Exclusive: Kass McQuillen talks 'Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance' (Part 2)

Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance merged the two tribes and concluded its Season 31 seventh episode with the new Orkun tribe snuffing Kass McQuillen's torch Wednesday night on CBS.


Kass, who previously competed on Survivor: Cagayan, became the seventh castaway voted out of the game. Her newly-merged Orkun tribe ousted her via a 6-4-2-1 vote instead of Ciera Eastin, Tasha Fox and Andrew Savage respectively at Tribal Council on Night 19 of the game.

Kass, Ciera and Tasha were all on the chopping block because they bickered at camp and started some drama by telling lies or at least blaming each other for telling lies. Ciera's reason for voting for Savage was not clear.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Thursday, Kass talked about her Survivor experience. Below is the concluding portion. Click here to read the first half.

Reality TV World: In your final words at the end of last night's episode, you said you "threw a bomb" on your game, that you got caught and you took responsibility for that. What exactly did you mean? What do you feel was your "bomb?"


Kass McQuillen: Letting [Tasha] get under my skin to the point where I felt the need to go in front of the tribe and just throw out there that she was lying to me and trying to break up our alliance, which is exactly what happened and they showed it. Her whole intent was to tell me lies and try to get me to cause trouble. And she did.

It's Pandora's Box. You open it. So I don't know if it was "Chaos Kass." I didn't go out there intentionally wanting to stir stuff up. Someone really got under my skin. So I guess the flaw there is that I let that person have that power to do that.

Reality TV World: How far do you think you might've made it in the game if you continued on with your initial "loving and sympathetic Kass" approach?

Kass McQuillen: Well, I think I probably would've gotten to the Top 5. I don't think anyone would let me into the Final 3. I was just having a lot of fun out there. You didn't see a lot of stuff I did.

I mean, I started fire with [Terry Deitz]. I killed a chicken with [Keith Nale]. I really embraced Survivor this time. I did all the things I didn't do the first time and just went out there to have fun. And I did that and I think people saw that.


I think at some point, people would've realized, "Oh my God. Kass has a great story here. She was this person we all wanted out and now she's at the end and everybody likes her. We better get rid of her."

So, I mean, I've spoken with Ciera since and she told me she wasn't going to take me to the end, and nobody was. So realistically, this wasn't my season to win. And maybe I'm never going to win Survivor, and that's okay. It's okay not to win. You don't have to win everything.

And there's only one winner and there's so much luck and so much chance in this game that you can't control. I'm happy with how I played. I'm happy that I got a really good, different side of me shown -- making friendship bracelets and all that stuff. So I couldn't be happier.

It sucks how I went out, but it's almost poetic, you know, that someone who criticized "Chaos Kass" in Cagayan and hated everything about my game that ruined her game turned herself into the chaotic figure and basically imploded her own game at the merge. It's kind of ironic.

Reality TV World: In some of her post-elimination interviews, Monica Padilla suggested the producers played a role in her exit because they commented to castaways how they liked the idea of keeping fan-favorites Spencer and Kelly Wiglesworth around. Monica also said it was funny timing a swap occurred right when Spencer was next to go. What are your thoughts on that? Because some viewers could argue it looked like producers influenced you to keep Spencer around since you had such a sudden change of heart in wanting to save him.


Kass McQuillen: No, keeping Spencer had nothing to do with production. If anything, production probably would've loved for me to just lop his head off, right?! (Laughs) But realistically, Yung "Woo" Hwang, you had to look at the whole picture. Ciera and I had been together the whole game.

Savage is a bro. He's never, you know, he's 100% bros before hoes. I know that's politically incorrect, but that's how he rolls. Woo is a bro. He's going to go with the bromance. He was never going to go with the women. I know that about Woo. It happened to me in my first season.

So, Woo was dangerous. He's never going to take control of the game, but he would enable someone else to control it, and he would be a number for the alpha alliance that was forming. So, Spencer I think is capable of making his own decisions, whereas Woo would be swayed more easily.

So, I had nothing personal with Spencer. We actually had a long talk on the beach. We made up. We agreed to put our past behind us, and we were very mature and agreed to work together. So Spencer was not even next to go. Savage would've been next to go if Ta Keo had gone to Tribal again.

Because when we came back from Tribal, [Savage] was an absolute little turd. You saw some of that, you know, with him cussing and hating on the people who blindsided him. I mean, the poor guy must've never been wrong in his life, you know? So, Savage was 100% the next person to go if Ta Keo went to Tribal Council.


Reality TV World: Any regret not taking Savage out before Woo? I understand your reasoning for getting rid of Woo, but it's clear Savage was the bigger strategic threat at the time.

Kass McQuillen: Yeah, the Savage [vote], I mean, we wanted Savage out, especially Ciera because he had mentioned her as a pawn. But [Abi-Maria Gomes] would not vote out Savage, so we did not have the numbers to do it. And I was actually just trying to go along with people.

To me, Woo was as good as Savage. And for some reason, Woo was better because we still didn't know what was going on with our original Bayon people. So sending Savage home would've really rocked their world and they would've gunned for us come merge time or whatever.

Unfortunately, Savage is just -- we took the wind out of his sail, and he was really uncomfortable with that. So as far as Monica saying all that stuff, as I understand it, she was pretty drunk the night before [she conducted interviews] and she was probably drunk when she was talking to people.

Back on Bayon, originally, Monica was going to be the first person to go. She even said in her interviews she didn't make connections out there. She was just kind of this person out there walking around trying to look good.


This game was really about people making connections and working together. This is Second Chance! And if you're not a fan-favorite, that's your problem, Monica, if you're bitter about that. But she certainly -- the merge didn't save Spencer.

To read the first half of Kass' exclusive Survivor interview with Reality TV World, click here.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski