Survivor Q&A with Scot Pollard: 'I had rats crawling on me at night'

The 32nd season of Survivor (Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT) has three tribes (Beauty, Brains and Brawn) all competing with each other to whittle down the competition and have one person walk away with a million dollars. One of the members of those tribes is former NBA player Scot Pollard. He played 11 years in the NBA, winning an NBA championship in his final season with the Boston Celtics in 2008.

He has been through a lot of physical pain and anguish over the course of his career, so surviving on an island and trying to outsmart the other people vying for the same prize must be a piece of cake, right? Before Wednesday's incredible episode, I had a chance to talk to Scot over the phone about some of the experiences from the show and his motivation for doing it.

Here is my Q&A with Scot Pollard:

Q: You’ve said before that you sent in a video for Survivor centered on your family. What did you choose to go that way?

Scot Pollard: Well, from what I’ve heard about this show, they want people from different demographics, different backgrounds and clearly being a professional athlete gives me a particular genre, if you will, or whatever ... a background that is unique. But I wanted to make sure they knew that everything in my world, the reason I live in Indiana, the reason I went on Survivor is for my family. Everything I do revolves around my family.

I grew up Mormon, though I don’t follow the religion anymore, it’s very much a part of who I am. Family is big to me. I thought that sending in a video of my family and I interacting, that’s what I do. That’s what I work for.

Q: I know you didn’t have a ton of time to turn around and prepare for this once final casting was completed. What did you do to prepare for the show in terms of physical preparation? Did you study episodes?

Pollard: I binged watched seasons over and over again. I ate a whole lot of food. I tried to gain as much weight as possible because I knew that food would be scarce. I’ve been watching the first episode [of this season] and was like, ‘Wow, I was heavy.' 312 lbs. I usually hover around 300 but I went in heavy. My physical preparation was eating a lot. My mental preparation was binge-watching shows over and over again. Luckily, two of my three kids got into it and they were watching with me. That was a lot of fun too. My wife was too.

Q: A lot of contestants try to portray more of a character rather then be themselves. It seems like you’re being yourself for the most part, but is there any part of you that is trying to play a little role with the others.

Pollard: I would say a little bit of both. Clearly, being a professional athlete has already shown. Alecia said it. That was a concern going into the show. Being the size and the notoriety I have because of my tattoos, the way I carry myself, I don’t think there was a chance I was going to be able to hide that I was a former athlete in any sport. I decided to out myself as far as that was concerned right off the bat to show them I was going to be honest with them and try to be upfront with them as much as possible.

But at the same time, there’s always strategy involved and I can’t go too far into it, but my plan going into the game was to try to have a female alpha and a male alpha try to do my dirty work for me and try to offset that I do have a very big personality. And not try to put too big of a target on myself, which was already there from being a professional athlete. Trying to combat the professional athlete thing by being honest about it. Yeah, I’m being myself but at the same time, I did have a strategy going in that I was going to not be as gregarious as I typically am because I don’t want people to pay too much attention to me. I wanted to deflect and try to give other people the stage so I’m not going, 'Look at me! I’m a professional athlete! Everybody watch me!'

Scot Pollard went through some tough times on that island. (CBS)

Q: At what point on the show, and maybe this happens very early on, do you realize, 'I am stuck on an island?’

Pollard: [Laughs] There were several of those moments. The only tough part about it was not being in contact with my wife and kids. That was the tough deal for me. That was the longest I’ve ever been away from my wife and kids. Obviously, the longest I’ve ever been without talking to them. Even nine days in, it was the longest I’ve ever been without speaking to my children. Shoot, I speak to them every day. I have joint custody with my ex and even though I don’t see them every day, we have week on, week off. It never goes more than one or two days without me speaking to all three of them. And I speak to my son every day; he’s the youngest.

That was the most difficult part. I tend to be a glass-half-full guy and I’m sitting there going, ‘It could be worse. I’m on an island. It’s beautiful. I love the weather there. The experience of being on a TV show. I could win a million dollars.' Yeah, you sit there and you go it sucks. It’s not supposed to be fun, as Keith said last season. There are worse things you can be doing.

Q: I think a lot of people assume that it’s a TV show so you’re probably taken care of at some point. The conditions are ... not dangerous ... but they do test you quite a bit, don’t they?

Pollard: Oh yeah. For anybody that wants to talk to me about whether the show is real, I welcome the opportunity. It’s real. They don’t yell 'Cut!’ and hand you a latte and give you a rubdown. You’re in the elements and it’s absolutely real. You know ... say if I can’t say this but they didn’t even give us rice. Jeff [Probst] didn’t give us rice this year. Typically, the cast members get a bag of rice or at least something they can ration out. We didn’t even get rice.

It was brutal. And the reality of it, this episode coming up this week is going to show some very difficult times. It was real. It is real. The show is 100 percent authentic from the survival perspective. There are no benefits given to the cast members. You’re living off the land.

Q: Is that something where you can draw from training in the NBA, training for basketball, training camps, practice, and things like that? You’ve been through physically taxing things before and so maybe you’re naturally in that mindset so you can just kind of deal with it?

Pollard: The amount of horrible, horrible things I’ve done to my body to stay a professional athlete for over a decade ... that gives you a mental toughness. You’re limping through something and you get a cortisone injection to try to make sure you can just go back out there, sometimes against medical advice. Just suck it up and tough it out and go out and play or practice when you’re injured because that’s just what you do. That was the mental preparation I had going in, just the experience of putting my body through such horrible things in the past that help being out in the sun and being exposed to the elements and bugs and the harsh sleeping conditions and not much food.

My only concern was getting enough water. That was my concern going into the game. Like I said I ate a bunch beforehand and I knew I gained some weight so I wasn’t so concerned about the food. But the water, I was more concerned about. And it was tough. It was very, very tough. I was borderline dehydrated to an extreme degree.

Q: You mentioned the bugs and I know it didn’t happen to you; it happened to one of your teammates but you seemed to handle it pretty well. Is there a certain point where one of your teammates has a bug burrowing into their head that you think I don’t want any part of this?

Pollard: [Laughs] Well yeah. I don’t know how I would’ve reacted if I had a flesh-eating worm in my ear. Jenny had a whole lot more happen to her that they really didn’t show because they didn’t have time. She had third degree burns on her eyelids because the fire finally got lit and it poofed up into her face. She got sunburned. Her eyes were almost sunburnt just from being out in the sun. Her eyeballs were sunburnt.

She was having a hard time with so many other things. Plus a centipede bit her on the face in the first day or second day. That girl toughed it out a lot. She had a rough, rough go of being out on that island. The things I was going through -- the dehydration, I stubbed my toe and had a big old sore on my toe, and I had bug bites. I still have scars from my bug bites. But you know, everybody is suffering the same way, some worse than others, some reacted to the sun worse than others and we’ll see that too. On the one hand, you’re going, 'Well it’s not as bad as having a flesh-eating worm in my ear.' But on the other hand, you’re all in this together because we all have stuff happening to us.

I had rats crawling on me at night and there’s nothing you can do about it. You want to fall asleep and you know there are rats that are going to crawl on you if you fall asleep. That’s just part of the reality of living off the land.

Q: You’re such a competitive person. Does that make failing in the challenges early that much tougher? After barely losing the first couple of challenges and feeling that strain, Ii it hard to get the rest of the team to focus and get back to the task at hand?

Pollard: There are a lot of different ways to look at that. A) There’s the strategy side of me trying not to be too domineering and saying, ‘Hey, pull your head out. Let’s do this. Let’s do that. Let’s get this win.’ Because again that can put a target on your back. But then there is that competitive side. I want to win. I’m used to winning. I went to the playoffs 10 out of the 11 years in the NBA. Every year I was in college, all four years I was in the tournament. In high school for two years, my junior and senior year, I was in the state tournament. I’m used to winning. I’m used to playing in the postseason when the popcorn’s popping.

That hurt, dude. That really hurt losing those challenges and especially when you’re sitting there going, ‘I should be able to do this better, faster, and stronger than everybody else. I’m a professional athlete.’ But the bottom line is there are team challenges so far and there’s certain times where you can only do what you can do. That first challenge, I overdid it. Quite honestly, I almost had to leave the game after the first challenge and they didn’t show that either.

That I almost did it and I almost pulled myself from the game. I spent every ounce of energy I had trying to push that boat up that hill and trying to get it on those wheels and then push it up the hill. By the time I was doing that puzzle at the end of that challenge, I couldn’t really see. I was half blacked out and I don’t recall much of what was going on with that puzzle. I wasn’t much more effective than Alecia was when I tapped out for her. Jenny did most of the puzzle on her own. I got a couple pieces in from what I recall but I remember holding myself up with my other arm while I was trying to do the puzzle with the other one.

It sucked. It was a tough game. It was a hundred degrees. I was dehydrated. I hadn’t eaten anything but fruit we took from the boat. We hadn’t had a fire yet so we hadn’t had much water. We didn’t have any water to boil. It was just coconut water we were drinking and you can only get so much water out of a coconut. We were going through them like crazy trying to get everybody some hydration.

It was all of those things.