‘Survivor 51’: Danny Kilby Reveals Kristin Wouldn’t Share Secret Plan to Save Them

Survivor superfans Kristin Flickinger and Danny Kilby are the second paired casualty of the Double Duo twist. First introduced in Survivor 50, the paired elimination format returned in Survivor 51 Episode 8 on November 11, requiring all of the players on the newly merged tribe to split into pairs. Immunity would be won in pairs, and players would be voted out in pairs as well. After an avalanche of advantages were deployed, one vote decided that Kristin and Kilby would go to the jury.

Kristin told TV Insider in our exit interview that she launched a last-minute hail Mary to have Lewis Kelly and Sharonda Cox give their immunity necklaces to her and Kilby, and she would protect them from elimination by playing her tethered idol on Sharonda. Kristin got the tethered idol on a journey with Sharonda and Ori Jean-Charles. As long as Sharonda and Ori were still in the game, Kristin could only play the idol for them. If they were both voted out (Ori was the last elimination pre-merge), Kristin could play the idol on herself if she still had it.

Kristin got the immunity swap plan going before tribal council, but their time got cut short. During the live tribal, she tried to make this plan work with Sharonda giving her necklace, but Maggie Nestor — who wanted Kristin out — overheard, intervened, and stopped the plan in its tracks. Kilby tells TV Insider that he begged Kristin to share whatever advantage information she had before tribal, but she wouldn’t tell him anything.

Here, Kilby explains when he found out about the tethered idol and breaks down his time on the show.

Explain your choice to work with Kristin in the double duo scenario. Why did you want to work with her?

Danny Kilby: I liked Kristin. We were on different sides. We had different friends. I thought that would be very hard to get the votes on me. And hey, I thought she might have something from exile. She did. It just couldn’t help us.

Did you ever hear about the tethered idol that she had with Sharonda?

On the boat ride back to Ponderosa, I’m in emotional distress, and I go, “We could have traded the necklaces for the tethered idol.” Lewis and Shonda give us the necklaces, and we play the idol on them, and that almost made it sting worse. I’m like, “Why couldn’t you have told me? Because I was begging her. Girl, I know you have something. Please tell me. Even if we don’t decide to use it, I will never tell anyone about it because we’re in that dire straits. We need to know.” And she kept denying it.

You were begging her before tribal or during the live tribal?

Before tribal. All day I’m like, “Girl, you obviously have something; this could go wrong very quickly. Please tell me because then we can come, even if it’s something you don’t think will help — maybe my crazy brain — we can come together on a plan.” And she just would not tell me. And I did not believe it at all. Even at Tribal, I’m like, “Surely she has an idol. She just thinks she’s good.” And when she didn’t play it, I’m like, “No.”

I just talked to Kristin, and she did tell me about that plan that she told me that before tribal, she tried to get Lewis to give her the necklace. There wasn’t time to execute that. And then in tribal, she tried to get it from Sharonda. Maggie heard is what she said, and then Maggie stopped it. You were sitting right next to Maggie, so you heard all of this, right?

I didn’t know about the tethered idol, so I was just like, “This is stupid. No, they’re not going to give us the necklaces,” because that part wasn’t communicated. It wasn’t like, “Hey, there’s a tethered idol that I can play on you guys, then we’re just both safe.”

That’s an easy deal, but she was just like, “Can you give us the necklace?” I was like, “Girl, they’re going to get votes on us.” I was like, “I’m trying to whip the votes away from us.” I was like, “No.”

Did you have any other strategy conversations pre-tribal that we didn’t get to see that you wish we had?

The big one is just me, and Cristian had a plan. The minute he had that extra vote that he was going to give me the extra vote, I was going to vote Mike and Mags with it.

And then he gave it to Eric, and I’m like, “Oh shoot, maybe he’s against me, and he’s being weird and not looking me in the eye.” So, wires got crossed and we voted Dev and Jelly. I had a contingency plan, and it went away in a souvenir with Eric, which just sucks.

It’s hard to understand why Eric didn’t play it because he was told it only worked at that tribal, so there was no reason to pocket that.

It just shouldn’t have gone to Eric. It should have gone to me. That was the plan the entire day. You know what I mean? I have no idea what Cristian was thinking. I have no idea what Eric was thinking.

I guess it would’ve been a three-way tie at that point because it would’ve been a vote for Cristian and Carter, then you and Kristin and Maggie and Mike.

Yeah.

And you love a tie vote, as we saw.

Love a tie vote. I think I would’ve been good in the tie vote, but brutal.

Did your calculus include a potential tie?

Actually, if I got the extra vote, I would’ve put two on [Maggie and Mike]. It would’ve been my vote and the extra vote on them, but because I didn’t get it, I could not trust Cristian, to be honest. That really is what it was.

And so then you switched to Dev and Jelly?

Yeah.

Yeah. And Eric was right. There was a majority for Dev and Jelly, but it seems like he just didn’t know everything that was going on. No one knew that Jelly had an idol, right?

No idea. Honestly, I was kicking, screaming, clawing. I would stay up every single night on Dina, whipping that island apart. I never slept on that beach because I was like, “I need an idol.” I think the producers wanted to kill me because I’d literally be in daylight, and then I would go sleep in the boat for two hours when it was light time. There was no idol on Dina. And so I was like, “If there’s no idol on Dina, maybe there’s no idols in the game.” Because I was looking everywhere constantly, and when that came out, I’m like, “God, no.” But I still thought it was going to be Cristian and Carter and then just shot in the dark. Great. I’m like, “Why couldn’t ours have hit?!” We made the same bet.

You did. Kristin said that the moment she knew that you guys were going was when she saw the different-colored ribbon on Christian’s Shot in the Dark, and she just knew in her gut that must mean that he’s safe and I wasn’t. Did you have a similar reaction?

No. Honestly, I still don’t know what they’re looking at with the Shot in the Dark thing. I never considered doing it. I didn’t put mine in. I don’t know what that even looks like, so no, that didn’t occur to me. I was just going, “Please hit, please hit.”

It was out of order, I think. I think Kristin actually played her [Shot in the Dark] second when we were there, but in the show, they flipped it. And so once theirs hit, I was like, “Rest in peace.” I knew I was cooked. That might be wrong. But basically at that moment on, I was in emotional distress, so I pretty much blacked out.

Was there any confessional about you that really surprised you when you were watching this season?

I feel like I had a pretty good pulse on how people felt about me. For the most part, people kind of liked me. Devin thought I was untrustworthy, whatever. Honestly, I thought he hated me. If anything, I thought he hated me more than it seemed like he did out there. I expected worse confessionals from [Devin]. I thought I would get nice ones from most people except for Devin. And honestly, Devin wasn’t that bad. He was just like, “Kilby [is] scheme-y.”

To me, that was a blood feud. I was like, “We hate each other. We hate each other’s guts, and it’s palpable and obvious,” so I was probably harsher to Devin than he was to me, which is surprising. I think a lot of people have that reaction about me because I was a little bit cutthroat in my confessionals, whereas a lot of people were pretty nice to me anyway.

You were trying to get Devin on your side in this episode. Was it genuine trying to mend fences so you could save yourself, or was it some scheming?

Yes.

Yeah, a mix of both.

Me and Devin kept having these conversations. They show in episode three, I think, too, where I’m like, “Dude, why do you not like me? You have some weird bias against me. I can’t figure out why and what’s going on?” Could not figure out why he just would never get over it. I tried so, so hard, and I was willing to actually go with it.

Then when he got partnered with Jelly, I’m like, “Well, it’s like my alliance is scattered in every other duo, and then it’s them.” I actually was open to working with Devin again, and I think he was open to working with me again, but then circumstances happened where it’s like, “Am I going to vote out my alliance or not my alliance?” And it’s not my alliance. It’s not that complicated.

Watching the season, did that help you understand the origin story for Devin’s unwillingness to work with you?

Honestly, no. I think they just show it as he didn’t know or just didn’t like me or whatever, and hey, whatever happens, I guess. I guess for him, he’s like, “Oh, my group.” I’m telling him, “Dude, Jelly’s telling me you don’t trust me.” She was. That is the truth. Brady was telling me that he doesn’t trust me, but I think they were doing it out of goodness.

They wanted us to come together, but then Devin was getting increasingly untrusting of me, and I was getting more untrusting of him because the people who wanted to play with both of us kept telling each other, “Devin doesn’t trust you. You should work on that.” Well, if I keep hearing that all day, I’m like, “I need Devin out.” And Devin goes, “I need Kilby out.” It doesn’t go, “Oh, let’s be a peaceful family,” even though that’s what they were trying to do.

I think that tribe was a lot of those missed calls of like, “Oh no, if you tell somebody they don’t trust you, it doesn’t make them get closer to you.”

Yeah. Even though it’s, “We’re trying to open a door for you to build trust,” it’s like, “I didn’t know we needed to.”

Exactly. And that makes me go, “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-uh. I didn’t need that guy out.” And that makes him have the same thing about me. And I think that’s what just kept happening over and over again. We had the same friends that were like, “Is Devin my number one or is Kilby my number one?” I think multiple people on that tribe were struggling with that, and I think that made both of us keep adding intention, like a Cold War. It got very, very tense, and it’s just like it’s hard to break that.

Who was your true number one out there?

Probably Thien An or Lewis or Carter. Probably Thien An or Maggie. I love that group of people. I felt 100% good with them, but I feel like Thien An maybe most consistently, whereas Lewis, me, and him would openly talk about, “Bro, I’m going to blindside your ass at the final seven. You’re cooked, dude. I’m going to play my super idol on whoever you think is going…” We would talk about cutting each other, whereas Thien An and I, we were going to go to the end together. Me and Carter, we were going to go to the end together. But me and Lewis had this friends, but I’m going to cut you, that kind of thing. So I trusted him implicitly, but also he would’ve cut me at seven, so I was like, “I’m going to cut him at eight,” that sort of thing. Whereas Thien An, I was like, “She’s never going to cut me.” Maggie, I didn’t think she was ever going to cut me.

I had people who were locked in, loyal to the soil, and so it just depends what you mean. At various parts of the game, it has different people based on positioning.

That’s smart to have those several close alliances. And the Lewis thing, there’s a lot of trust to be had in knowing, truly knowing in your gut, “Yeah, we’ll work together until we don’t.” It’s like, “This is going to end soon, but before then we can make sure we both get to that soon part.”

One-million percent. You can trust self-interested players. If you understand, oh, Lewis wants to win no matter what, I want to win no matter what. I can start thinking, well, Lewis is a smart person. He’s going to do the best move for him, and Lewis knows I’m going to do the best move for me. And so most of the time that’s going to be the same thing. And the minute I go, actually, Lewis’s best move would be to cut me or cut someone I’m close with; that’s when I need to go after him. But that would’ve been a long time from now. So it’s that sort of thing. It’s kind of fun brain space to be in because it’s kind of like you’re both secret agents or whatever, and you’re just like, “Who’s going to turn first?” But I found it really fun, and I think I would’ve won, but I think Thien An and Carter were closer to me, but…

You think you would’ve won over Lewis if it came to that?

In that battle. I think our group was closer to me than they were to Lewis, but I think Lewis thought he was… But who knows? I got sniped out of the game.

Did you know that Kristin was going to play her shot in the dark? Did she tell you before?

Yeah, that was a plan. We were just agreeing that one of us is going to do it.

Did you plan that before tribal or during the live tribal?

During tribal.

What was the moment that was like, “OK, we need to do the Shot in the Dark?”

It was when Cristian gave the extra vote to Eric. I was like, “Oh, we could be boned.” I tell her, I’m like, “Girl, it’s one of these situations where…” And this happens a lot in Survivor. Either everybody’s with you, or everybody’s against you, and you don’t know. And that’s the mirage. Every blind side is somebody thinking, “Oh, everybody’s with me,” and they get [voted out 9:1].

For me, I’m going, “We are in that pocket. We don’t know. There are five people, six people that could plausibly be voting us. They’re saying they’re voting Dev and Jelly, but they could easily be voting for us. That’s not good.” So I go to her, “Hey, I think we have enough votes that we can afford a shot in the dark because Cristian’s playing his, and Cristian would be the needed vote to be voting us, so you can do it. We’ll be good. And hopefully everything just works out.” It didn’t.

It didn’t, but what a way to go. Great TV.

It was epic. It was annoying how good that episode was. I was like, “Oh, dang.”

It’s like, “God, that was good, but why did it have to be me?”

No, literally! Watching just at home, that would’ve been freaking awesome, but I’m unfortunately biased.

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