Exclusive: Brandon Hantz talks about 'Survivor: Caramoan' and his meltdown (Part 2)

Brandon Hantz was eliminated from Survivor: Caramoan -- Fans vs. Favorites' Bikal "Favorites" tribe during Wednesday night's fourth episode of the CBS reality series' 26th edition.


Brandon -- a 21-year-old in chemical disposal from Katy, TX -- was voted out of his tribe at the season's fourth Tribal Council, the second elimination vote for Bikal, which took place right at the location of the Immunity Challenge because Bikal had decided to forfeit the challenge in order to get rid of him as soon as possible due to his unruly and unpredictable behavior which included a tantrum in which he destroyed the tribe's rice supply.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Brandon talked about his Survivor experience -- until one question caused the still quick-tempered castaway to get "pissed off" and end the interview abruptly!

Below is the concluding portion of Brandon's interview. Click here to read the first half. 

Reality TV World: [Regarding] the idea that Phillip Sheppard is the tribe's leader -- it almost appears like everyone on your tribe could be letting him think he's the leader because it keeps him calm and they just haven't had a chance to go back to Tribal Council yet and vote him off. It seems like it might be a situation where everyone else was in on the joke but you were the only one taking the idea that Phillip was actually the leader seriously.


Brandon Hantz: No, this is a legitimate thing. Because as you see in the [clip for the] next episode, [Corinne Kaplan] goes, "He is the most annoying player to ever play Survivor." I mean, everyone was annoyed by Phillip constantly. He was the leader of their alliance because nobody wanted to take the leadership role. In Survivor, you want to play strategic obviously, right?

So you're not going to be like, "I'm the leader." So everyone kind of lets the person who comes out with, "Look, I'm the leader," be the leader. It gets the target off their back. Now you do it too long and the leader really starts to control stuff, because you start to get used to the whole process of everything.

People start to get used to, "Oh he may be the leader. He's actually making decisions. So we might want to listen." And it's just that everybody is doing it to protect their own self in the game. "Let's just listen to him. Let's let him be the target." But they actually go with the flow and that was a problem with me.

I'm not going to let Phillip disrespect me and degrade me -- just [let] him say and do anything he wants no matter what. He was getting volatile before I was even getting volatile. You gotta understand that. In real life, I respect Phillip. I don't have any problem with Phillip as a person -- as anything, but as a Survivor, he's a terrible Survivor strategically and in every other way.

He plays to the camera. To me, I think you should be real. I believe, I don't think you should go with this whole storyline of "Stealth-R-Us" just because you want to sell your book more. He came out with a book immediately after he [filmed Survivor: Caramoan last year]. It was in the process of coming out.


So a lot of the things he was doing was for his own personal benefit as far as publicity is concerned. And it's obvious. You don't give -- that's the most odd thing that ever happened on Survivor, to give names to the tribe, character names by the way.

He even said this himself. He even made a couple comments to me in the past, like, "Look man, I'm not the crazy person that you've seen" -- I tell that to everybody, I'm not like that. "This is a persona." Well, just be yourself, Phillip.

And him not being himself, which I don't really know what that is at this point, it's a bad situation to where look, I am myself and just because you're not yourself doesn't mean I'm not going to be myself. And when I'm disrespected to that degree, there's consequences for that.

It's not an excuse to being physical, which I didn't. But you know, your life is going to be poured out. What can you do? I can't get physical, so I'm going to get vindictive and I'm going to pour out your rice. And pouring out your rice is no different than burning your socks. You know how bad you need your socks out there on that island? -- More than you need food and clothing.

Reality TV World: Near the end of the episode, you definitely seemed like you wanted to hurt your tribe and help the "Fans" tribe. So if that's really what you were trying to do, I was curious why you didn't just outright quit the game. Because it seems like had you done that, then similar to what we saw with Shamar Thomas, your tribe would've had to go to Tribal Council and vote off a second person if they had lost the Immunity Challenge, instead of just losing one person.


Brandon Hantz: Like I said before, I was ready to play the game. I was ready from the beginning. I had a moment of weakness there and... you only get to see very little. But everybody goes through that phased where they're done and they don't want to play anymore. Well, I am an extrovert. I have an extroverted personality, so everything that I think, I say.

So I was like, "Guys, ya'll just go ahead and vote me out." I was already feeling up against the wall. I was like, "You know what? You're all going to vote me out anyways. Just write my name down." I was giving them -- instead of fighting it and doing what I did do, I wanted to give up, and it was a very short-lived -- I said, "Screw that. This is for my family. I'm not going to do that. I don't want my kids seeing their dad giving up."

So it was just one of those no-brainers for me. I reneged on the short moment of weakness and I said, "Well, if I'm going to play this game, then I'm going to play it hard." And Phillip didn't even want to budge on anything. He didn't want to do anything to be even civil with me.

Reality TV World: What happened after you were voted off? Did the producers try and have you spend some extra time meeting with the show's psychologist and stuff? Did you go through the normal post-voteoff process? Jeff's comments to Entertainment Weekly suggested...

Brandon Hantz: Get me off this interview. I'm getting pissed off. I don't want to talk to you anymore.


Above is the concluding portion of Brandon Hantz's exclusive interview with Reality TV World. Click here to read the first half. 






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski