The lesser of three evils.
Following her fourth place finish on “Survivor 48,” Kamilla Karthigesu exclusively told The Post that the jury of the eliminated contestants weren’t thrilled about voting for Eva Erickson, Joe Hunter or Kyle Fraser to win.
“People were just unhappy with everyone,” Karthigesu said. “To be honest, they didn’t like anyone sitting at the end. I think people were the least upset about Kyle.”
The 31-year-old software engineer, who was one of the five people that voted for Fraser, 31, to be the season’s champion, explained that the jury resented the final three for their gameplay.
“I don’t want to speak for anyone, but it feels like there is a bit of like…. people were completely shunned,” she shared. “Some people in the big alliance didn’t have any conversations with people outside of it, didn’t have any strategy conversations with people outside of it.”
“And then there was this other aspect of going around parading honesty and integrity, but you do have to eliminate people. And how do you call that honesty and integrity?” Karthigesu added. “I think people wanted to see a bit of that too. Like owning that.”
Karthigesu also clarified when she and Fraser decided that Erickson, 24, and Hunter, 45, were the ideal people to sit next to in the final three.
“I think it might have been around either the Shauhin vote or at final five. We never said let’s make that person the winner. We just said that sitting next to them is your best chance at winning,” she explained. “And saying sitting next them means not sitting next to each other. And yeah, we both kind of had figured that that was the thing for us to do.”
Furthermore, Karthigesu told The Post that as the game progressed, she realized the eventual final three weren’t in the jury’s good graces.
“I think that the further along the merge we go, the more and more that becomes true because the more people get eliminated that are unhappy about it,” she stated. “Every time we’d sit at tribal council, as people spoke, I’d look over to the jury, see their reactions and people were not happy.”
Karthigesu continued, “And seeing that with more and more people gave me the confidence where it’s like, ‘Oh, maybe I can sit next to them. Maybe I don’t need to get rid of Joe. Maybe I should stick to them.’ This was sort of later on into the merge, at least for me.“
As for how she and Fraser kept their alliance a secret all season, Karthigesu chalked that up to the actions of three of her fellow jurors.
“I have to thank David, Mary and Star for that because they policed us on the island and they didn’t let us talk to each other,” she revealed. “I was followed around like pretty much everywhere. They would insert themselves into every single conversation.”
“So we just couldn’t be seen talking to each,” Karthigesu added. “And that’s how we kept it on the down low. We were just very good at communicating.”