that Baltimore connection. But especially when that Loved One visit hits, they have a way of doing it when you're at your lowest point and when you're ready to give up, and when you know you're at your most tired. And if I could have Ray Lewis come out of the tunnel and hit me with a pump-up speech beforehand, come on! Everyone get out the way. I'm winning if that's happening.
Next, check out our interview with Survivor 47 contestant Caroline Vidmar .
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