Survivor: Kaoh Rong -- Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty castaway Darnell Hamilton was voted off his To Tang tribe during the premiere broadcast on CBS.

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Darnell, a 27-year-old postal worker from Chicago, IL, became the first castaway voted out of Season 32 on Night 3 at the game's first Tribal Council session. The Brawn tribe had to vote one of their members off because they had lost the Immunity Challenge, which Darnell took responsibility for.

During an exclusive Thursday interview with Reality TV World, Darnell talked about his short-lived experience on Survivor. Below is the concluding portion. Click here to read the first half.

Reality TV World: Viewers saw you getting close with Cydney Gillon. Did you form a real alliance there or was it at least in the works? And how long did you see yourself sticking with her?

Darnell Hamilton: Yeah, we had formed an alliance, and I had told her, like, "Look, I give you my word. I'm not going to vote you out. When it comes to the end, you know, me and you will go to the end. And it will just come down to who played the better game." I made a genuine alliance with her.

Reality TV World: It was clear Cydney didn't want to vote you out of the tribe. Do you think Cydney's vote was based on the fact she really liked you or just hated Alecia Holden?

Darnell Hamilton: I think that she just didn't like Alecia. (Laughs) I mean, and she liked me. It was kind of a combination of both -- whichever way you want to look at it. But, you know, she liked me. But everyone was tired of Alecia.

They just had enough and she had to go with the group, so in the game of Survivor, if the group says something, you have to do it. If not, then now Cydney has a target on her back. We already knew that people were looking at us as a pair, so if I'm gone and she didn't write my name down, who's next?

Reality TV World: You came across like a really nice guy and you got emotional at Tribal Council. Do you wish you had been a little more aggressive in your arguments in order to put the bigger target on Alecia? You took a lot of responsibility for failing the tribe and hurting them and stuff.

Darnell Hamilton: Mhmm, no, I don't think so. I think there was nothing that I could have done besides the fact I lost the goggles. I think that I took the right approach. I don't believe in making excuses.

I don't believe in doing anything like that. If I do something, I own up to it. That's just the type of person I am. So, I mean, I looked at it like, "If I'm going to go down, I'll go down fighting and I'm going to keep it real." And that's what I did, so I don't regret it at all.

Reality TV World: That bug in Jennifer Lanzetti's ear was pretty disgusting. From a viewer's perspective, it looked like she just lied down and the bug crawled out for Scot Pollard to grab. Is that actually how it went down? We didn't see her attempt to contact medical staff or anything.

Darnell Hamilton: Medical staff was contacted. I mean, they put some type of liquid in her ear and the bug slowly but surely started to come out. But it was disturbing seeing that happen! Jen was -- and I tell people this all the time -- she's one of the toughest people I've ever met.

We didn't know if anything was wrong with her, if she was faking or what, because Jen was working hard like us! She was doing her regular job and one minute she's okay and then one minute she's down. It was like, "Okay, what's going on?! Is this an attention thing?" But over that night, it was just too much for her and her ear started bleeding. We were like, "Okay, this is something really serious here." 

Reality TV World: When she started feeling like the bug in her ear was getting to be too much, did she mention needing or wanting to quit at all because the pain was so bad?

Darnell Hamilton: No. no. She never, ever said anything about quitting.

Reality TV World: Looking back on the days you played the game, whom did you think was aligned with each other?

Darnell Hamilton: Day 1, it was [Kyle Jason] and Scot without a doubt, and me and Cydney. And Jen and Alecia were, like, wild cards, you know? Well, Jen quickly [gravitated] towards Jason. They were the older -- it was kind of like older [vs.] younger. So me and Cydney were like, "We need to get a third! The numbers don't add up. If we can't get Alecia, we're automatically at the bottom." So we kind of brought Alecia in.

Reality TV World: So before the challenge happened and the whole goggles fiasco, which castaway was your little group planning to vote for? Whom were you targeting at that point?

Darnell Hamilton: Either Jason -- a lot of us wanted Jason because he had made alliances with everyone, (laughs) and I didn't trust him. I was like, "He made an alliance with you too?! And he made an alliance with you?" He made a lot of alliances. I mean, they didn't show it but he actually talked to me as well, so he made alliances with everyone.

Reality TV World: I wonder if Jason thought he was being secretive about it because it sounds like the rest of the tribe got together and established he was trying to align with everybody.

Darnell Hamilton: No, he didn't do it secretly, like it was just between us. He made alliances with everyone.

Reality TV World: Which castaway did you view as the most intimidating or threatening? Jason, for example, talked to the cameras about how he typically intimidates people just because of the way he looks and what his background is like.

Darnell Hamilton: I wouldn't say intimidating, (laughs) because he didn't intimidate me. I just felt like he was the one -- like as far as in the game -- he was the biggest threat. He was probably the biggest threat, because Jason, he'd always analyze. He's always analyzing.

We would sit around together and he'd say something; Some people are going to catch on... And when I listen to him, I'm like, "He's really playing this game hard... like let's get together and make this alliance," and stuff. He played the game hard even before he stepped on the beach. So I would say Jason is probably the one who was controlling a lot of things.

Reality TV World: How were you cast on Survivor? How did you end up on the show?

Darnell Hamilton: I applied. It was my first time applying after the first, the original Brains vs. Beauty vs. Brawn.

Click here to read the first half of Darnell's exclusive Survivor interview with Reality TV World.


About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski

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