For a long time onSurvivor 43,Owen Knight couldn’t get on the right side of the numbers.
Was Owen surprised by the result?
Does he think things would have been different if he had taken Jesse Lopez on at fire?
Owen Knight on ‘Survivor 43’.CBS
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.
So how much did it hurt to become a zero-vote finalist?
Cassidy Clark and Owen Knight on ‘Survivor 43’.CBS
OWEN KNIGHT:[Laughs]I jinxed myself.
So did it hurt then?
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.
Owen Knight and Jeff Probst on ‘Survivor 43’.Robert Voets/CBS
I mean, I had no illusions.
I knew I was a long shot.
I knew it was going to be a very uphill battle.
Jeff Probst and Owen Knight on ‘Survivor 43’.CBS
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.
Jesse Lopez, Cassidy Clark, Karla Cruz Godoy, Owen Knight, and Mike Gabler of ‘Survivor 43’.CBS
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 bang out 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 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.
Yeah, it didn’t feel great.
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.
But it felt like he was talking a lot.
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.
Whom would you have voted for between Gabler and Cassidy?
I would’ve voted for Cassidy.
I absolutely love that guy, but I just had a harder time seeing what he was doing.
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.”
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.
Yeah, and I look at you and Cassie.
Let’s toast my loss clink, clink!
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.
I mean, there’s so much that they leave on the cutting room floor.
I just think about some funny confessionals.
And he started calling it the Big Boys alliance.
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 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.
Or why didn’t you vote Jesse there if he hadn’t had the idol?"
There was no universe where Jesse was not going to fire.
No one was ever going to take him to the end.
So we felt pretty confident we could slay the dragon there.
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.
I was just at my wit’s end.
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 been very gracious through all of this.
And he had every right in the world to just never speak to me again.
And that’s where I was just like, “Come on.
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?”
I just lost it and I tried walking away.
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?
It’s hard to pick just one, but I think for me, winning Last Gasp.
And every day at Tree Mail I’d be like, “Ooh, is this Last Gasp?
Is that Last Gasp?”
Although, I wish we had done a Hold Your Breath contest or something.
What do you mean?
You wanted to have each of you hold your breath underwater as a tiebreaker?
I was so loopy at that point.
I was grateful to get out of the water.
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.
