Survivor's [Spoiler] Says Joe Was 'Brittle' And Had 'Zero Self-Awareness'
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of Survivor 48.
There's trouble in paradise for the Strong Five.
In Wednesday's episode, paranoia swirled about all over the beach, as the dynamic between the game's majority alliance began to disintegrate. Kyle and Shauhin continued to work overtime to protect their close ally Kamilla, which made David and Mary increasingly uneasy, especially after Joe defeated the former in a tightly won immunity challenge. But as David tried to make the tribe see the truth, trust among the five (six, if you count Mary) continued to deconstruct, and when Jeff brought out his torch snuffer, it was David whose game came to an abrupt end. (Read a full recap here.)
Below, David talks to TVLine about his frustrations with Joe and Eva, correctly clocking Kyle and Shauhin's true agenda, and the one thing he shouldn't have said out loud.
TVLINE | Let's get the important stuff out of the way first: How many glasses of milk did you throw back during your first night at Ponderosa?
DAVID KINNE | [Laughs] They ask you what you want when you get voted off and yeah, milkshakes! Chocolate milkshakes. That was it, man. I think I had three when I got back to Ponderosa. That was my comfort. I was craving it. I think there was steak and some spaghetti bolognese. I don't even really remember too much, but I remember the milkshakes.
TVLINE | Leading up to this vote, a few of your tribemates talked a change in your demeanor in your last 48 or so hours of the game. Did you recognize any changed behaviors in yourself looking back or do you reject that notion all together?
Well, your demeanor should change when s–t's hitting the fan, right? I mean, what do you want? I have a correct read on everything going on. I know that the Strong Five's in danger. I'm not just gonna sit there passively and be like, "Well, that sucks." You're gonna do something about it, right? And the fact that Joe and Eva aren't doing anything about it or aren't privy to that information or astute enough to notice, that was frustrating. Of course, I have emotions, too. I'm supposed to be a key member of this alliance, not the leader, just an equal, and yet I'm being dismissed despite the fact that I'm right. So, of course, I'm gonna have some frustrations there. Any demeanor change was basically because this was a very pivotal vote. This was danger zone for the Strong Five. Yeah, I absolutely was on edge, as should everyone [be]. You can see Kyle's demeanor change, you can see Kamilla's, you can see Shauhin's. The only people you don't see is Joe and Eva's because they're the ones who just think, "Well, everything's perfect in this world," and it wasn't.
TVLINE | You were right to question why Kyle and Shauhin were protecting Kamilla so much. Your reads were spot on. Do you take any solace knowing that your gut was right there?
Thank you. I feel like I am pretty good at reading people and there are subtle little things that are obviously pretty hard for the edit to show. Those bigger moments obviously do justify how I felt, and especially looking back at it now, I don't know how you could be Joe and Eva sitting watching these episodes and be like, "Oh man, see? I did the right thing." Clearly you're being played and manipulated by Shauhin and Kyle, the exact thing I said was happening. I'm not being aggressive. I'm not being condescending. I'm just like, "Hey, guys, I'm pretty sure this is what's going on." I don't know what else I could have done in that moment.
I had a pretty good social game up to that point. I had a good relationship with pretty much everybody on the island, and again, I looked at them as equals. So if I can't have a simple conversation at a reward being like, "Hey, I think this is what's happening," and tell them the truth, What are you gonna do at that point? I don't even know. People will say that maybe I pushed too hard, but would you not, if you think that you could potentially be going home that night? It was a difficult situation to be in, for sure, and I tried to navigate it the best I could, but I wasn't tiptoeing around. I wasn't playing on eggshells. I was just being myself out there, and I treated those people like family and friends. I did. I didn't talk to them as fellow contestants. Maybe that's where I went wrong, but I was playing a game that was true to myself, and I wanted to continue that. And as such, like with the Chrissy Tribal Council, that was me arguing with a friend, with a family member. It wasn't me arguing with a fellow contestant. I wasn't worried about jury management because Kamilla is playing a game that's dissimilar to who she is in the real world. I'm playing [as] myself, and Chrissy very much was too. She wasn't pretending to be anyone else. That's why I think she would have voted for me at the Final 3 and so would have Cedric, because it was me making real connections with those people. Again, that's only out of respect for one another.
TVLINE | What are your thoughts on this whole Kamilla thing, especially her relationship with Kyle, now knowing what you didn't then?
I love Kamilla. I love everybody in my cast, by the way. They're incredible. And Kamilla, in particular, because she's a gamer. I'm a gamer and we connected on that on the island. So I knew that she was gonna be a little schemey, and I knew that she was gonna have choice words. When you're online, man, you embrace the s–t talk. I was PVP-ing back in the '90s. We invented trash talk online. So, I know how she operates. Her calling me stupid and dumb, that's just her talking s–t. I love that, and that doesn't bother me whatsoever because she is just being herself. She's being that gamer girl. I was just laughing when she was calling me those names. I had no problem with Kamilla whatsoever. The people I do have a problem with in that moment were my allies who were not believing me that this was actually happening when it was.
TVLINE | Tell me a little bit about paranoia in the game. How would you compare the paranoia post-merge to that of the early game?
Well, you can only be paranoid, literally by definition, if you are not correct. By definition, I'm not paranoid because paranoia is literally defined as unjustified, whereas everything I was feeling and doing was justified, right? So I didn't have any paranoia. You could argue the others had paranoia, such as Joe and Eva. They were paranoid that I was scheming against them. They actually ended up being the paranoid ones, whereas I myself had the correct read on the situation. I was reacting as well as I could, giving them the right information, and still they thought something else was going on. They were being paranoid in the fact that they thought I was being paranoid. It's like a double-edged sword.
TVLINE | Joe seemed to take offense when you told him he went back on his word. Did that play a big part in Joe and Eva deciding to flip on you?
Oh, for sure. I don't think Joe thinks his shit stinks. He doesn't take criticism very lightly, and I think he thought of himself almost as the godfather of that group. We're all supposed to be equals and he considered himself the leader, and he will sit there and say that he was following Eva blindly, but OK, so what? So you're not playing the game of Survivor? I think he truly thought that he didn't go back on his word when he did. That's the only issue I had with Joe in that moment. There's a moment during the reward where I basically said, "They're gonna push back against Kamilla because they're working together and you need to stand your ground, and that's how you know that I'm telling the truth. That's how you know something's going on." The fact that they're gonna push so hard [for] Kamilla is proof that they're working together, and he promised that he would stand his ground. He also promised he would never vote me out. He promised on his kids he would never vote me out, and here I am.
I think Joe's an incredible man. He really is an incredible father. A lot of respect for Joe. I look up to him in many ways. In the game, however, he flat out went back on his word and didn't think he did when he did. So he can take offense to that all he wants. Obviously, probably wasn't the most strategic comment to make towards the man because he was clearly very sensitive, but at that point, short of recreating a whole new alliance which I could have done, I still thought that I could salvage it. It probably wasn't the best thing to say at the moment, of course. I thought I played a good game, but obviously did not play a perfect game, and that was one of those moments where I maybe shouldn't have said that. Would it have changed anything? I don't know. But if I can't look my ally in the eye, a friend of mine, and say, "Hey man, you said you were gonna do something. You didn't do it. What the hell is going on?" Well, what am I going to do? My game is dead at that point anyways.
TVLINE | Heading into Tribal Council, how confident were you that everyone in your alliance would be voting Mitch?
Twenty percent. It was pretty low. The moment I saw my name written down once, I knew it was over. That was it. It made no sense, absolutely, for anybody on the bottom to be voting me unless there was a majority, and they wouldn't have the majority unless people in my alliance flipped on me. So the moment I saw my name written down first, I knew it. I knew it. Looking back at Joe, it was just like, "Bro, everything I was doing was to protect you and Eva, and you wanted me out for it."
TVLINE | We saw Shauhin planting seeds against you for days before the vote. He said you were trying to play a Boston Rob-style game where no one could talk to each other and everyone had to babysit each other. What's your reaction to that?
I think on most seasons, Kamilla would have been voted out. Unfortunately I got caught with two allies who were not astute enough, not aware of what was happening. So I think it was just unfortunate because I don't think Kyle hid it very well, as you can see in the edits. I think it was pretty obvious that he was working with Kamilla, and it was even more obvious on the island, at least in my perspective. And Shauhin, there was a lot of little things that happened that I would tell my allies like, "Hey, this is going on."
For example, when Mary was being considered to be brought into the Strong Five, and I didn't just force Mary into the alliance. She had a good relationship with Eva. She had a good relationship with Joe. But there's a moment where Shauhin came up to me when we were considering Mary, and it was like, "Hey, I know Mary is being considered to join us, but what do you think about Kamilla?" There are just little moments like that. You talk like, "Yeah, Kamilla's great, you obviously have a good relationship with Kamilla," and you play it off as if it's a good idea, but he's not coming to me and presenting that without an agenda. So it was pretty clear to me that Shauhin and Kyle wanted Kamilla in the game, and him planting those seeds of doubt against me is probably because he wanted Kamilla from the beginning, which again, I was on to.
TVLINE | If you could go back in time, is there anything you'd do differently?
I don't know, it's tough. Confronting Joe, I didn't realize that he was as sensitive or as brittle as he was, because you think of him to be this big, strong, tough guy, when in reality, to [offend] a weak man, tell him the truth. That was Joe, right? I don't think anyone who is comfortable in their own skin would have taken it as personally as he did, and I didn't expect that from him. I thought I could talk to him man to man, which clearly I couldn't because he didn't see me as an equal, apparently. Whatever. It's the game. Love Joe, a lot of respect for the man, but at that time, I was talking to a friend and he didn't see me as a friend anymore. So, yeah. That sucked. But when he pushed back that much and saying like he's incapable of breaking his words it's like, "Dude, you have zero self-awareness," but that's Survivor.