‘Survivor 48’ star Thomas Krottinger explains not using his Steal-a-Vote

Everything was working out so well on Thomas Krottinger on Survivor 48. He was initially put on the dominant Lagi tribe and formed multiple alliances to insulate himself. He also won a Steal-a-Vote on a journey. Then, when a tribe swap happened, he was swapped alongside his entire California Girls alliance of Shauhin Davari and Joe Hunter.

But then… disaster.

Thomas’ new Vula tribe lost the first post-swap immunity challenge, and then the California Girls bought the acting job by Kamilla Karthigesu and Kyle Fraser that they were on the outs, a bag search turned up nothing, and Kyle played his immunity idol to flip the script and send Thomas home.

How does the ousted player feel about his sudden, terrible turn of events? Why didn’t he use his Steal-a-Vote to guarantee his safety? And what would have happened on Lagi had the tribe swap never happened? We asked Thomas all that and more, including what didn’t make it to TV.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much is this all Shauhin’s fault for not doing a more thorough job searching through Kyle’s bag?

THOMAS KROTTINGER: Yeah, let’s put it all on all on Shuahin’s head. It was entirely his fault. I didn’t do anything wrong, clearly. Was that bag search that shocking? I feel like in the theater we were watching, people were gasping, and I’m like, “Is this old school Survivor? Is this crazy?”

Well, I have a whole thing on bag searches. You can read it in my recap. I have no issue with it on any moral or privacy grounds. I just don’t think they should be allowed because I believe the game is better and more dramatic when people don’t know what everyone has. But it certainly was dramatic last night when he did a really crappy job searching that bag.

Terrible. And in front of Kamilla! At least be very thorough.

Tell me your reaction when Kyle walks up there and plays that idol on himself?

Well, when Kyle came back from the voting booth, I saw something in his pocket and I just knew. So that was the moment where I was like, “Oh, here we go.” I was like, my nightmare. I knew the only way I was going to go home is if Kyle had an idol and played it. And it felt like a one in six chance. So I was rolling the dice — ugh, dice — and so when I saw him come back with a little thing in his pocket and those tight pants, I knew. I was like, “Here we go. Let the games… well, end… not begin.

You closed your eyes after your first vote came up. What was going on there?

Well, it was interesting because part of the reason that I was so excited about my alliance with Joe and Shauhin is that I felt like I was the smallest target of the three of us. So this is the moment where I was like: This is my perfect alliance. You’re going to go after big threat Joe or huge personality threat Shauhin. And I think I truly underestimated myself in that moment. So when I saw my name and heard it — seeing it on parchment, it all just clicked. And I was already learning things about myself as I was being voted out and synthesizing this entire process just from Jeff saying “Thomas.”

Well, first off, this is what you get for coming after my girl Eva, but we’ll get into that.

I didn’t want to go after Eva! I didn’t want to. I had to choose Bianca,

Fair. So when Kyle first played the idol, did you think it was going to be you?

I kind of had a feeling it was me. And that’s because when we hit that beach on Vula, the first time I was gone from the four of them, I came back and Joe and Shauhin told me how intensely the two of them were coming after me and trying to break us up and tell them that I was lying to them, which I was. But my whole point is that Mitch could also be lying to them. And so I’m never going to get these two on my side. And so if I reveal my advantage to them because these two put me in a corner, it immediately breaks my trust with the boys that I’ve worked so hard to get, and I wasn’t going to throw it away if we weren’t going to Tribal.

That’s the big question that everyone’s going to have is why not use the Steal-a-Vote and split your votes just to be safe? I’m sure you worked out every scenario in your head, so walk me through it.

Okay. Basically, those boys, I love them to the end of the earth. I love my California Girls. Joe, I call him the Titanic. He goes in a direction and it’s hard to turn it. He doesn’t turn quickly. You have to spend time and really get in there and slowly move him. Shauhin is a little skittish with information. I say, “What if (Star’s idol clue) disappears?” And we see in his confessional that spooked him, which is kind of funny to me considering there were other things that could have spooked me, but whatever.

So my point is is that I had been lying to them for seven days at this point. And I wasn’t going to reveal it if we weren’t going to Tribal. And then we go to Tribal, I’m in the majority alliance with these two boys, and the only way in my brain that I for sure go home is if Kyle has an idol and plays it for himself and doesn’t play it for Kamilla. So all these things going through my head, it’s like a game of probability. It’s a game of chance. And it feels like for my long-term game, not destroying my hardcore alliance with the boys would’ve served me if Kyle didn’t have an idol. And there was no way they were going to tell me that. I couldn’t go to Kamilla to get her to tell me if Kyle had an idol, and he wasn’t going to open up to me. It was clear to me that those two were doing their thing. I know that it kind of looked (a certain way), but they felt very in it to me personally.

So you didn’t buy the acting job, is what you’re saying?

I knew that they were selling me something, and Kamilla had been selling being on the bottom of Civa to Star for a while. So it felt too good to be true. But there was no way that I was going to crack the two of them wide open in that moment. And I knew that they weren’t going to crack the three of us. So it kind of just felt like we had to go into battle and see what was going to happen.

So its sounds like with the Steal-a-Vote, you’re not thinking, “Let me get through this vote.” You’re thinking long-term: “What’s it going to do to my alliance if I do use it?”

Yeah, I’m old school. I love alliances and taking it to the end. I’m a Black Widow. I want all three of us at the end. I was never going to cut Bianca, if that makes sense. I was going to sit next to Bianca if we got all the way,

Okay, so then let’s play a game of Survivor What If? If there had not been a swap and original Lagi went to Tribal Council, what would have happened? Were you really with Bianca and Star, or would Star have gone home?

Well, that’s a fluid thing. It depends on where we are going

Well, who were you truly with? We saw the California Girls, you don’t want to get rid of Bianca, then you tell Star, “We’re going to team-up with you.” Was that real what you were telling Star?

I mean, we have to keep your options open, but there were moments where I really wanted to work with Star. There were real moments, but also Star and I connected last. I knew Star was going to the boys and to Bianca before me. So Star was someone that I wanted to work with in the beginning and we didn’t connect right away. And it was only after I’d had the California Girls and then obviously Bianca. So that was always my priority.

For me, it was how do I keep those three people in the game with me? So then it probably would’ve been: Do I want to go down the Star route? Or do I want to go down the Eva route? It’s helpful for me if Eva goes home because she’s number ones with Joe. And that would be very obvious. So that’s why I was coming after your girl, Dalton.  

I don’t want to hear anything about you coming after my girl.

I know, but I love her. I would never want to vote her out.

So lets go back to day 7, where Justin went out. If you guys had lost that immunity challenge and you had gone to Tribal Council, whom would you have voted for.

God, I feel like I’m going to get attacked. In that moment, it probably would have been…. I think the truth is, Bianca really in that moment really wanted Eva out because it felt like it was precarious for her with the boys. And she wanted to be the fourth person with the California Girls. And I feel like I probably would’ve gone the Star route. Because she showed me that she didn’t trust me. I was the last person she trusted of those people.

So if I cut Eva and it’s the five of us at Tribal, Star is then going to be coming after me most likely. Where if we go to Tribal without Star, and then it’s still Eva versus Bianca, and then Shauhin is threatened by Eva’s proximity to Joe. So then Shauhin comes with me and Bianca. Oh, look at that! And then we don’t make Joe vote out Eva. We do it for him.

So in an the alternate universe, this is all happening somewhere on an island.

And you’re talking to someone else right now.

So you guys were not helping Star solve that Beware Advantage then?

Oh no, we were.

You were?

Oh yeah, we figured out that advantage and I just didn’t open it. I didn’t open it. Why would I give someone an idol when I can have someone not have a vote and know where the idol is?

So you intentionally weren’t helping her open it.

I mean, I was putting myself in the position where if Star needed a vote to open the idol, I could have helped her open the idol. I had all the clues. I knew the different word combinations. It was going to be a game time decision before Tribal. Are we going Star? Are we going Eva? So yeah, I was helping her, but I wasn’t helping her. I was helping her to help me. It’s Survivor.

Blow our minds with something that happened out there that didn’t make it to TV.

So Lagi beach has no food. You saw how Civa was talking about cassava root last night. We had nothing. We had coconut and I hate coconut.

I hate coconut.

Okay. I don’t recommend playing then. So one night we were so hungry, we scavenged for sea snails for hours on end, and then we did a sea snail boil and we ate a bunch of sea snails. And Star got violently ill before going to our first immunity challenge. She was up in the jungle, everything was coming out. We didn’t know if she was going to be able to stand up to go over the net and push the thing up the hill. And then she went beast mode and she crushed it and it was incredible. But yeah, that was a moment where I was like, “I don’t know what we’re going to do. All six of us have to do this!”

How bad was it when you got whacked in the face by Bianca during the challenge?

Medical said that if it was half an inch up, I could have lost my eye.

It looked that way.

It’s funny too, because the internet didn’t really see what happened in the challenge because it was so quick. And then they’re like, “Where’s this black eye from?” And I’m like, “Guys, I almost lost my eye!” But also, kind of amazing. When else am I going to have a black eye? Do you know what I mean? No one’s throwing punches in the music business.

You seemed to take your vote-out very well. You took a moment before you got up to have your torch snuffed, and had that nice comment to Jeff. How were you feeling when you got to Ponderosa and the 24 hours after, because it’s a lot to process when you’re voted out of this game.

We have the show psychiatrist who you’re with, and they take good care of us. And I remember just being on the boat, going back to Ponderosa and talking with the psychiatrist and just being so joyful. I remember her looking at me, and she was just handing me water and just kind of taking it in. And I was like, “Is this not a normal reaction?” And she’s like, “No, not at all.”

And in that moment, I realized that I was getting so much out of the game. And when I got to Pondy, it just all clicked. Walking in, the first people I see are Steph, Kevin, and Justin — some of the kindest people you ever meet in your entire life. And then I get to process this whole thing with them and learn about them and everything that happened on that terrible Vula beach. It was great.

Jeff Probst said on his podcast that he could see you maybe as a two-time player. Would you do it again? Head back out to the island, have more coconut?

If someone busted in here and was like, “The van’s outside, we’re going to Fiji,” I would do it in a heartbeat. Are you kidding? This game changed my life. I see myself as the person that I think all of my friends and family thought I was, if that made sense. And I finally believe in myself the way that they have my entire life. It’s given me a sense of confidence and pride and joy and gratitude that I didn’t have before. So of course I would do it again. It’s the best thing I’ve done in my entire life, hands down.

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