Yahoo News Survivor 43 finalist Owen Knight says 'F--- the After-Show'
For a long time on Survivor 43, Owen Knight couldn't get on the right side of the numbers. And while he finally found his footing and made his mark with a string of individual immunity wins, when it got to the very end of the game, the numbers were once again not in his favor.
Owen made it all the way to the final three, where he faced the jury alongside Mike Gabler and Cassidy Clark. And while he said earlier in the finale that "I didn't come back from those early votes just to be a zero-vote finalist," that is exactly what he became, losing to Gabler (and Cassidy) by a 7-1-0 count.
Was Owen surprised by the result? Does he think things would have been different if he had taken Jesse Lopez on at fire? And what was it like having to film the After-Show after dealing with that final Tribal Council? We caught up with the third-place finisher to get his take on everything that went down. (Also make sure to read our finale recap and exit interview with Mike Gabler and finale Q&A's with Cassidy Clark, Jesse Lopez and Karla Cruz Godoy.)
CBS Owen Knight on 'Survivor 43'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We heard you say in this episode that "I didn't come back from those early votes just to be a zero-vote finalist." So how much did it hurt to become a zero-vote finalist?
OWEN KNIGHT: [Laughs] I jinxed myself.
So did it hurt then?
I'd be lying if I said it didn't. I mean, I had no illusions. I knew I was a long shot. I knew it was going to be a very uphill battle. I knew things didn't fall the way I wanted it to. But yeah, to see zero was kind of painful. But it's good company to be in. It's certainly a special club.
And you were my episode 1 pick to win!
Yeah, sorry to let you down.
Which votes surprised you the most?
I was a little surprised Noelle didn't vote for me. That was the one that I really felt pretty strongly about. I was like, "Okay, I could at least get one." So that was a bummer. I thought I had a good shot at Sami and Jeanine. I thought Ryan might potentially respect the scrappiness and the more physical side of my game. I thought those could have been maybe at the very least kind of toss-up type situations. But I would say Noelle would be the one that I was most surprised by not getting there.
Who did you think your biggest competition was walking into Tribal? Did you think it was Cassidy or Gabler? Because I think a lot of viewers are surprised now.
Yeah, well, put me in that same group. I was flabbergasted. I really thought Cassidy had it in the bag going in. I made some reference in my head that she had the inside track or whatever. And I was shocked as the votes were coming out. I think based on what I've seen, it seems like a lot of people were.
CBS Cassidy Clark and Owen Knight on 'Survivor 43'
As Tribal was going on and you're sitting in there, could you sort of feel the momentum going Gabler's way?
Yeah, it didn't feel great. I could tell. He's so interesting. He has such a way of speaking and it's very long and confusing. But also, he gets these nuggets in there and he's so likable! I've spent over 600 hours with this man, and he's so likable. And as he's started getting the jury laughing and I was like, "Oh, s---t. This might not go well." But it felt like he was talking a lot. And so I wish maybe I had interjected more or tried to maybe elongate my answers a bit, but I could tell they were really buying what he was selling.
Do you think anything changes if Cassidy puts you into fire and you, instead of Gabler, beat Jesse?
Honestly, I don't think that scenario would've changed much. I maybe would've gotten a couple of votes. I don't think that would've been enough to win. I was really counting on an Underwoody effort by myself. I mean, you saw me break my pole in half at the Final Four challenge. I was really realizing I needed to win and then pull the move of taking the necklace off and taking Jesse out myself. I knew that that was going to be really my only path to victory, if that would even work.
Whom would you have voted for between Gabler and Cassidy? Let's say you turn into Laurel Johnson and have to deliver the tie vote? Which way would you have gone?
I would've voted for Cassidy. I love Gabler. I absolutely love that guy, but I just had a harder time seeing what he was doing. But it's hard to say since it was harder to pay attention to what they were saying at Final Tribal, but I think I would've voted for Cass.
What was it like after getting that kind of result at Final Tribal then having to immediately deal with the after-show?
F--- the after-show. I am not a fan. Just do it the next day. Let me take a shower. I'm just chugging champagne out of the bottle. And I'm trying to tell myself, "Don't look as sad as Xander. Don't look as sad as Xander." And I tried, but eventually it's like, I don't need to sit there and hear Jeanine talk about her discovering her idol got given to Jessie. I can hear that later. Let me go eat. Let me take a shower and then yeah, we can yuck it up. But I am not a fan of this format. I know it's more raw and it's drawing this raw emotion out of me now, but I don't see why it has to be that way.
Yeah, and I look at you and Cassie. I look at Mike Turner, I look at Xander and I think of people having to immediately go from one thing to the next and a champagne toast 10 seconds after you just went through that emotional roller-coaster.
Yeah. Let's toast my loss — clink, clink!
Robert Voets/CBS Owen Knight and Jeff Probst on 'Survivor 43'
What's something that happened out there during the season that we didn't get to see that you wish would have made it on TV?
I feel very, very fortunate with my edit. I feel like I got a lot of narration opportunities. I feel like a lot of my story got to be told. And for a zero-vote finalist, I think I was given a pretty gracious edit. So I'm very thankful for that. But I do wish a bit more the relationships were shown. Dwight, for example, he and I were super tight. As soon as we met, I really felt the connection with him and that we could work well together. They kind of teased a little bit of me and Noelle working closely, but I felt very strongly about our relationship.
I mean, there's so much that they leave on the cutting room floor. I just think about some funny confessionals. I was remembering today, there was a point where Ryan had gathered five of us together to make a final five alliance, which he was doing at the final 11 or 10. And he started calling it the Big Boys alliance. And I remember going and saying in an interview, "Well, as a medium boy, I don't know if this is the best plan for me at all."
And so just all these things that I said and remember, it's so complicated remembering what I remember from filming and then seeing it with the show interspersed and just being surprised, mostly pleasantly, by what ends up making it.
What was the plan at five if Jesse had not taken out Jeanine's hidden immunity idol? You guys didn't know he had one. When you were making the plans before you head over to Tribal, what was the plan?
I was very much going to vote Karla. I felt much more confident about my abilities to beat Jesse in the final four challenge and to beat him in fire. I know Karla was hobbled, but like I said, she is a fighter. She is very, very tough, very, very smart. And historically, her challenge record was much better than Jesse. So as much as people might be saying, "Oh, why didn't you take Jesse out with a 3-1-1-1 at the Cody vote? Or why didn't you vote Jesse there if he hadn't had the idol?" I still think just given where my game was at, I was more threatened by the challenge abilities of Kody at five.
There was no universe where Jesse was not going to fire. No one was ever going to take him to the end. And I love Jesse, but I don't think there was a universe where he was going to win the final four challenge either. So we felt pretty confident we could slay the dragon there.
So are you normally kicking sand and throwing bags and poles down and stuff like that in your regular life? Are you walking around the Tulane campus just kicking shrubs and stuff? What's going on?
No, I'm not. But I appreciate that most people who have been watching have told me... "It's real." It's a game for a million dollars. I'm going to be upset when certain things don't go my way. And, for me, so much went wrong. And I think it all culminated with the Charlie Brown confessional after Noelle went home, and just spiking my bag on the ground. I was just at my wit's end. I think my friends would say I have a shorter fuse and I'll snap and whatnot, but I'm not frequently just punching inanimate objects on a daily basis.
CBS Jeff Probst and Owen Knight on 'Survivor 43'
So how much more was there to the blow up with James than what we actually saw on TV?
Well, first, I want to say James and I are great now. He's incredible. He's been very gracious through all of this. And he had every right in the world to just never speak to me again. But what really made me walk away at that conversation at the well is that he actually suggested that I go look for the hidden immunity idol at the Vesi Beach. And that's where I was just like, "Come on. Really? After all this..."
It just really felt like he was kind of kicking me while I was down. The Godfather analogy really came to my head when he told me I was protected at the ball-on-the-pole challenge. And I was like, "What are you? Are you Tony Soprano? What is the situation?" So yeah. That really was what kind of set me over was the combination of just the imbalanced power dynamic plus then him telling me to go on a wild goose chase for the idol.
I just lost it and I tried walking away. But as we've mentioned already, I do have a short fuse at times and it got the best of me, and not my proudest moment. But I think they did a great job telling the story and showing how we were both valid in our feelings, but also could have handled it better. And we kind of got to see both sides there.
You made it all the way, you won three individual challenges. What was the coolest moment of this entire experience for you?
Oh gosh. It's hard to pick just one, but I think for me, winning Last Gasp. And I know Randy Bailey might say I won on a technicality, but I still think to have kind of called my shot and seen this challenge that I've known I could perform well in since I was nine years old when I was a kid on the swim team — I really thought that this could be a challenge I'd be good at. And every day at Tree Mail I'd be like, "Ooh, is this Last Gasp? Is that Last Gasp?"
You've seen in secret scenes, I've been trying to do detective work on the clues, and when I saw the one that day, I knew for sure it was going to be Last Gasp. I felt so hyped up and then not only to win it, but also to triple the duration of the previous longest Last Gasp was pretty incredible. Although, I wish we had done a Hold Your Breath contest or something.
CBS Jesse Lopez, Cassidy Clark, Karla Cruz Godoy, Owen Knight, and Mike Gabler of 'Survivor 43'
What do you mean? You wanted to have each of you hold your breath underwater as a tiebreaker?
Yeah, I think I would've been down for that, but honestly, I could not hear anything. I was so loopy at that point. I was grateful to get out of the water. But if I had known that most of the conversation had been about the disappointment of how it ended, rather than acknowledging how awesome it was that Karla and me did that, I wish we had just settled it, so people would shut up.
I thought it was insane. I don't know how either of you stayed in there that long and didn't freeze.
Because I peed on myself like a million times.
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