Destination X's Mack Reveals One Player Called Her After the Show to Apologize: Wasn't "Using Me"
Mack Fitzgerald got hit by the biggest blindside of the season yet. Here's what she has to say after the fact.
This interview contains spoilers to Season 1, Episode 6 of Destination X.
Arguably, the biggest blindside of Destination X yet happened this week when Peter Weber was given the power to break the Map Room tie and sent one of the toughest competitors in the game from Day One, Mack Fitzgerald, back home.
Mack was the only person to figure out this week’s destination of Salzburg, Austria, just from the clues, and that likely factored into Peter acknowledging her as his biggest nemesis in the game. So, he sent her packing.
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Ironically, Mack admitted to NBC Insider that she did not feel the same way about Peter or his late addition partner in crime, JaNa Craig.
"Respectfully, I didn't think either one of them was a threat at all,” she said. "I didn't really think they knew much. So on an individual level, which is how I wanted to play this game, neither of them were making me sweat."
In this week’s exclusive exit interview, Mack expands on her gameplay, revealing her almost alliance with Biggy, the spider issues in that Salzburg dungeon, and who called her after the game was complete to apologize for their move that cost her the game.
Mack "slept like a baby" in that castle dungeon
Across all the Destination X locales, Mack said she had various feelings of certainty about where they might be located. But in Austria, she was more confident.
"I believe I knew I was in Austria,” she confirmed. "And I actually think I knew we were on the more eastern side of Austria, just from tracking the sun, because I had built this little thing to track the hills. But I didn't specifically know Salzburg versus Vienna. But for some reason, I just felt really cocky about it, and was like, 'I'll be able to figure it out,' so I wasn't nervous at all. And I was really excited to be in a dungeon. Game aside, I thought that would be a way cooler experience, so I was really excited to be in there."
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As the lone person initially assigned to sleep in the dungeon of Moosham Castle, Mack said it was nice being in there alone for a second.
"I got to pick which bed I wanted. I got to pick the little corner that had the least amount of spiders,” she said, laughing. “Yeah, there were a bunch of spiders, so we had to call people in to take care of them. And I think the spiders were the bigger issue compared to ghosts because, at least to me, those are real. But I slept like a baby."
How do you solve a problem like Biggy?
In the end, ghosts and spiders weren’t Mack’s biggest problem; that was Biggy Bailey. The content creator from Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a big personality with a southern twang, and he seemed like he was pretty sweet on Mack.
For her part, Mack said she saw right from the first episode that Biggy was a player perhaps worth allying with.
"I thought Biggy was playing kind of a better game socially, but then Rick [Szabo] knew more things,” she assessed of the players she kept her eye on the most. “If they had teamed up, honestly, they would have been unstoppable. But then they would have had to fight to the death at the end.
“You don't see a lot of it on the show, but he's really smart,” she continued about Biggy. "I think he plays up this dumb southern boy, which makes sense. But nobody on the bus thought he was a dumb southern boy. It was clear that he studied. It was always clear that he was paying attention. It was always clear that he was tracking the sun. You just knew he was focused and was paying attention."
Set on playing more of a solitary game like Kim Connor did, Mack said she observed too many alliances going on right under her nose to really trust anyone with allying fully with her. But she considered taking Biggy with her to the end.
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"I thought Biggy was a really strong threat, and I wanted him and I to take Rick down,” she said of her end game strategy. "But then I also wanted the four of us to take out Peter and JaNa, so there was just a lot going on. And I think people wanted me off in the sense that I was a threat, but I was still trying to stay in everybody's good graces."
She said the only regret she had in this leg was telling Biggy they were in Salzburg because he didn’t have to go into the Map Room, so there was no need for to tell him their locale.
"And then that wouldn't have backfired on me because Shayne wouldn't have known,” she said of Biggy telling fellow player Shayne Cureton.
Asked if he ever apologized about that betrayal of their friendship, Mack confirmed he did.
"Once [Biggy] was done filming, I believe I was the first person he called — other than his dad — for an apology, which does make me feel a little bit better,” she revealed. “That it wasn't that he was using me for information and screwed me over. I think he genuinely thought that Peter thought it was going to be Switzerland, so he wasn't going to cause a tie, and so he might as well help his friend. I don't think it was meant to hurt me. I think it was just kind of stupid because I thought it was obvious that Rick and Peter were working together. And I'll take that over purposefully trying to get me out because I don't think he meant that."
The agony of knowing it was Salzburg, Austria, all along
Having figured out from everyone else’s shared clues that they were indeed in Salzburg, Mack admitted she was the cockiest she’d ever been going into this particular Map Room.
"Not only do I know Salzburg, but I talked to Shayne and he said, 'Vienna.' I talked to Peter who told me he thought Switzerland, and then I assumed JaNa was going to be doing whatever Peter was doing. I felt so good!" she said
And then a tie was announced after the votes, and Mack said the air went out of the room for her: “As soon as [Jeffrey] said that there was a tie, I just had a pit in my stomach and thought, 'I'm going home.’"
Peter sealed her fate and Mack got off the bus, in literal shock at the turn of events.
"It's a mixture of emotions, right? I think for everybody else, you get off the bus and it's like, 'Oh, sh--, I didn't realize I was in Paris, or whatever.' And for me, there was no reveal,” she said. "It was a bummer to see [Jeffrey] because that was just confirmation. And he's a really nice guy and he's kind of got that soft side to him, but then he's also going to take the opportunity for a jab if it's there and I respect that out of a person. But I was really upset, so then for him to just be like, "Yeah, and you were the only one who knew...' It's just like, 'All right. Great.’"
"I guess part of me just wanted to believe that Peter had an epiphany last second, or Shayne put it all together on [his] own just because that would make me feel better,” she said of being the lone player to figure out Salzburg all by herself. "But yeah, that was not what happened, so it was tough to hear."
Like the rest of the players who exited before her, Mack said she hung out for a few more days in the next location, which ironically was her least favorite place in Europe. However, she adored her time on Destination X and wants to do it again.
“Filming this was the coolest thing I've ever done,” she shared. "Take away all the beautiful scenery and all that stuff, just being a part of a set was really cool and fascinating to me, and so I would love the opportunity to do that again. I actually tried to have them give me a job because they were filming the British version right after ours. I was like, ‘Guys, keep me around. I just want to be on the crew!'"
They declined, but now Mack has the production bug and is hoping another show is in her future: “I would do anything to be back on another set, I think [it] would be cool."
New episodes of Destination X premiere on Tuesday nights and are available to stream the next day on Peacock.
