Mark Burnett’s latest venture into reality TV is Pirate Master, and what the show has produced thus far is an acceptable amount of guilty, giddy fun, the kind you’d expect from a reality show about pirates. Alexis Shubin, the latest pirate to be cast adrift, may not have embodied what her fellow crewmembers wanted in a pirate. Maybe that’s because Alexis is a fashion publicist and she didn’t really fit in. She gave it her all, however, and was kind enough to take some time earlier today and come speak with us about her time as a pirate.
Below you will find both the written transcript and full mp3 audio of the interview.
Can you tell us how you got involved with Pirate Master, was it something where you auditioned or did they contact you and seek you out?
I, actually…they found me, I never would have applied for a reality TV show ever and I got an email, actually on Myspace on the final weekend of casting that they were looking for more “pirate-y” girls. I thought it was a joke and I called the guy, it was a friend of a friend of a friend who worked for Mark Burnett, and they kind of found me and tracked me down so it was all…I was just cast in a few days so it was almost too right, so I just went for it.
Was there a lot of trepidation on your part to accept going on a reality show, are you a fan of reality shows in general?
You know, I’m not actually, I’ve never been a big follower but, you know, I’m 26 and the opportunity…the fact that it found me and found me so quickly it seemed perfect, I couldn’t not take the opportunity. So, you know, at 26, going to the Caribbean, hanging out with random people. So yea, no I didn’t really have any hesitation about it.
From what you had been told about the show, what CBS had prepared you for, what were your expectations going onto the ship and how different did it actually play out?
Going into it, I really didn’t have any expectations because it was a brand new show and the only remotely similar thing we had was Survivor, but it was so different. So I kinda went into it like, “Take it for what it’s worth and it is what is”. So, I mean, having no expectations, I wasn’t surprised by much but it was definitely an interesting adventure, for sure.
We don’t get to see a lot of your guys days on the ship, can you take us through a typical day, is it a lot of work or is it a lot of hanging out? Is it fun on the ship?
Yea, it was definitely fun, and, yeah, there is so much that you don’t see which is kind of hard to watch and be like “Damn, they missed that,” but we did night watch, which we haven’t seen yet, so we’d be up, usually we were going in 2 or 4 hour shifts, which was hard, and then we were getting up before the sun came up and scrubbing the decks and and all that. So, no, there was definitely downtime to kind of hang out and get to know everyone but there was always work to be done it seemed like.
What was the biggest thing to you that was edited out that you wish the viewers would have gotten to see?
What I wish…is that the Pirates Court really were like 3 hours, and I dunno, I kinda staked my claim in the Pirates Court which had been edited quite a bit, kind of being the mouth on the ship. I went after John in the first Pirates court, went after Kendra in the second Pirate Court and usually got them pretty good.
Did you at all expect to get the black mark?
Yeah, that was really no surprise.
Then, going into Pirate’s Court what was your confidence level going in?
You know, I didn’t really go in…people got so emotional about it and so stressed about how they were gonna prepare for the vote or if they were on the black spot. I was kind of…just, I feel like I was one of the only people able to keep it in check, like, “Oh hey guys, we’re on a reality show, it’s not the end of your life.” So, I kind of just went in…I wasn’t trying to protect myself the entire time I was on the show, where I think people had been really politically correct and kind of trying to play their cards right at the beginning. So, I just went into it with this same attitude I had prior to it, which is just like, “This is me, I call it like it is, take it or leave it.” So, I wasn’t too stressed out.
(Interview Conducted by Oscar Dahl)
(Image Courtesy of CBS)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
