Patt Cannaday knew that someone from her alliance was going home in Survivor 51 Episode 3, she just never thought it would be her.
As her ally, Brady Booker, revealed in tribal council in the episode that aired on October 7, the last hour before tribal was chaos. Plans flipped on their heads and names were thrown out, including her own. But Patt and her alliance of five, including Brady, Angelica “Jelly” Loblack, Devin Way, and Mike Pinsky, were led to believe that it was Mike on the chopping block — and that new tribe mate Carter Krull, who joined Toka via mutiny, was voting with them.
Here, Patt looks back at her blindside elimination, saying that Thien An Nguyen deserves her “flowers” for orchestrating her exit from the game. She also reveals that Brady never told her that he heard about the plan to get her out, but explains why that didn’t feel like a betrayal. Plus, she reveals what viewers didn’t see in that conflict with Danny Kilby, when Kilby said that playing with Brady was like “playing a video game with your little brother, but the controller’s unplugged,” and the player she didn’t believe when they called her their number-one ally in the game.
Robert Voets/CBS
Brady said that about an hour before Tribal Council things started to go haywire. So what was going on with your core five alliance during that time?
Patt Cannaday: Oh my gosh. Everything was insane. I will say, Toka was chaotic to the max in every way. It was just tiny little pockets of people everywhere. But then the hour before tribal, it got frenetic. I mean, things just really popped off, mostly because there were members of my alliance that told members of other people a lot of things that then got back, and then I think things just got insane. So, you could feel it on the beach.
Frankly, going into tribal, it was also the weirdest tribal. I think Jeff even said, he was like, “The energy is so weird.” But it was like we had carried this crazy, everyone’s talking, everyone’s throwing names. Our plan was the same, but people could not stop moving. And it was scary and obviously bad for me.
Yeah, unfortunately. And we saw in the episode that Brady found out about the swing onto you. Did he ever tell you about that?
No.
Really?
No, he didn’t. No, and I do think he believed that we had Carter. I mean, he says he thought that Thien An did not have the power, which she did. I think she gets her flowers for this. She ran that.
And Brady still did vote the way your alliance was voting. In hindsight, did that feel like a betrayal from Brady or a mistake that he didn’t tell you about the swing?
I think it was just a mistake. I think Brady had some, I would say, missteps, but I think they were mistakes.
Your alliance didn’t look too surprised when your name came up. Maybe that’s just the shots they chose for the edit, but were you surprised when you saw your name when it first came up? Were your other tribe mates surprised? It didn’t seem like you were afraid until more votes came in.
Oh, Kelli, I feel bad about this because no, I was petrified. And not only petrified; I knew at that moment, and I was furious, but my mentality was like, I’m not going to let these people see me freak out about this. They’re not getting anything from me. I’m giving them nothing, which I know is a producer’s worst nightmare because even watching it, I was proud of myself because I was like, OK, you did it. But also it made it look like we weren’t shocked. And I think that we were. I think that Mike had an idea and then Brady knew, but I mean, I was definitely shocked, but I was trying very hard not to show it to anyone because I was like, “You’re not getting the satisfaction.”
Robert Voets/CBS
What made you think Mike had an idea that it was going to you?
I don’t think he thought that I was going to go. I know he didn’t think I was going to go, but he had that conversation with Carter that was shown where he was like, “OK, basically, it should be Patt,” which is totally fair. So, I think he thought it was going to be me, but I don’t think any of us knew for sure I was going home.
And he didn’t mention that to you either when he heard?
He had told me earlier in the day, “Your name is around.” Then it had swapped. I mean, it truly swapped multiple times. It went back to Mike for almost the entire day, and then that conversation was right before, to my knowledge. I wasn’t there, obviously. Things would’ve been different, but yeah.
OK, so going into tribal, you thought it was possible that you would get a vote?
I thought it was Mike, for sure.
Oh, really?
When I saw my name on that parchment, I was like, “Oh, they had a conversation that I was not let in on.” And so to me, that signaled if they’re coming for me, they got six votes. I felt like they had rounded up six, because to me, I was like, my five, I knew.
Robert Voets/CBS
So, watching the episode last night, I’m sure you learned things that you didn’t know before?
Kind of. I mean, I will say that Thien An had been like, “Yeah, I threw your name. I thought you were a big threat.” I had heard that…. I think I knew most of the contours. I had tracked everything down. I hate losing. I’m very competitive, so I knew exactly where the lines had gone wrong and what I could do better in the future.
Mike, in tribal council, whispered, “We have Carter” to Jelly. Do you know what made him say that?
They were worried at that time about me, and he had had a conversation with Carter. He thought that Carter was voting with us. We all genuinely thought that Carter was voting with us for God knows what reason [laughs].
Did what Carter said in tribal make you confident about that, too?
He had agreed with Jelly. What he said was fair, but in tribal, to me, you walk into tribal, you know what your votes are going to be already. So, I thought going in, we had Carter, and then anything he said, I was like, “Oh, confirmation, I guess.”
Did you think you had Lewis, too?
[Laughs] Lewis randomly told me I was his number one before we went to tribal, but still I didn’t think we had Lewis. Lewis was such a wild card. I was like, “I have no idea, but no, I don’t think he’s voting with us.”
Robert Voets/CBS
You were scared heading into tribal, worried if your plan was going to work out. Percentage-wise, how confident were you that the “kill shot” on Kilby was going to work?
So, I was worried for Mike. I thought maybe my ally was going to go home, and I was worried about that. Honestly, I had some serious doubts. I would say I was probably 60/40, but I fully thought it was Mike. So, I was close to 10% or less, I mean less probably than 10% that it was me.
Was there any one person or people that made you feel it was Mike?
Yeah, who convinced me? I think I talked to people when it was Mike, to be fair. Oh my gosh, Kilby. I actually love this from Kilby. Kilby had told me it was Mike. We had had so many conversations. It’s definitely Mike. And I had told him, which was a lie, that I was willing to vote for Mike if he thought he had the votes. So, I was like, “In tribal, tell me if it’s Mike and you have the votes for Mike and I’ll vote Mike.” And in tribal, he turned to me, and he was like, “We’ve got the votes for Mike.” And I was like, “OK.” And then obviously I wasn’t going to write Mike’s name down. Imagine if I had, though, crazy [laughs]. It’s all me, and then one vote for Mike. But yeah, no, I was like, “OK, OK.” I was lying, obviously.
What was the plan after that, if Kilby gave you that signal? Which he did.
I was going to do nothing.
You just wanted to know.
Right. Obviously, he thought he had the votes for Mike. I thought he didn’t. So, he was going to turn around to tribal and tell me it was Mike no matter what, but I was kind of curious.
Robert Voets/CBS
Did you consider causing a live tribal and being like, “Oh, he’s got the votes for Mike. Let’s try to flip some people?”
No, because we knew that he thought he had the votes for Mike. So, to me, I was like, “I’m not going to live tribal this from information that I already had.” We came in there; he thought he had the votes. In my mind, he thought he had the votes for Mike. We thought he didn’t. It was kind of Lewis, Carter — where are they headed? We’ve got some wild cards out here, but people we feel decent about. And then Jenna [Doore], I also kind of thought Jenna might vote with us.
Interesting. Why?
She and I had had a conversation. We were trying to build a relationship, and I felt like if Lewis voted with us, Jenna might… It was odd. And then Devin [Way] really thought Maggie [Nestor] was voting with us, which is hilarious. He promised Jelly and I that Maggie was voting with us, and we were like, “She’s not.”
Interesting, because earlier in the episode, she told Kilby, “I don’t want to vote for anyone in the Five. I’m not willing to do that.”
OK, I will say that actually surprised me. Well, she was willing to vote for Mike, but that portion did surprise me. I thought that was sweet. We had had some really good conversations, so I was pleasantly surprised that she had said that. Wasn’t true, but she did say it. It was nice.
Did you ever consider playing your Shot in the Dark?
No. No. I mean, I genuinely thought it was Mike or Kilby, and that was it.
And you don’t want to lose your vote.
One-hundred percent. I thought it was Mike or Kilby, and it was probably going to be a 6-5.
Robert Voets/CBS
Kilby saying he thought that he was Brady’s number one, and that playing with him felt like playing with video games with a kid with their controller unplugged, was there more fallout from that than we realized?
Yeah. Oh my gosh. This took up a lot of my bandwidth that day, unfortunately, which is precious time that you need. Brady is like a Gatling gun. You can just tell him that someone talked about him and he’s like, “OK, let’s go.”
He, at some point, had heard that I was saying things about him. Obviously, I was. So, he was on me for a second, despite our alliance. And so then I was like, “OK, I have this line that I’ve been saving that Kilby said that I can now relay to you.” And then that got him turned back around, and we were back on Kilby, and that was kind of a longer process, but Kilby really thought he had Brady in his back pocket for a really long time. It was, I think, right before tribal, basically, that he realized that he didn’t. And it was because of that comment.
Do you think that he was trying to bond with you through negativity, as he said in his confessional interviews?
I don’t know what he was doing because he didn’t trust me. I think he would say yes, but I think we were just talking sh*t. I’m sure I also said some things, but yeah, probably trying to bond to some extent.
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