Kyle Fraser is feeling like a million bucks.
The 31-year-old attorney exclusively spoke to The Post about winning “Survivor 48” and defended his decision to never betray his alliance with Joe Hunter — despite the 45-year-old fire captain being the apparent biggest threat all season.
“I felt like that final tribal council was me owning my game and being like, no, no, no, look at what I did,” Fraser explained. “When I got to the merge I had just played an idol. I was in the majority alliance. I won the challenges. My threat meter was off the roof and I’ve just seen players like Kaleb get popped, like in my archetype. So I don’t wanna do anything.”
“People are telling me like, ‘Hey, we can all go to the end together.’ Yeah, sure. I was really patient and kind of fine until people started telling me, ‘Hey, Joe’s going to run away with this game.’ And I’m like, ‘What the hell? What more do you need from me?’” he continued. “But I’m glad they told me that because I just knew I had to give them one more notch.”
Fraser explained that he intentionally “played both sides” and acted patiently instead of making a big move for the benefit of others.
“I kind have used the analogy of I told everybody, ‘Get in the Trojan horse, come on.’ And then I’m the guy at the gate. I promise I’ll open it for you. But it’ll be tomorrow. And then it’ll be tomorrow, and then I make a move when I need to, but it’s at my discretion. Because I’m not going to let anybody make me the biggest threat out there just because I made a big move to do it. Next thing you know, I’m going home at five because I’m, like, the threat of the season. Absolutely not. I wanted to go with the end and I wanted to plead my case.”
Watching past seasons of the show influenced how Fraser played the game.
“I saw all the New Era seasons. I saw Jesse, I saw Omar, I saw Ricard,” he explained. “I’ve also seen other players who are very threatening. The David Wrights of the world get close to the end, but people want to pop them.”
“And I had a group of people who said, ‘I will go to the end with you.’ And I’m very glad that I had that group of people because I felt the same way,” Fraser added. “And they were just as threatening as I was. But that’s the beauty of it. You have to trust it.”
Furthermore, Fraser expects that the gameplay of Season 48 will affect future seasons.
“Maybe this will make people put more stock in alliances,” he told The Post. “I think if there’s anything, it’s alliances work. Maybe people will be looking over their shoulder about if there are these secret alliances popping up. I don’t know if that could ever be replicated between Kamilla [Karthigesu] and I. I think that might be the takeaway in a lot of ways.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
