Survivor 51 is here! Every week, Parade.com’s Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the castaway most recently voted off the island.
Through the first week of the game, Survivor 51 was far from a trial for Patt Cannaday. Sure, the federal prosecutor had lost her pants in the opening swim. But she was well-covered strategically, able to make quick and solid relationships, get into a majority alliance, and even put the wheels in motion to flip the first vote of the season. But, just as things seemed the most comfortable for her, a series of key witnesses were enough to render a bad verdict. While her alliance felt they had the power, they were technically in the minority, and a group of outsiders was coalescing. As a result, “Pantsless Patt” was left exposed on the bottom, brutally blindsided and left seeking revenge (or maybe a cheeseburger as an alternative).
Patt came into the season as a relative rookie when it came to her knowledge of Survivor. But when her feet actually hit the sand, she proved to be quite adept at the physical and mental rigors that come with this island boot camp. Not only that, she was more than happy to take matters into her own hands. Facing the vote on Day 3, Jenna Doore was number one on the shot list, pegged as an outsider from the jump for acting withdrawn. But Patt was eager to keep her due to her puzzle skills, especially when Aaliyah Puglia literally dropped the ball during the first challenge. So she let Jenna know that she was the target, setting into motion a chaotic series of events that culminated in a live Tribal Council to open the season. In the end, however, the target did indeed switch from Jenna to Aaliyah, giving Patt a win in the opening argument.
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Not everyone was clued into Patt’s plan, namely Devin Way and Angelica “Jelly” Loblack. However, that didn’t detract them from working with her. In fact, the next day, after Jelly found her tribe’s idol, she proceeded to tell Patt and only Patt, showcasing their tight connection. The two women then parlayed that into forming Toka’s first solid alliance, a fivesome with them, Devin, Brady Booker and Mike Pinsky. Every good group needs a communal target, and they quickly found one in Danny Kilby. Feeling the game designer was gaming too hard and spreading too much discord, they were eager to land the “kill shot” on Kilby, feeling confident they had the numbers to do so.
It turns out, however, the biggest chaos agents on Toka were its two newest members. As Tribal Council plans began to cement, it was clear two sides were forming, setting their sights on Kilby and Patt. And the two people left in the middle were those who hadn’t yet cast a vote on the tribe: Lewis Kelly, who had spent the first vote on Exile Island, and Carter Krull, who had just mutinied to their group the previous day. Much like Patt, the two found themselves in a dilemma: Hide themselves within the established alliance, or take a swing and risk getting targeted. And, given both men’s penchant for pandemonium, it’s no surprise what happened next. Patt and her allies’ faces fell as they saw the farmers had planted their own seeds of chaos, taking her out and stunning half the tribe in the process.
Now out of the game, Patt talks with Parade about her reaction to Lewis and Carter flipping, whether the first Tribal Council of the season really was live, and if she ever found out what happened to her pants.
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We have to start with the most pressing issue from your time in the game, Patt: Did you ever figure out who or what took your pants?
[Laughs.] No! We found out nothing. We tried to track it down. I used, like, my investigative skills. We went person to person. People got blamed: Thien An, Mike, Ori. Literally the whole pantheon of players. I mean, actually, mostly those three. And then Lewis also, I think, caught some strays. But no, I mean genuinely, we have no idea. I took them off. I handed them to a raft, and then they got passed around. Which I’m like, they could have just stayed there! I don’t know why we’re throwing them all around.
[Laughs.] Well let’s talk about how you got exposed on the bottom in a very different way. Usually, when people are blindsided, I ask if there’s a moment or interaction that, in hindsight, should have indicated that things weren’t going their way. Did you have something like that in retrospect?
I mean, to be honest. Toka was so messy in every single way. Toka’s still a little messy! But everyone had heard names, and like it’s not that I had never heard my name. But I had a conversation actually with Jenna very close to going to Tribal. And I’m not Kilby, I can’t read people’s minds on whether they’re lying. But I should have known. I had a conversation with Kilby; I knew he and I were lying right to each other’s faces. I think both of us knew it. But yeah, I should have probably picked up on on some other clues.
So you did hear your name out there. But what was your response to being the name the others went for? And Thien An’s reasoning that you could “bat your puppy dog eyes” and get people on your side?
I mean, fair! [Laughs.] As far as the reasoning goes, understandable. I’m a huge threat. I’m obviously very charming and lovely, and there was no way I wasn’t gonna crush the game. So I get it. As far as knowing my name, I knew it earlier in the day, but I thought we had, like, put a stop to it. I thought we had solved some things. My boy Mike, who I love, I thought his name was in there. So truly when I saw my name on that parchment, I was like fully shocked. I tried not to show it because I was like, “I’m not giving these bitches anything.” But I was very shocked.
What was your perception of Lewis and Carter, the two newest members of Toka? What made your alliance feel they were so on your side going into that vote?
Okay, I have to say this because I think it’s so funny. I actually did not trust Lewis. But he did tell me I was his number one right before Tribal Council. So random. It made no sense. He was like, “You’re my number one,” and I was like, “…Okay.” I couldn’t even respond because I was like, “I know I’m not, but I don’t know what we’re doing here.” He’s hilarious.
But Carter I trusted. I mean, maybe it was the accent. I mean, both of them have accents. But for some reason, Carter, I was just like, “Yeah, he’s gonna come in. He’s gonna be loyal.” And it helped that, for some reason, Brady was [vouching for him]. Watching Carter lie to Brady and Brady being like, “Obviously this is a stand-up guy, you just lied to me” was like…okay. [Laughs.]
I want to rewind back to the first episode, when this Toka mess “began.” Because it seems like you wanted to keep Jenna in the game, so you tipped her off that she was the target, which started the series of events to get Aaliyah voted out instead. Was that actually the case, and why did you decide to do that?
So genuinely, I wanted to work with strong women. And I watched Jenna doing the puzzle, and I felt like she was super focused on that, and I loved that. And so I did stick my neck out and give her some information that was helpful to her. At the time, I didn’t know that Aaliyah was gonna be kind of the fallout from that. But, to be fair, I was happy to let Aaliyah be the fallout because she was so close to Jelly and Devin, who I wanted to work with.
So how live was that Tribal Council? What caused the votes to formally turn against Aaliyah?
So I would say maybe the vote wasn’t that live. We went to Tribal Council, my allies knew where the votes were. And Devin decided to blow up Tribal Council, which I was furious about. And then people kept coming over to me. So then everyone knew who my allies were to a degree, which was brutal. But yeah, I mean, I was fine saying Aaliyah’s the vote because, to me, I thought she knew. And then she said she didn’t know, and I was like, “Well, you’re the vote. Now I’ve got to sit with this. So here we are.”
It’s interesting you mention you wanted to work with Devin and Jelly, considering they’re both left out of this Aaliyah vote. But, indeed, we see how tight you were with Jelly in Episode 2, especially when she tells you about her idol. Talk to me about your relationship.
Yeah, I could talk for the next hour about Jelly and me. We just bonded. We loved each other. We had late-night talks, early-morning talks. We were super close, and we were strategic partners fully. We see a lot of the guys because they’re out there. But, like, Jelly and I were at least trying to guide things in the direction we wanted, for sure. So I think that’s why she told me about that idol; she saw me as a strategic partner.
Was she your number one?
They kept asking me! So Jelly and Mike. Mike was like my Day 1 number one, but I didn’t tell him about Jelly’s idol. So genuinely, I went back and forth, like, “Who’s my real number one?” And there have been questions from both of them about whether they were my real number one. So to each of them, yes! [Laughs.]
[Laughs.] There you go, pulling a real Lewis right now. In your Final Words, you said, “There are people you grow close to, and clearly some of them voted me out tonight.” Were you referring to anyone specific with that statement?
Yeah, I mean Jenna and I had some really, like, serious conversations. I think Jenna didn’t have the social capital to save me in that conversation, which I get. And then Maggie, we had some conversations. She homeschools her kids; I grew up homeschooled. And Maggie is like a strong woman. Her catching the crabs, she’s hilarious. She is such a, like, farmer, down-to-earth. So those ones were the ones that kind of hurt. Not that I didn’t see it coming, but still, it sucked to see my name.
You said in last night’s episode that Kilby was playing “in the most aggressive way [you’ve] ever seen.” Can you give me more perspective on that?
I kept hearing from different people like, “He doesn’t trust you.” Which then he said in his confessional, so he didn’t trust me! [Laughs.] He was saying very similar things about other people. And then we had really good conversations, so I was like, “You’re also talking to me like we’re really close, and I’m not really seeing that.” He was playing really hard, which is what we should all be doing. But it felt at that time like a little unhinged to me. I was trying at that time really hard because we thought there might be a tribe swap to bring everyone together. And I felt like he was a big impediment to that, and I couldn’t bring people together, which was fair.
Well, it does look like we’re getting some form of a tribe swap next episode, something you were clearly anticipating. Who were you looking to work with if you had made it to the next day?
Oh man, I was excited about that possibility. So Kristin and I on the beach had a lot of fun. Kristin clocked me as an attorney immediately. This was so dumb. I said something about going to Lambda events. Lambda stands for Lambda Legal, it’s like the LGBTQ+ legal circle. I had to then say it was my roommate was a lawyer. She was like, “Oh, are you the secret lawyer?” Hilarious. I loved Kristin. I thought she was amazing. At the time, I think that was my probably the person that I would have been most excited about. I’m trying to think of anyone else that I really vibed with. I mean, I actually loved Alexis too. Us fighting, I was like, “Oh, let’s go!” I think we could have honestly bonded over that. So yeah, maybe I would have just found the attorneys on the other side. [Laughs.]
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