Don't let that smile fool you.

"I think that probably the most entertaining thing about me," Francesca Hogi says in the video below, "is that I like to talk trash about people, which I think, you know, people always like that."

Hogi knows American TV viewers all too well, and that's why I'll be watching the 36-year-old D.C. lawyer compete tonight in the premiere episode of Survivor: Redemption Island, the 22nd season of the CBS reality series and the second in a row filmed in Nicaragua. In a show that features serial reality-show contestant "Boston" Rob, who has already appeared in three Survivors and two Amazing Races, Hogi seems eager to be seen as the cold-hearted, manipulative one. "I care about managing people's feelings as long they're in the game because that affects me and how I'm perceived, but no, I don't really have a problem with hurting people's feelings," she says in the CBS clip. "There's a mean girl inside of me. I terrorized some girls in elementary school, and so, yeah, you'll probably see that Francesca."

Hogi, one of only two black contestants among the group of 18, could not be reached for comment, but an interview with the New York Daily News suggests she's more diva than outdoorswoman. "I've been camping twice before in my life before I went on Survivor," says the Bronx native. "I like to get my nails done and that sort of thing." And about the watching the first episode, which airs at 8 p.m., she says, "It's anxiety-producing. I'm going to see myself on television, dirty and in my underwear. I'm not looking forward to that. Everyone I know has hi-def TVs. I'm not going to watch myself in underwear in hi-def."

Information on Hogi is scarce, aside from the Daily News interview and her profile on the Survivor website, where she reveals that her mom grew up a cotton-picker in segregated Alabama. Her two Facebook fan pages reveal nothing. A Twitter user with her name, and who follows Survivor host Jeff Probst, wants to know why there's no English word for fianceé. Does this mean she's engaged? For now, we can only wonder, and hope that one day our ignorance will be resolved. But this appears true, anyway: Hogi is the co-inventor of the Bag Hitch, a strap that allows women to hang their purse from the headrest of a car seat. It remains unclear why women can't simply rest their purse on the car seat itself.