Most of the subjects of this week’s People Issue have achieved recognition from work they’ve done here in Nashville — but this one made waves last year some 7,000 miles away on a remote island in Fiji.
Sam Phalen spends most of his days working as a Tennessee Titans reporter for A to Z Sports. He moved to Nashville for school in 2019, graduating from Lipscomb University in 2022. As a lifelong fan of Survivor, Phalen started applying for the show as soon as he turned 18. But it wasn’t something he took seriously until a few years later.
“In fall of 2023, I was watching Survivor 45, and there was actually a lady from Brentwood named Julie Alley who I actually now have a very good, close friendship with, which is awesome,” Phalen tells the Scene. “But I was watching it, and I think there was something about seeing somebody on Survivor that lived 10 minutes from me, paired with Jeff Probst doing his little ‘apply to be on Survivor!’ outro moments that forced me to sort of be like, ‘Let’s just do it. You have a lot going on in your life right now that could be pretty interesting for a video. Give it a shot.’”
Phalen took advantage of the moment and filmed his audition tape on the field at Nissan Stadium after working a home game. Days later he got the call, and after a few interviews, it was official: Sam Phalen would be a competitor on Survivor 47.
Phalen started the game as a part of the Gata tribe, leading his team to some early victories and forming alliances with tribemates Sierra and Andy, the latter of whom proved to be a real wildcard in the game. Phalen’s strategy involved playing up the bubblier parts of his personality, hoping other players would underestimate him as a result.
“I have this version of me that is this very boyish energy,” he says. “It’s very excited and goofy and happy to be there, kind of an entertainer. The golden retriever energy for sure. I know I can go there at times, and that is the version of me that I wanted to present to the people out there. I knew that if I was the very serious, intense thinker that was inside, and I was also the biggest guy on my tribe, and I at a certain point had an idol in my pocket, this threat level would just grow so large that it would make me a very juicy kill early in the game. I wanted to show people, ‘Hey, I’m here, I’m funny and goofy, and I’m not thinking all that much, you tell me what to do and let’s ride.’”
Sam Phalen at Radnor Lake
That strategy ended up serving him well, although it came with some surprising results. A small choice made to enhance his goofy persona ended up being a major plot line after the footage left the editing bay — Phalen’s supposed inexperience with fruit. In the show, he appears to try fruits like pineapple and melons for the first time, but in the months since his season has aired, Phalen has said his fruit virginity was merely a ruse meant to enhance his naivete in the eyes of the other castaways.
“It wasn’t really a premeditated thing that I was going to go out there and lie about what fruits I had or hadn’t had,” he says. “They found it so entertaining and fascinating and interesting that I immediately saw this as an opportunity for a social connection in a way of just making people laugh.”
This underlines one of his biggest tips for other players — don’t underestimate the importance of your reputation in the game. He took notes from former champion Michele Fitzgerald, who used her station on what was then known as the “Beauty tribe” to play into others’ expectations of her while plotting big moves behind the scenes.
“I tried to lean into that first impression of me that people might have and have a lot more cooking under the surface, and then always just stay resilient and gritty,” Phalen says.
Just like his idol, Phalen had a big plan cooking. In the biggest game move of the season, he was a vital part of Operation Italy, a split-vote blindside that took the quiet but cunning Caroline to the jury by surprise. He schemed the plan with ally Genevieve and brought on the unpredictable Andy — who had the same great idea — to orchestrate the plan hatched over a rewarded Italian dinner.
Phalen outlasted all his allies and made it to the final Tribal Council, where he ended the game as runner-up to the undeniable schemer Rachel LaMont. He might not have earned the title of Sole Survivor, but his torch never burned out, and he now holds the title of longest surviving Nashvillian.
Our profiles of some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from a queen of Appalachian character comedy to a Vanderbilt football star, a 'Survivor' runner-up and more
