Meet the 'Survivor 48' Cast! Eva Erickson Makes History As First-Ever Openly Autistic Player (Exclusive)

There are many different ways millions of people have discovered Survivor. Eva Erickson found it as a drinking game with her hockey teammates. Regardless of the method, after just one taste, the 24-year-old was eager to chug all she could, invigorated by the competition. Coming to Fiji continues the improbable, yet incredible story Eva has, from living with autism and being mute as a child to currently working towards her PhD at Brown. But her primary passion lies with hockey, where, even there, she was able to defy the odds, breaking the ice–as well as gender norms–by becoming not only the first woman on her men's hockey team, but captain. And she's hoping she's as smooth in the heat as she is on the ice, downplaying her smarts while making a few power plays to avoid getting sent to the penalty box–or juror bench.

Read on for my interview with Eva, and check in with Parade.com daily for interviews with this season's contestants and other tidbits. Survivor 48 premieres on Feb. 26 with a two-hour premiere on CBS.

Related: Meet the Full Cast of Survivor 48

Interview with Eva from Survivor 48

To start, give me your name, age, and occupation.
I'm Eva Erickson. I'm 23 years old, and I'm a PhD student in engineering and fluid and thermal science.

That is a mouthful! What does that involve?
So my research for my thesis is on how seals use their whiskers to locate objects in water, and how that can be implemented in sensory tech for the Navy.

That is incredible. What does the research involve? Do you get to interact with the seals?
Unfortunately, I don't work with live seals. But I do a lot of experiments. I have a big, scaled-up seal whisker model that I put in a very large water flume; it's like 2000 gallons. And I do different experiments to see its vibrational profile in response to disturbances. So I'm basically creating a fake fish flapping, and then have my seal whisker respond to it by vibrating in different ways. So we can ultimately create a sensor that's very sensitive to different types of disturbances.

How on earth did you find yourself doing a thesis in something like this? Have you always been interested in science and seals?
Not specifically seal whiskers. Well, my previous research was also in centipede locomotion. So I mean, I feel like I'm a step up from bugs now. But overall, I wanted to study physics when I was an undergrad because I loved nature, which sounds really contradictory. But growing up, I loved animals so much, and I was really good at math. So I was like, "How can I combine those two things?" And so I wanted to go into the physics of living systems. And so that's what I studied at Georgia Tech. And then, from there, I was able to get involved in really cool research that allowed me to do bio-inspired robotics.

Do you have an end goal at the moment once you get through your thesis?
I mean, there's a lot of different pathways I can take. I'm getting a really elite degree from a great school, Brown. It's an Ivy League school, so I feel very lucky to have this opportunity. So there's a lot of opportunities for me to do things in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics, going in those pathways, maybe continuing in military research. But something that I thought going forward that I might be interested in transitioning to is, instead of doing animal research, doing more about humans and specifically sports equipment. I love hockey so much. That's a huge passion of mine.

Yeah, I saw you wrote in your bio that you're a hockey official on the side.
I've played hockey my whole life. I'm still playing hockey, and then I am also an official. I'm an NCAA Division I hockey official. So I'm a linesman, and I also do a ton of USA Hockey national tournaments. They bring me around the country. So that's my side gig, as well as my PhD.

How much does it kill you to be out here while game seven of the Stanley Cup is happening?
Oh my god, I was dying. I couldn't believe that it made it to game seven. After the first three games were all to Florida, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna see the end of this." No, of course, the Oilers come back and bring it to game seven. And I'm like, "I'm gonna miss it!" I cannot believe I'm missing it. So my dad said he would tell me.

I was gonna say, do you want me to tell you what happened?
I was told. I mean, I was talking to all the crew that's been around, asking people. I wore an Oilers shirt the first day. So a few of the guys were asking me if I was. The curse remains, yes. Oh my gosh. I was so sad. Florida, of all places! I did not want Matthew to get a cup. But here we are.

Well, let's talk about what brings you from the ice to the heat. Why Survivor?
I mean, so many reasons. First off, it's a crazy adventure. I mean, we're out in the most beautiful place I've ever been. And just getting to be in nature, that's crazy. That's so cool. I love the outdoors, so that's a big experience. And then I'm so competitive. I've been an athlete my whole life. I'm always been so driven, and this is the biggest competition I'll ever be a part of. It's such a unique experience where I'm competing and living again with people I don't know, and I'm battling the elements as well as these people. And it just brings together to this huge sporting event to me that I'm like, "I want to win!"

What's your history with watching Survivor?
I'm pretty new to Survivor, actually. I only started watching it in college because my teammates at Georgia Tech created a Survivor drinking game. We played Survivor, but with drinking game challenges, like Flip Cup, Pong, Defend the Dastle, all these classic drinking games. But tribes were playing against each other, and then if your tribe lost, you voted someone out, same as Survivor. We hid an idol around the house. We had Tribal Council, where we're having someone be Jeff asking questions. And so it was a big thing. We did this several times. And the first time that I played it with my teammates, I won. And I was like, "You know what? Maybe I could do it in the real game too."

How long did this last for? Was it just a one-night thing?
We make a whole night of it. It was a big thing where we'd start at 5:00 p.m., and then we had, all the challenges mapped out, and the breakdown of tribes and everything. It was very fun.

That's like playing one of those one-day live reality game versions of Survivor. You may not have won a million dollars, but your BAC level was probably a million at the end of it.
Oh yeah. Well, the last challenge for our building fire to be part of the Final Three was everyone had to take a breathalyzer, and whoever was most sober was out. It was great. It was so much fun. And those guys are the best. We all watched Survivor together. We kind of bingewatched it during finals. Gotcha. And watching this, we would all be throwing out our commentary. And the guys knew way more than I did,. And we'd be seeing all these challenges where the female characters were so weak; these were really old seasons. And I didn't like these female characters they had cast. And all the guys were all like, "Oh my gosh, they're so dumb, they're so weak. Eva, you're so much better than them. You could kill everybody in this game." And I was like, "Yeah, I should do that". And so they're really the ones that encouraged me to go try and do this.

Give me one winner and one non-winner who you identify with the most.
So the two characters that I think I really identify with were Denise. She won. She was from Minnesota, like I am, and she was a challenged beast. That woman, she was small, but she was so strong and fierce. And so I really liked her. I thought she was super cool. And I was like, "You know what? I want to be like that woman." And then someone more recent is Lindsay. And she also was a very strong competitor, and she had a good alliance with Jonathan, I remember, throughout, who were two very strong players. And I thought she was really cool. She also played football, and I'm a woman on an all-men's hockey team. She was a woman on a men's football team. Aand so I also identified that with her as well.

Talk to me more about that. What was it like breaking into that environment?
I mean, it was crazy at first, because I was really nervous. I'd been playing girls' hockey all growing up. I'm from Minnesota, so there's just as much girls' hockey as boys'. And it's very high level, the best hockey for women in the country. And then I went down to Georgia Tech for college, going there because I wanted to go to a great school, not for hockey. But I found out they had a men's hockey team. I was like, "Well, I don't want to give up on my passion for hockey. I'm gonna try out. We'll see where I land." And I made the team, and they do cut people. So it wasn't that they're just, "Oh, we have to let her on." I made the team, and at first, the guys were kind of on eggshells a little bit. They didn't really know how to handle having a girl playing with them. They're like, "Can we hit her? Can we joke around the same?"

But I really showed them that I'm here to play. I'm an aggressive player, and I can shoot the shit with them just like they can with anyone else. And so quickly, I earn their respect and become one of the boys. And it was funny because one of the guys on the team was talking to me about how he can't talk to girls, and I'm like, "Well, I'm a girl. You're talking to me!" And he's like, "You don't count. You're one of us. You don't count at all." And so I know that I'm just one of them, and they were the best support. They're great guys. And any time that other teams often would target me because they'd never played against a girl. They see me, they're like, "You don't belong." They would try to blow me up. They'd say terrible things to me. My teammates would always have my back. And they'd go fight them for me if I wasn't already fighting them myself.

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What's one life experience that has prepared you most for the game?
I feel like that [this] is a big thing that has prepared me, because that also has grown my confidence in myself a lot. Everyone says I'm a very confident person, and I know I'm very authentically myself all the time. And that comes from a lot of my autism. That is something that's very important to me, and it's because I don't change who I am for other people. Because I don't recognize the social cues to do that. So I'm just always me.

And I think I've grown even more into that as I've gotten older, because I just accept that and go about doing what I want to do. And so joining men's hockey team, I was like, "I like hockey. I'm gonna go do that." And everyone became my friends. And then, I did the same thing when I started my PhD. Going to a new school, I have to start all over with new guys. I was even more ready for it this time because I'd done it before. And I was like, "I know I can show up to the situation, and I can thrive." And I've thrived so much that they've selected me as their captain for next season. Being a girl captain of a men's team when everyone on the team was like, "Yes, 100%. You're who we want." There was no doubt that it was gonna be anyone but me. And that felt amazing to know that they all respect me and all see me as one of them.

It's clear you're balancing a lot right now. So what was your prep process like to come out here?
I mean, it was a big balancing, because I had a lot of lab work to do. I mean, I'm taking time off for my PhD–which is a very rare thing. It's a year-round thing. It's fully funded. I'm a fellow with the National Science Foundation. And so I have a lot of work to be doing. And luckily, my advisor allowed me to take this time. But I did have to submit a manuscript to him before I left, so that was a lot of work to get this put together. But then, in addition to that, I was training. I was building fires in my backyard all the time. In my little apartment in Providence, I'm building a fire. My neighbors probably think I'm crazy.

I was training every morning. I always train every morning. I'm huge into lifting; that's for hockey. And so I just kept up that workout plan, changing it to adapt to different things that I started fasting. I started limiting my food intake a little bit to prepare myself to have less, still having enough to maintain my muscles and be strong. But knowing that I was going from having four meals a day as an athlete, where I eat lots of protein, lots of food, knowing this is to fuel me. To then shrinking that down a little bit smaller time frame. I was down to having only two meals, and one of those just being a smoothie, before I came here to prepare myself to know, "Okay, your body's gonna have to function on nothing. So let's dwindle it down a little bit."

You're clearly a very athletic person. And you were just voted the leader of your team. How do you think you'll be perceived in this game?
I definitely want to be seen on my tribe as an athlete. I do not want them to know that I'm also very intelligent. That's something that I'm gonna keep hidden because otherwise, I'm gonna be too much of a threat.

So are you just gonna generically say you're a student?
No, I'm gonna say I'm an NCAA hockey official. Because you take one look at me, you can tell that I am very fit. I've got huge muscles, especially for a woman, and my personality really shows that, yeah. And so I can really lean into that. And nobody's gonna look at that side of my life and be like, "Oh, she plays men's hockey. She's an official. She also is probably really smart and goes to an Ivy League school." Nobody's gonna think that. So, if I really lean into this one aspect about myself, I think I can hide the other part and keep that to my advantage. So I am being strategic. I am working on different things, but hopefully, they just see me as a physical competitor.

Give me your biggest superpower and your biggest piece of kryptonite when it comes to this game.
My autism for both of those. And that's the thing with autism, is that a lot of people think is autism as being something bad and that it's a big roadblock to success. But I believe that I would not have been as successful in my life without having my autism. Because I know it's provided me with so much drive, because I get these fixations on things, which can be very bad. But I've learned in my life to channel that towards my goals and using my fixated mindset to achieve what I want.

And sure, there's also a lot of downsides. So that's where the bad part comes in. There are times I'll get super overwhelmed and overstimulated, and that can have a very large physical effect on me. As well as there's other things with autism, like my inability to recognize social cues. I'm a very social person, have a ton of energy, love talking to people. But I don't pick up on the small social cues that everyone else does. And so this game where everyone's lying to me, a lot of that's going to go over my head. So that's where I have to really make sure I'm building strong alliances with people who I can trust to tell me the truth.

Well, let's talk about some people you can hopefully trust in. Who are you picking up good vibes from in the preseason?
I mean knowing myself and that I'm an athlete, and I look at everyone else in the view of an athlete, this is a competitive, physical game as well as a mental game. I see people who look athletic, and I'm like, "That's someone that I think I could work with." Because oftentimes, people who are very strong and are built, they're hard workers. You put in a lot of time and effort to get those muscles. And to have that strength in sports gives you lots of different morals that people who don't play sports don't have about hard work and teamwork and many things in general.

So, I saw two guys over the last couple days that I think I'd really like to work with. One of them, he's a Black guy who looks very strong, great smile. The guy was wearing a lacrosse shirt at one point. I was like, "Lacrosse is pretty close to hockey." That's someone that I think I could get along with. That would be a great ally to have. As well as there's a Asian man who looks about my age as well. Also looks muscular. A guy who's smiley; I like the happy people. And so seeing him too, I think he looks like someone who I could get along with. He just seems like a fun, nice guy. And so those are two people that I'm hoping I could get one of them on my tribe.

What's the biggest thing you value in an alliance partner?
Like I said, I'm not gonna recognize lying. And so I want to have someone that I'm solid with, that I feel like I can trust and can look at. I look to my teammates, because my teammates are like brothers to me. And I want to find someone who I can have that connection with. Because especially at the beginning of this game, you are a team. And sure, it's a very complex relationship. But at the ground root of it, you want to get further in the game, and that's their goal, too. So how can we do that together?

How much do you anticipate your cooperative spirit from a team setting butting up against the individual elements of Survivor?
I mean, ultimately, in sports, too, there's a lot of competition that happens outside of just your team playing to win a game. There's also the competition to make the team. We're all at tryouts together, and not all of us are gonna make it. So I've gone through that with the people that were teammates. We've been teammates, but also we're all competing for limited spots on a team, or to be on the first line. There's different little aspects of competition within all of it that you're not always working towards that one goal together. You all have your individual wants as well. But it's just being able to balance that, because you can't be the asshole who's just being a dick to the rest of your teammates, and because you want to be on the power play. You still have to be a team, so you can all work together.

Related: Everything to Know About Survivor 48

Looking to the other side of things, is there anyone giving you red flags? Who you're putting in the proverbial penalty box?
I mean, there are people that I just think are annoying. There's this Black woman who she just has been–we're supposed to be quiet, right? And she's just often been making little comments or doing little extra things that I'm just like, "Dude, chill!" And it's just been kind of getting on my nerves. I don't think I would want to work with her. There's also been a few people that I've still seen them wearing makeup and big hoop earrings. And we're we're out already, sleeping in tents every night. We're in the wilderness a little bit already. And I'm like, "Why are you still getting ready to look nice?" It just seems very contradictory to my thoughts on this game. So these are people that I know that I'm very different from, so I don't think I would be working with.

When it comes to writing your thesis on Survivor, how much will idols and advantages be incorporated?
I'm not good at finding things. I'm definitely not gonna find an advantage. I am the worst at looking for stuff. Whenever it's like, "Oh, where did I put this thing?" And I spend forever looking for it, and then it's the first place that I looked that I just didn't see. So I really doubt that I'll be able to pick out a tiny little idol hidden somewhere in the forest. So I'm kind of discounted that for my thoughts on what I'm gonna be able to do. So I feel like I have to rely more on the rest of my gameplay instead of all these little additional things that you could find.

Would you ever volunteer to go on a journey?
The hard thing about volunteering for something is that it does put a target on you. You see that time and time again. So I would not volunteer for a journey. However, I think if we lost the first challenge, and it's doing Sweat or Savvy, I would volunteer for the Sweat task because of two things. One, then, I get to show that, "Look, I'm a physical player. I'm showing that I'm physical by going to do this big, physical thing." And two, the other person who would go with me on that is also probably another strong player that gets me an opportunity to talk to someone who is going to be a potential ally, because they have those characteristics that I look for.

I mean, Q and Jelinsky said the same thing!
[Laughs.] Oh, no!

What's your main takeaway from Seasons 45 and 46 that you're bringing into your gameplay?
Play your idol. Definitely play your idol.

So you won't be finding them, but you'll be telling people to play them.
Oh my gosh. I can't believe so many people went home with idols in their pockets. That is ridiculous. I mean, that's for sure a thing that I'd want to do, because it's all just about the little steps to get to the next thing. Because to me, I kind of think–here's gonna be a big hockey analogy. But for the beginning of the game, when we're in our tribes, that is like regular season. The regular season, you're playing games, you want to win and stuff. But if you lose, it's not super bad yet. But once you hit the jury, once we merge, there's the jury there. Now, all of a sudden, you're in playoffs, and you're playing for the Stanley Cup. So here's where you're really kicking into gear. And hockey, when it hits playoffs, all of a sudden, everything's way more physical. It's way more intense. Everyone wants it that much more. And so the regular season is just, we gotta get ourselves in a good position to make it to the playoffs, and then you really kick it into gear. So to me, that's kind of what I'm thinking about. II have to make it through the regular season. Gotta stay with my tribe, hopefully I can make it through there. And then once we hit the merge, then it's really game is on. I'm playing for the Stanley Cup.

What's your favorite moment in Survivor history?
I think my favorite moment is kind of a heartwarming one. Noelle, she had one leg, and she had to go across a little balance beam. Oh my god. And she could not do it over and over. Just kept falling off it. And she got so frustrated, and you could just see it. And I just felt so bad. I really liked her, and I was like, "Oh my gosh. She has to do it." Everyone else is way past that part of the challenge. They're all throwing their bags by now. And finally, she gets across that beam. She goes up, she throws her bags one after another, lands all of them, and she won the challenge. And it was just the biggest comeback story. And it just showed so much heart and grit and dedication. She didn't give up. And that's how I want to play. I want to be that person who doesn't give up. You're gonna get knocked down. And I see that, and I'm like, "She got up, and she had one leg to get up on. And she still did it." I think she's so cool, and I want to be like her.

What's your hottest Survivor take?
I think that you should not be allowed to ask what someone's gonna do with the money in the final Tribal Council. I think that that should have no indication of how someone played. The rules are to outwit, outplay, and outlast, and that's what the jury should be making their decision based on. Not on who needs the money the most, or who do you think is going to use it the best? No, it should be based on your gameplay, not outside factors.

Of course, everyone has their own reasons for voting for somebody. So if you're a juror, you're going to be more of a résumé checker?
Yeah, definitely. Like looking at what did you actually do for this game? Not, who's the most likable? I think it should be, how did you play? I'm checking the boxes. Did you win challenges? Did you make big moves? Not like, "Oh, you were really nice to everybody." A+ if that keeps people from voting you off. But I don't think that that should be a reason someone should win.

What celebrity or fictional character would you bring out for a Loves Ones visit?
I would love to meet Wayne Gretzky. I mean, he's the greatest hockey player of all time. I mean, at least for his era, and now, the hockey players have definitely changed. But he is amazing. And I would love to get the opportunity to meet him. I think that he's just a very cool guy to get to meet. So that would be someone I'd want to bring out here, for sure. But if someone was going to be competing in a challenge with me, I think I would bring Conor McDavid. I feel like he's a crazy athlete. I mean, just won the Conn Smythe without even winning the Cup. So I'd love to have him alongside me as my loved one to help win a challenge, as they used to do.

The question is, how good will they be without skates on?
Oh, they're powerful people. I mean, Wayne Gretzky's old now. But Connor McDavid, that man trains like a water buffalo. I don't know. He goes crazy.

Lastly, how are you going to make your mark on Survivor 48 to make sure you return for Season 50?
I'm gonna win! [Laughs.] That's the game plan. I win, and you want me back. [Laughs.]

Next, check out our interview with Survivor 48 contestant Bianca Roses.