early show 12 episode 4

Ruth Marie Milliman's Early Show Interview

Video:

Transcript by James Barber for SurvivorFever.net -  2.24.06

RENE: Last night on Survivor the La Mina tribe went to Tribal Council for the second time in a row, and in the end, the crumbling alliance of five wound up selling out one of its own members.

(video clips package)

RENE: Ruth Marie Milliman, good morning.

RUTH MARIE: Good morning.

RENE: I thought you showed such class when you exited from Tribal Council. You said goodbye to everybody, and these are the folks that stabbed you in the back.

RM: I know it! I know it. It was a little bit shocking. I had about a two-hour window where Dan had come to say, 'Oh my gosh, the vote has changed.' I was trying to work Terry, and you know, you're constantly trying to save yourself out there. So I had a little bit of window, but...

RENE: It's exhausting, isn't it?

RM: It's exhausting! (laughs) That's right.

RENE: Speaking of Dan, I mean he really had your back through and through. This is our Survivor Secret Scene, I want you to take a look and we'll talk about it in a moment.

RM: OK. Great.

[RUTH MARIE (solo): I had a conversation with Dan just to get some reassurance on our alliance, and he told me that the five of us have a solid agreement, no matter what.

(Ruth Marie sits on a log while Dan works with the fire)

DAN: I am 100% on your side. We made a deal, and...

RUTH MARIE: Rock-solid to the end.

DAN: We're sticking together. We're gonna follow to the end. Money doesn't matter, it's the commitments we make.

RUTH MARIE: I agree.

DAN: If it costs us some bucks, well too bad. This thing is beyond 39 days. I'm planning to have some friends for the rest of my life.

RUTH MARIE: Right.

DAN: And that's just the way it's gonna be.

RUTH MARIE: Okay.

RUTH MARIE (solo):

So I think I have an agreement with four gentlemen who are stand-up guys.

]

RENE: Well...one of them turned out to be a stand-up guy. (Ruth Marie laughs) Who exactly do you blame for your being here? Is there any one person? Terry? 

RM: OK, I just wanna run through this. I think Sally outgamed me. Sally wanted it so bad and she worked Austin - as you should on Survivor - for about a day and a half. So I think Sally outgamed. I think Austin kind of went back on me a little bit, but you can't really blame him for keeping a 27-year old. We're gonna cut him some slack on that. 

RENE: Why? Why? Why? What are you saying here?

RM: Closer to his age, somebody for him to hang around with. I'm not gonna hold that against him.

RENE: I thought you both looked great out there.

RM: Well, thank you.

RENE: If it's a matter of who looks great in a bikini, you were holding your own out there.

RM: Thank you very much; I appreciate that. But I think in the end Terry was kind of calling the shots...you could hear last night where he was saying it wasn't a handshake on his part. You know it's been a while, maybe the third grade, since I've heard that, but it worked, it worked for him. (Rene laughs) Good for him. 

RENE: Hey, Terry last night...speaking of which, he's on Exile Island. This is the big story, right...

RM: Right, right.

RENE: He's out there, he's digging around, he's got three or four clues, or what have you. He finds the idol. He finds immunity.

RM: I know. 

RENE: Did you guys have any idea that he...

RM: I knew for certain he had the idol.

RENE: Really?

RM: Yeah. I think everybody probably knew, it was just too much jibber-jabber the way he was explaining it, and nobody was asking him directly, so I sort of sensed that everybody knew. I could be wrong, because I didn't discuss it with anybody, but I'm pretty certain of it. 

RENE: You guys - somebody in your tribe last night said, 'Look, we're about three or four days from not even being able to lift our heads off the pillow.' You had no food for 11 days. When was the last time you went 11 days without food? You guys were really, really week.

RM: Right, right. We were lethargic, but you would have been amazed - the minute those challenges started, it was like everybody had eaten and was ready to go. It was pretty amazing, but I felt the same way. We had three or four more days until it was gonna get a little ugly.

RENE: Did you like it? Did you have a good time?

RM: Oh my gosh, Rene. It was the experience of a lifetime, and I've said this before to people, I've had many, many, many good experiences at my age, so it was amazing, truly amazing.

RENE: Was one of those experiences that you had in your lifetime as one of the great ones being crowned the Watermelon Queen in 1978 in South Carolina?

RM: Actually, that was one of the great ones, for certain.

RENE: What now for you? I read somewhere that you want to run across country. Is that true?

RM: I do. I was sort of working on this before I got cast for Survivor, so I'm going to continue pursuing it. What I would like to do is run across the United States, and folks have done that before, but I would like to run at least a marathon a day and never, ever get in a motorized vehicle.

RENE: 26 miles a day...

RM: At least.

RENE: For two-and-a-half months?

RM: Yes, that's what I'd like to do.

RENE: Wow. Well, listen, good luck with all that, because you're on your own on that.

RM: Thank you so much.

RENE: Ruth Marie Milliman, it's so good to meet you.

RM: Thank you.

RENE: And the older thing, the older women thing, I didn't buy that at all.

RM: I know, I know.