The blindsides keep coming on “Survivor 47.”
During Wednesday’s episode, Kishan Patel got the shock of his life when Genevieve Mushaluk expectedly rallied Rome Cooney and Sol Yi to vote off the 28-year-old ER doctor, who thought he was in the power position on his tribe.
In an exclusive interview with The Post, Patel revealed that he had a secret alliance with Mushaluk — hence why he was so shocked over her betrayal.
Patel also told The Post how he felt about the drama between Cooney and Yi, why he voted out Aysha Welch on last week’s episode, and more.
New York Post: Take me back to your vote off. Where do you feel like things specifically went wrong for you?
Kishan Patel: Where things went wrong is I think Genevieve just awakened and realized, ‘Hey, what’s best for my game is not in the long term working with someone like Kishan or Teeny [Chirichillo] because they’re in the background making decisions.’ Her best choice at that moment she realized was Rome as a shield — having him as someone to take some hate.
It wasn’t me trying to turn Genevieve against her ally. There was a preexisting relationship between Genevieve and I. We were super tight. The only time I cried on the island was when I shared some personal details with Genevieve. We were really close and we were really close as a trio between Teeny, Genevieve and I. There was a lot of strategizing that was already happening amongst us three. We had already talked about beforehand that if Rome doesn’t have an idol, we’re going to vote him out. Genevieve was down for it. She was game for it. She had said this, too, even though she was ‘strongest ally’ with Rome. She was still stronger with us, too.
So that’s why going back to the first vote, that’s why we went with voting out Sol or Aysha, because we were so tight with Genevieve. We knew that she would work with us in getting out Rome, versus we never got that feedback from Sol or Aysha that they didn’t want to really get out each other. They were so tight with each other that if it came down to us needing to move down one peg further, we’d be at a stalemate at that point. So it kind of made sense for us to go with Rome and Genevieve just because they were powerful with Rome’s advantages and idols and Genevieve wanting to work with us.
It sounds like Genevieve realized that with you and Teeny she was the third wheel. Would you say that was the case?
I do think so. I tried to solidify as much as I could about like, ‘Hey, I’m super tight with you Genevieve. I’m tight with Teeny but I’m tight with you. It’s us three.’
Three is a powerful number. Three is a number you want to have. So it made sense for me to be open with her. However, I think I underestimated that she probably felt a little uncomfortable with how close Teeny and I were. So that was probably the one thing I sidestepped. I maybe could have said a couple more times, ‘Genevieve, it’s us two,’ which may have maybe changed things, but I didn’t think that was necessary.
The moment that Rome took your vote, did that tip you off that you were in trouble?
Thousand percent. Like that’s the moment that you’re sitting there. You’re in pure shock. In that moment, I knew exactly that was happening. Even if there was some semblance of me holding on to maybe this is just to throw off Sol or something, I knew in everyone’s facial expressions afterwards. Genevieve the whole time was just mouthing, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry.’ Rome had, like, this scorned look [and] was mad. I knew that he had learned that I was trying to get him out. Sol was kind of in a, ‘I’ll explain things.’ I kind of pieced together people’s facial expressions in addition to him saying he’s stealing my vote that things were headed into a blindside against me.
There was a lot of tension between Sol and Rome. What’s your takeaway from their dynamic?
They have a older brother, younger brother dynamic. They just never could get along. From the get go they immediately were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Even in terms of their energy. So it was very contentious from the beginning and it just continued being contentious. And I think it created a really clear divide, which automatically initially created a nice little middle ground for Teeny and I to fall into. When you have two polarizing sides, you can kind of easily slink into the middle. But I think it all just came down to kind of them just having very philosophical different perspectives of how to play the game. That being Rome wanting to be a bit more chaotic, Sol being a bit more thoughtful and composed and just never being able to move on from that.
Is the Rome and the way he’s behaving the real Rome? Or is that the Rome that knows he’s on television?
It’s the Rome that knows he’s on television. I do think in person there are aspects of that that are part of Rome. Rome has a lot of energy. He has a lot of positive energy, but also just in general, very big personality. Which again is fine in the real world when you’re grabbing drinks on a Friday and just hanging out for a short hour or two. When you’re there 24/7 and you’re playing a game and you know there’s cameras on you, it’s very different.
The biggest thing that I think bothered me was I went into playing ‘Survivor’ to have fun and just experience it and not be theatrical. It wasn’t my intention to do something for the intention of doing something just so that it would come across on TV a certain way. But I think for Rome, a lot of it was a bucket list for TV. Like catching fish. I remember there’s a quote from one of the episodes like ‘How many fish did Ozzy catch? What’s the record? I’m going to catch one more than that.’ It’s just to cross things off. And I think that irked me and that irked a lot of people on our tribe.
You get to Ponderosa after you’re voted out and you see Aysha. What was that interaction like?
The minute I get there the first thing I hear out of anyone’s mouth is Aysha says, ‘You have a lot of explaining to do.’ I think the whole encounter was very therapeutic for both of us. I think a bit more therapeutic for her because she got closure. She was able to kind of see our reasoning. I was able to speak for the group as to why we ended up voting for her. She was able to understand why that happened. So Aysha was able to get that closure immediately.
“Survivor” airs Wednesdays on CBS at 8 p.m. ET.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
