“Deal or No Deal Island” first victim Luke Olejniczak reacts to playing 'worst game ever'

Sometimes, while playing a game like Deal or No Deal Island, you can do everything right… and still lose. That’s simply what happens in a game of chance and luck. Suffice it say, Luke Olejniczak did not do everything right.

First off, Luke prematurely ziplined down to his red briefcase without waiting to see who took what high value cases. Then, he used his steal to take Rock Carlson’s $450,000 case, even though it was guaranteed to be less than all the higher value cases. Finally, after being put up against the Banker, Luke turned down an offer with a 66.6 percent chance of success, and instead ended up being eliminated while only adding a measly $1 to the prize pot. No less an authority than host Joe Manganiello told Entertainment Weekly it was "the worst game of Deal or No Deal Island ever played."

“Everybody makes stupid mistakes,” Luke said at one point during the debacle. “Mine just happened to be on camera.” We spoke to the 29-year-old private chef about those mistakes and how everything went so wrong, so fast.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: As if your experience down there was not rough enough, last time I saw you, your flight home had been canceled and you were stuck on Deal or No Deal Island. Did you ever make it home?

LUKE OLEJNICZAK: I finally made it back home, man. I had to fight my way out of that country. It was incredible — from flight changes to getting locked in the woman's bathroom, as if that wasn't bad enough and embarrassing. But I finally made it home. It was a harrowing journey, but it's a success story.

You made some curious decisions out on the island, so let’s go through them. First off, you decide to go for the red cases and David says to wait to see who takes what high value cases, but then you just take off and zipline down. What happened there?

Swear to God, I never heard David say to wait. And one thing that was not seen on camera that was discussed prior was a game plan of how we're going to attack this. And the game plan was we would take the highest value case out of the low case groupings. So it's a bird in the hand. They never showed that on camera, so it really made me look like a dope. But at the end of the day, there was still errors and poor decisions on my end. It's my bed. I got a lay in it now.

So let's talk about what you just said in terms of the Steal. You don't know what the high value cases are yet, but the high value cases are all guaranteed to be higher than the medium value case. On the show, it seems like you're making this decision alone, but you're saying there was a discussion that happened and a strategy. Tell me about that and tell me about how you guys came to that decision.

From the viewer standpoint, it looks like I went rogue, but there was a meeting between David, Seychelle, and I on the deck before we even took off. And that was to go after the highest value case of the low groupings, and then we'd poach one out of there. I believe the understanding was one of them was a value of zero or something of that nature. So that was the plan. And once we commit to a plan, you see it through. But it changed, I guess, unbeknownst to me. So when I was pressured, when I was told, “Hey Luke, make your choice” — I just went with the predetermined plan. And I paid dearly for it, but it is what it is.

Related: Joe Manganiello reacts to 'the worst game of Deal or No Deal Island ever played' (exclusive)

Why did you want to take on the Banker?

So there's two things that can happen here. If you go home, you can go home by the hands of the Banker, which at least there's a little bit of glory to that, right? You go down swinging, you're in control. Or you can sit in a crowd and watch someone else control your destiny. I don't want that. I want to play the Banker. I want to be at the controls, right? At least make a heck of an experience out of it. Leave nothing on the field.

How hard was David pushing to take on the Banker?

Oh, he wanted it. He wanted it just as bad as I did. And because Sydnee was fairly attracted to David, I really had to play hard to get that and jockey for that position. The deal at the end of the day was I had a good old Wisconsin handshake with David, telling him that if I won, Seychelle would be the one going home. That made David kind of back off to, “Okay, well, this might be my safest bet.” And I know that no matter what, Sydnee was probably going to go with what David wanted. So I had to appease David as well.

During the show, you saw that Seychelle was pretty sour with me. She is a spitfire, but she had reason to be a spitfire. That New Yorker in her came out. But that's because I told her face to face on camera prior to me going to Temple that she was going to be the one going home, despite her pleading with me why I should send David home. But I told her “I already had the good old Wisconsin handshake with David and unfortunately, you're going to be the one going home.”

There was that alliance with David. and I was going to honor that. And to this day, I still say if I would've won and made better decisions, Seychelle would've went. But in the end, you know what? It worked out the way it was supposed to. I made the poor decision. I was the one sent home. They get to live on and fight again.

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Okay, let’s do some math. You get an offer from the Banker for $218,00 and there are two cases below that offer and one above, so you have great odds if you take that offer, but you do not. Please explain.

If you want me to be completely honest, it was always weighing on me that I carried most of the weight to put our team in that position. And maybe it's a little self-serving, but I wanted to see that number 7 case take me to the end for my father. It doesn't make sense on paper. Kind of a dumb decision. But you know what? I wanted to go out with glory, and I feel I did that. I am definitely getting scrutinized for it, but I don't care. You only live once. Who could say they made the worst deal in DONDI history? Nobody but me. That's me, man! $1 Luke.

Joe told me it was the ‘worst game of Deal or No Deal Island ever played.’

At least you're remembered for something, right? Thank goodness I can cook better than I can be a reality TV star, otherwise I'd be in big trouble, brother.

The interesting thing you said a minute ago though is that when you picked that number 7 case, unless something really crazy happened, you were riding it to the end, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You're on that show to win money, but to me, money doesn't absolutely equal tranquility. What I knew for sure is I could walk away from this show honoring my dad by picking his number, riding it to the end, and that was a guarantee. That was an absolute guarantee. I made a moment for my father and myself on national TV. You know what? That's worth something too.

Related: How Joe Manganiello turned being a 'compulsive math nerd' into Deal or No Deal Island job

What did it feel like to only put $1 in the pot and see it was $1 in that case? What was your reaction when you saw that number?

This is kind of ugly for me to say because there are folks that I still keep in touch with after the show, but some of the personalities that I was starting to see, there's a part of me that thought, “You know what? I'm glad I left you a dollar.” [Laughs]

I've covered reality TV for a long time, and no one ever wants to get eliminated. Everyone wants to win. But it is particularly hard being the first one out. You have this big experience, you go through all the casting, you get out there, only to have it cut short. Tell me what that was like.

It's what it is. I mean, you can sit there and mope about it and hem and haw, or you can move on and say, “You know what? I was blessed with one heck of an experience.” And you embrace it. You have to own it. There's no going back in time.

Let’s say you had beaten the Banker. Where do you see your game going from there? Who are the people you wanted to play with had you survived?

Well, I'll say this: First of all, it was a calculated choice to take the last bed available. I wasn't going to say, “No, I need to be in this particular dome” where there was a bed available. That's where I'll lay my head at night. It doesn't make a difference to me. But I truly feel during my limited time on the island that Rock was a man of his word. He's someone you could stand by, and I also truly do feel that about David. There's a couple others that I would've liked to experience a little bit more, and there's some others on that show that I just want to stay as far away from as possible.

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