Eliminated Castaway Spills Tea on Most ‘Knife-Twisting’ Betrayals: ‘It Felt Below the Belt, Even for Survivor’
The following contains spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Survivor 47.
Twists do, indeed, play a huge part in Survivor, especially this wild and wonky new era. But even more important in this game? Luck.
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In Wednesday’s episode, lady luck was certainly on Rachel’s side. After the merged tribe was split into two, the former Gata member found herself on a losing team surrounded by all former Tukus, making her a sitting duck when it came to Tribal Council. But after Sol found a timely Safety Without Power advantage while on reward and gifted it to Rachel, she was high-stepping it back to camp, leaving the remaining Tukus to eat one of their own. Which made Tiyana perhaps the unluckiest player of the week, when all four of her tribemates turned on her and voted the flight attendant from Hawaii out of the game. (Read our full recap here.)
Below, Tiyana spills some tea about Sue and Gabe, and reveals which alliance members she feels most betrayed by.
TVLINE | You were super emotional before the vote went down. What was going on in your head there?
TIYANA HALLUMS | I think because I was with those people for 13 days, it was still gonna hurt. So I was equally terrified for myself for the opportunity to go home, and I was also terrified for them, which was such a weird conflicting emotion that I’ve never had before because you never usually cry for yourself and others. It’s usually one or the other. But I was crying for both at the same time because although Gabe and I were adversaries, it’s still gonna suck. I spent 13 days with this person and that’s all that we had out there. That was our support system, that was our community and having to see one of them go would have been the worst. The emotions were all setting in that we’re all so close and tripping at that last moment was just gut-wrenching.
TVLINE | How did it feel falling just one spot short of making the jury?
I legitimately felt like I was gonna throw up. Once I saw my name down for the second time, I knew I was done because that wouldn’t have made sense. I knew Gabe was gonna put my name down, but once I saw that second vote go down for me, I knew that I was going home. At that moment, I honestly blacked out. I think a lot of people can resonate with that when they play Survivor. You black out because you’re like, “Holy crap. This was too early. This is not my time to go. There’s no way that this is real.” You almost disassociate from reality. As you could see from the episodes before, my face says it all. So that was everything that was going on inside my body, both a burning rage and sad and all the things, devastation, all at once. The emotions were very real.
TVLINE | What was your experience like watching it all back and how are you feeling about it now?
As I get farther and farther away from the island and from playing Survivor, I forget everything that happened. Sometimes I have to think to myself, “Do I remember this correctly? Is this how things went down? Is this how the conversation went?” So when I watch it back, it’s almost surreal. I almost disassociate from me even being on Survivor. It’s kind of like a mix between, “Did I ever play Survivor?” and also all these different scenarios that I wanted to do differently or all these things that I wanted to say. It goes back and forth, and Survivor just now lives rent free right here in the back of my head. Unfortunately and fortunately. [But] I think watching it back was great closure at the same time. I felt like I got teleported right back on the island and I felt every single emotion again.
TVLINE | Let’s talk about the Rachel of it all. Was she the sure-shot vote had the advantage not been played?
I think that she would have possibly gone home. However, that was not what I wanted to do. It was pretty obvious in the episode that I wanted to use her as a number because it would make no sense — I will die on this hill — for all five of us to vote out Rachel because then it makes us look like liars, that we didn’t actually have any cracks and we’re actually Tuku strong. Then the six would just pick us off one by one because why would I work with a Tuku five that seems so tight-knit when I could just pick them off and make them a little bit weaker?
So I personally wanted to work with Rachel, but it seemed like I had no one to play with sometimes. When I think back on it with my alliance members (that I did not have, that were non-existent, my imaginary friends), I felt like I was back in kindergarten and I’m waiting for someone to play in the sandbox with me and make fun times in recess and no one wanted to play with me. I wanted to build a big castle and do cool moves and all these things. But when you get stonewalled over and over again from bringing ideas to the table and they, just as Gabe said, [were] injured birds [who] just flocked to Gabe and did what he wanted… there was really nothing I could do. So I didn’t want to see Rachel go, obviously, but it probably would have ended up that way because I didn’t have the numbers anyway.
TVLINE | Why did people flock to Gabe? Why do you think you were unable to convince people to vote him out?
That’s a great question to this day. I have absolutely no idea because usually in seasons past, when someone tries to be a dictator or tell people what to do, it doesn’t go over well because everyone’s trying to play their own game. As an alliance member, kind of like the Reba four [from Survivor 45], they were loyal to each other. Loyalty is a freaking hot commodity on the island. However, it was them collaborating. It was them constantly coming back to each other checking in being like, “Are you good with this plan? Do you have any other ideas? What’s another name that we could write down just in case?” But when it came to Gabe and his two injured birds that he corralled, it was almost like no matter what I said… and you also saw that too when Kyle was trying to tell Sue, like, “Hey, Gabe said that you’re just a goat, You’re just a pawn for him to use.” She was not hearing it at all. She wouldn’t even be receptive to that information.
Honestly, right after the TK vote, I should have been way more unhinged than I was. I had nothing to lose at that point because there was no way that I could have convinced any of them to do anything else. So yeah, to this day, I have no idea why because I know that Caroline is such an intelligent player. Every single time that we talked, I felt like she was a good alliance member, that we had good collaboration skills. It felt like me and Kyle had really good collaboration skills, but I don’t know. I don’t know why King Gabe reigned over Tuku. I didn’t want to be an injured bird, so that’s why I had to go, I guess.
TVLINE | Who do you feel most betrayed by?
I feel probably the most betrayed by Caroline and Kyle, I would say. When it came to Caroline, that exact episode, she actually broke down to me and was like, “You would never write my name down, right, Tiyana? This means everything. To trip so close to the jury, I couldn’t even live with myself,” blah, blah, blah. And I was like, “Hey, I got you. I would never write your name down. You wouldn’t write my name down. We got each other. It’s OK.” So, it felt below the belt, even for Survivor. It is a game. Obviously, you gotta cut throats, you gotta make decisions that work well for your game and I don’t fault her for that. But she could have cried to Sue. She could have cried to Gabe. But she chose me and then ended up voting me out.
And then Kyle, every time I brought a story back to him, it always checked out because I really trusted him. I always made sure that he was in the loop, and so to see him also write my name down and not go to bat for me was also crazy because I would have gone to bat for them. I think those two were probably the biggest gut-wrenching, knife-twisting moments for sure.
TVLINE | Did you believe that Sue was 45?
Oh, absolutely not! Nobody believed that. And I don’t know why that was a problem. I don’t know why she decided to lie about that because it’s way more impressive to say that you’re 59 than 45. And I’m like, “Whoa, that’s so badass! Awesome.”
Also, really quickly, what I want to say about Sue that kind of irked me — a little bit of tea. Sue was constantly saying that she’s the strong independent woman, and that’s amazing and I’m all about that. But when it came to life on the island, she was having a breakdown almost every day, like crying or she was sick or something was happening, and I was constantly the one consoling her and being there for her. So I don’t know if that was gameplay or something. I want to make it crystal clear that I was never counting her out because of her age or that she was older than us or whatever. I was counting her out because of her behavior. I don’t know what her gameplay was. I still don’t know to this day what was going on, but whatever.
TVLINE | Was there any parallel universe where the women could’ve run the game to the end? Could that have potentially worked?
[Shaking her head] Knowing what I know now… I thought for sure they had my back because we shared a lot of very emotional conversations and things like that. We all got emotional together and we were vulnerable and things like that. It was so moving, so powerful. [I thought] we could really go far. It did not matter. Any time Sue had any information, she ran straight back to Gabe. I guess that was a good description that Gabe gave because it was like a little bird that just kept running back to him. King Gabe with all this information. I didn’t want to be an injured bird, unfortunately, and Gabe hit it right on the head when he said at Tribal Council, “Sue will do anything that we want her to do. We cannot control T.”
TVLINE | Lastly, a very important question: What are you dressing up as for Halloween?
[Laughs] Great question, indeed! I actually have a Moana costume that is in my cabinet just collecting dust. So maybe that or we’re gonna go with something even funnier, maybe like a Smurf or something hilarious. Something absolutely out-of-pocket and random.
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