Exclusive: 'Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance' runner-up Spencer Bledsoe talks (Part 2)

Survivor Cambodia: Second Chance declared Jeremy Collins the winner of its $1 million grand prize over Spencer Bledsoe and Tasha Fox during last week's finale on CBS.


Spencer, who previously competed on Survivor: Cagayan, was beaten by Jeremy in a unanimous jury vote. Jeremy received all 10 votes, while Spencer and Tasha both earned none.

Kelley Wentworth finished the game in fourth place, Keith Nale finished in fifth, and Kimmi Kappenberg landed in sixth place.

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

Reality TV World: Did you have any pre-game alliances before the show? Abi-Maria Gomes told me that she thought you and Tasha had something going on from the very start.


Spencer Bledsoe: We talked and we said, "I hope we end up on the same tribe," and I feel like we could trust each other and things could be good. We never said the word "alliance," and we never said, "You and me to the end." And I didn't do that with anyone. I didn't have any ironclad alliances, secret plans, anything like that.

Tasha was definitely someone I thought I could work with and we had a rapport, you know, [Stephen Fishbach] as well, and [Shirin Oskooi] definitely, and a few other people. But it was not this grandiose, super-tight, unbreakable, unshakable "you and me to the end" type of thing at all.

Reality TV World: Do you think producers implemented all of the Tribal Swaps for that reason, to sort of break up and potential pre-game alliances? And if so, do you think it was effective?

Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah! I mean, I think that was a factor in why they did it and I think it was effective. It was like, after a couple swaps, especially when we got to the merge, there were so many different groups that had been together. There were like three different tribe groupings that had all been together.

There were people who played together before, there were people who knew each other outside the game, people from the same areas -- it was, like, mind-numbing, the number of possibilities and possible pairings and groupings. So I think the swaps definitely complicated things more than they could've hoped for. It was pretty good.


Reality TV World: I know you said you didn't want to obsess over when you could've/should've taken out Jeremy because it would drive you crazy.

Spencer Bledsoe: (Laughs)

Reality TV World: But did you ultimately determine a certain time you think would've been best to take him out in hindsight?

Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah, I mean in hindsight, I think probably when there were five people left, I should've voted out Jeremy instead of Stephen. At the time, I thought Stephen's advantage was really dangerous and if he made it further into the game, he could use it against me. I just, you know, misjudged.

I thought that Jeremy getting to the end was a risk -- something I wanted to avoid -- but not something that was just totally impossible to overcome. I thought I had a chance against him, and I didn't. So that's on me.


Reality TV World: Abi asked the Final 3 what their best subtle move was, but no one discussed their biggest moves. What would you have said yours happened to be, was it taking out Fishbach?

Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah, I think it was the Fishbach vote. That was the moment that I made a move that I came up with, that I implemented, that I made happen. And it was the first time I ever did that, really, in Survivor, and it worked out. So, it was not necessarily a great move, but it was [my biggest].

Reality TV World: Were you surprised Kimmi called you a bully and basically said you were a poor example for her kids? Was there something drastic that happened between you two that viewers missed? And did you guys hash things out after the show?

Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah, we talked. I think she's, for the most part, forgiven me. I hope she doesn't feel that way anymore. I was surprised though, yeah. I mean, I thought it was frankly ridiculous. I thought it was gameplay on my part. But she was upset that she went out and I could've said things better. I could've been more sensitive, but yeah, that was way over the top.

Reality TV World: Do you feel at any point during the season producers might've had a hand in keeping you around because you were a fan-favorite? Monica Padilla previously suggested that producers planted seeds during confessionals to vote someone else out and the timing of swaps was in your favor because both times you were at the bottom and pretty much got saved.


Spencer Bledsoe: Oh, no. The swaps are orchestrated way in advance. They have to have props for the challenges and they need to know how many teams are going to be part of the challenges. I definitely got some good luck, but it was definitely not a case of the producers flipping everything around to work out in my favor.

Reality TV World: You definitely played a different game this time around. If you were to play again, what would you do differently? Do you think you made any major mistakes you'd correct?

Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah, there were mistakes. I think I just focused on building relationships, and I think I did and that allowed me to make moves I couldn't have made before, but I think I definitely underestimated how bad that would sting. I didn't see the bitterness of the jury coming.

And so, I think while I got better emotionally and I got better with people, I definitely still have room to grow and improve. That's kind of how I left the season feeling, that I made a lot of progress but there's definitely progress left to be made.

Reality TV World: On the topic of a bitter jury, Wentworth said there were a lot of things we didn't see, especially when it came to you and certain backstabs, lies or playing both sides. Would you be able to specifically mention things we didn't see that might've resulted in a bitter, resentful jury?


Spencer Bledsoe: Yeah, I've heard this in a couple of other interviews, and I honestly don't know what she's talking about. (Laughs) I was in the middle, yeah, I was playing both sides.

I mean, I completely own up to that. But I don't know necessarily what it was that I did that the audience didn't see. I feel like the audience did see me playing both sides and betraying a lot of people. I guess, if anything, it's just that I did form close bonds and we didn't really see it on the show, but I had deep conversations with a few people -- [Andrew Savage] and Wentworth in particular.

And Wentworth and I got close, so in her case, voting her out was a deep betrayal, and I guess you saw the betrayal but you just didn't see the depth of it.

To read the first half of Spencer's exclusive Survivor interview with Reality TV World, click here. For more interviews with the season's Final 6 castaways, be sure to check our Survivor page.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski