Cohoes life shaped ‘David’ to face ‘Goliath’
Maintenance manager flew to Fiji to outscheme 19 foes on latest “Survivor”
When Pat Cusack got the call telling him he’d made it to the final round of auditions on “Survivor,” he lost it.
Not his temper. Not his mind. Something a little more tangible.
“I literally puked all over the dashboard of my truck. And my wife’s sitting next to me and saying, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said: ‘Survivor’! She said, ‘Yeah, right. Put it on speaker phone.’”
That was around early December. Three months later he was on the plane with 19 fellow “castaways” for a 39-day shoot in Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands while his wife Jodi, recovered from the dashboard incident and holding the fort at their home in Watervliet, told the story they’d devised to explain his absence: that he was going on a church mission.
“She said, ‘Well, he found God,’” Cusack recalled. “And she kind of made excuses that our marriage was in a rough spot, and we needed a time of separation.” For months after his return, they stuck with the fiction. “People are still, like, ‘How’s the
marriage? You guys good now?’ ‘Yeah, everything’s good, everything’s good.’”
Cusack was on the phone, chatting on a break from his job as maintenance manager at Latham Village Apartments. Born and bred in Cohoes, the 41-year-old father of three is an energetic storyteller with a knack for earthy philosophizing — on his life, on his parenting and on the sly social calculation required to fight it out on primetime in one of television’s longest-running reality competitions.
What happened in Fiji and how he fared, he can’t say. Not yet. Not with the CBS reality show’s 37th iteration set to premiere at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26. Subtitled “David Vs. Goliath” and hosted, as usual, by Jeff Probst, the new season divides the cast into two tribes of achievers: Goliaths, who hail from privilege; and Davids, or those who’ve “scratched and clawed their way through life to prove themselves,” to quote the CBS promotional blurbage.
Cusack is a David — he is, in fact, the mother of all Davids, having inspired the season theme. His dad worked two demanding jobs: firefighter and cop. His mom, who drove a school route, was paralyzed when a drunk driver ran a red light and plowed into her bus. The injury led to 20 or so surgeries and three years of paralysis; Cusack, around 9 when the accident occurred, tended to her in her hospital bed at home.
If she needed a drink, he gave her a drink. If her colostomy bag needed a change, he changed it. “It kind of nurtured me into being a loving parent that I am to this day,” he said. “It just kind of molded me into taking responsibility.”
He was 14 when he met Jodi. By his junior year they had their first child: Felicia, now 25. By his senior year she was pregnant with their son: Paul, now 23. Three years later they had their second daughter — Kiera, now 20 — and were deep into the joys and demands of fullblown adulthood. “And I embraced it,” he said. “I’m grateful for everything that I’ve earned in my life. I don’t take anything for granted.”
Flying out to the finals in L.A. was the first time he’d ever been on a plane. Flying out to Fiji was the first time he’d been truly incommunicado with Jodi in their 27-year relationship and 12-year marriage. Back in August of 2017, when Cusack decided to audition for “Survivor” in Rochester, they packed up their bags and made the schlep together. They just weren’t used to being apart – maybe here and there, back when he worked as a roofer, but for 39 days? Without so much as a text? “It was hard for me ... not hearing my wife’s voice,” he said. “Not giving her a kiss when I wake up. Not giving her a kiss when I go to bed.”
As a longtime devotee of “Survivor,” Cusack wants everyone in fandom to know: “When I tell you that this game is real? It’s real real. It strips you right down.”
Going in, he figured he had a few key strengths. He’s an outgoing guy, he said. He gets along with people, makes friends easily. Socially, he’s skilled. Emotionally, he’s smart.
But he knew there’d be widespread scheming. “You gotta outwit and outlast everybody . ... We’re always conspiring against one another.” Or, put another way: “You gotta keep people that are basically your puppets on their strings. Keep them thinking that, you know, ‘We’re going to the end together.’” Meanwhile, “People are creating the same relationships and using me as a puppet just the same way I’m using somebody as a puppet.”
If that sounds crafty to the point of Machiavellian, well, it is. “It’s pretty intense,” Cusack said.
When news of the new season dropped earlier this month, Cusack’s name was announced with the cast — along with photos of him in Fiji, sporting a determined expression and many vivid tattoos. On his right arm: a tropical island. On his left arm: a sleeve of planes in tribute to the military. On his chest: a rosary memorializing his late sister. On his hands: two words spread across eight knuckles — “self” on his right hand, “made” on his left – that express his motto for living.
Now that it’s all over, Cusack said, there are no hard feelings among the castaways. He remains in touch with everyone, Davids and Goliaths alike. “We all knew it was a game we were playing for a million dollars – but outside of the game, now it’s a big family . ... I’m just having a blast with them, riding this wave. It’s an awesome time.”
He’s grateful for all of it — the chance to make new friends, the chance to travel, the chance to expand his world in so many ways. He was grateful from the moment he heard he’d been selected for the show.
It was February. He was at the apartment complex, busy clearing snow from a recent storm. He answered the call, heard the news, “and I just fell backward into the snowbank and did a huge snow angel ... and, of course, crying like a 2-year-old who lost his binky.”
As for that earlier phone call and its noxious effects on his pickup: About that, too, he’s philosophical. “I can always clean that up. I can’t anticipate a call from ‘Survivor’ again, you know. The wife was a little freaked out,” he said. “But it was what it was.”