Survivor season 35 cast: Desi Williams is a Healer with a Hustler-like mentality
For Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers, Desiree “Desi” Williams could fit on the Hustlers tribe despite her Healer designation.
Desi Williams’ CBS cast bio and the accompanying video on YouTube show two very different sides of her. Just reading the cast bio, you might get the impression that she’s extremely confident and almost too practiced in her answers. Check out her response to the final question, “Why do you think you’ll ‘survive’ Survivor?”
It’s a fairly sizable paragraph that has one sentence start with “A natural academician.” Another sentence earlier in said paragraph uses the phrase “my childhood love of puzzles and games or logic and strategy,” which covers pretty much every base we can think of for her to say she’s going to be good at the puzzle portions of challenges … or at least thinks she’s going to be good at them.
She actually mentions in an earlier question that she’s been in pageants before, so that might explain it a little. It could end up helping her prepare for a Final Tribal Council should she get that far, at least in anticipating questions and being able to string them together. If the jury’s not in the mood for long answers, though, she might find herself in trouble.
However, then you look at her video:
There’s definitely an aura of confidence in parts, but her answers, especially toward the end, seem to suggest that once she made it to Fiji, she wasn’t quite as sure that she was prepared to handle Survivor. The mention of “creatures” certainly supports that theory.
There are some positives to be found in the video as well. First, that bit of uncertainty could actually make her more relatable to her tribemates. Her noting that her interactions with men can come back to bite her depending on where they talk shows a certain degree of social acuity.
Additionally, she calls herself a “thrill seeker,” and combined with her cast bio noting that she “has little patience for laziness” makes her sound like she would have made a pretty decent fit on the Hustlers tribe as well. That means that she could probably get along pretty well with Yawa tribe members if she gets the chance to get to know them.
The problem is that Desi might not make it that far if her personality clashes too much with others on the Soko/Healers tribe. Taking someone to task for not working enough often gets raised eyebrows at minimum and a ticket out of the game at maximum. She clearly has some strength, and with her experience as a physical therapist, she can probably help take care of her other tribe mates … but she’s literally on a tribe full of caretakers.
Next: Jeff Probst promises greatness in Survivor season 35
Desi’s not this Surviving Tribal expert’s winning pick, but she is more of a wild card then she seems at first glance. Next week’s premiere of Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers should tell us more.