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Survivor 2's Kel Talks About His New Life & Old Accusations
by David Bloomberg
-- 07/10/2002
In an exclusive interview with RealityNewsOnline, Survivor 2's Kel Gleason Kel discusses his new career, what makes a good reality TV show, how FCC regulations should apply to them, his thoughts on the fight against terrorists, and, of course, Jerri & beef jerky.
In the early days of Survivor 2, U.S. Army Captain Kel Gleason was the unfortunate first target of Jerri Manthey’s plan for dominating the game. His name forever became associated with beef jerky when she accused him of hiding and eating that foodstuff while the rest of them subsisted on rice. She whipped the rest of the tribe into a frenzy that ended with them searching his bag and the cameramen searching Kel himself. Despite his best efforts, he never did recover and ended up being the second person voted off the show.
Since those fateful days, Kel’s life has taken a big turn in a different direction. In August he left the Army after six years of service, and moved to Toronto where he is now a Survivor and entertainment reporter for Global TV (the Canadian CBS equivalent). I spoke to Kel about the changes to his life during and since his participation in Survivor 2.
Kel’s move from the Army in the U.S. to TV in Canada may seem like a strange one, but it really is just moving back to the direction his life was taking before he entered the Army. Kel received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in radio and television and is, of course, Canadian by birth. After working in the entertainment industry, he decided his life needed a change in direction and so he joined the U.S. Army. He explains that the Canadian Army would not have offered the same opportunities as the U.S. armed forces, which is why he didn’t join there.
Now, however, he says he has been looking at where he is in life and decided that, while he loves the Army, it is a very solitary lifestyle and not conducive to having a family. At the age of 33, he can no longer be a young dad, and doesn’t want to be an old one. So it was time to go back to the world of entertainment – buoyed, of course, by his Survivor appearance.
Kel will be Global TV’s Survivor insider reporter, much like Jeff Varner does for Los Angeles or Gervase does on the East Coast. One big difference is that Kel will be seen throughout all of Canada. Every Thursday he will have a 5:00 newscast in which he recaps the previous week’s Survivor: Africa activities and gives predictions for that night’s show. At 11:00 he will go over what was seen earlier that night, and then on Friday at 5:00 he will again recap the previous day’s show.
While Kel has moved on to television reporting, he wants to keep in close contact with his Army buddies, many of who have already been deployed, or are getting ready to deploy, in the face of the September 11 attacks. He said he misses them – they were almost like brothers or fathers to him – and he worries about them. Speaking before the attacks started yesterday, Kel notes that in the search for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, bombs and missiles won’t do the trick; for one thing, there is nothing left to bomb. If the U.S. fights this war, it will definitely involve ground troops, and it could turn into another Somalia or Vietnam. The Afghanis have the home ground and therefore are at an advantage. Remember that although he left the Army before the attacks, Kel was in military intelligence – while he obviously is not revealing any secrets, he knows what he’s talking about.
Moving from the serious back to the world of entertainment, I asked Kel the question that he has probably been asked a thousand times – what does he really think of Jerri? He said that when he was first asked this question, he tried his best not to say anything negative about her. But she has made it very hard to do that, because he says she continues to bash him whenever she has the opportunity. She has never contacted him to apologize, although in her Playboy spread and article, she claimed to be in occasional e-mail contact with everybody. The only time they have interacted was in the reunion show.
Even now, Kel really doesn’t say much that is bad about her. He notes that they are “total opposites in every respect” and that he doesn’t look forward to seeing her (for example, when many of the contestants were planning to attend the Emmys – he was looking forward to seeing people like Maralyn, Mike, Jeff, Kimmi, and Rodger, but definitely not Jerri). He immensely dislikes her and has “absolutely no respect for her,” but he has forgiven her. “Life is too short to be upset or angry.”
But he explains that the fact that they were two very different types of people is what makes good reality TV. He says a good show has humor, sex, and “tons and tons of conflict.”
It goes beyond that, though. Kel said he believes that Jerri – and many others who go into reality TV shows today – was not playing to win, but to better her acting career. Indeed, Big Brother 2’s Kent made a similar statement about his housemates, noting that most of them came in already having agents. Kel says that Jerri understood that reality TV is a soap opera, and she played it the right way to make that soap opera interesting. What better way to get more camera time than to question the integrity of the Army intelligence officer with a Top Secret clearance? What better way is there to cause conflict than by accusing the professional chef of being a bad cook? She was vying for airtime, and she got it. He says the viewers want conflict, and she gave it to us.
However, Kel is thankful that the public was smart enough to be able to tell BS from the truth, and noted that even with her accusations, he never had to defend himself because viewers knew Jerri was lying.
Still, at the time it was obviously a very difficult situation. Contrary to some reports, he did not overhear what was said about him – the cameramen told him because they needed to search him after the accusation. When Kel asked why he was being searched, he said there was no way around telling him – the Survivor crew members did the right thing. Kel says that, as he knows from his college studies and experience in television, game shows like Survivor fall under the FCC rules against rigging. So when he was accused of cheating, he had to be searched.
Still, I asked him if the crew could have just searched him without telling him why, since telling him could be interpreted as affecting the game and therefore violating those same FCC regulations. Kel firmly believes there was no way they could search him without a full explanation – even with the contracts they all signed, he still had the right to know why he was being patted down.
Kel’s mention of the FCC regulations led directly into a discussion about Stacey’s lawsuit against Survivor over rigging allegations and Mark Burnett’s own statements claiming that Survivor is not subject to FCC game show regulations (this after previously stating they were). While Kel obviously cannot speak for Burnett, he says the FCC rules do indeed cover shows like Survivor, and they are intended to make sure there is no rigging going on. He furthermore says that he saw no evidence of any type of rigging, and thinks Stacey’s accusations against Burnett hold no water. Indeed, he can’t believe Stacey could even say such a thing, since there are so many people watching at all times, there is no room to cheat. Kel calls the whole idea “ludicrous.”
Moving to how the show affected him personally, Kel says his time on Survivor changed his life, but has not changed him personally. It surprised him that an appearance on a game show could open up so many opportunities. I asked him if he thought the contestants on future editions of Survivor would continue to have the same success, and Kel thinks they will for the foreseeable future. Reality TV, he says, will not go away.
Even so, he did not do Survivor 2 to help him get back to the entertainment world. Unlike some others, he didn’t even do it for the adventure – that was why he joined the Army! He did it “to win the money.”
So, would he have done what Colby did – bringing Tina into the final two rather than the disliked Keith? Not a chance. Kel says that there was not a single person on that jury who would have voted to give the money to Keith; Colby was a shoe-in. He speaks for many when he says he “totally doesn’t understand it.”
As far as Survivor: Africa is concerned, Kel unfortunately doesn’t have any inside information. His favorite is for Ethan Zohn, the professional soccer player, to win. He says Ethan is a powerhouse and should do great. He’d also like to see Kim Johnson, the retired teacher, do well. He says she is in incredibly good shape and is an inspiration for anybody in her age group.
The only specific prediction he has is that we will get another great soap opera, and that “people can’t stop watching it.” He says, “Mark Burnett knows how to put a reality TV show together;” he is the master and has no equals. For this reason, he is also looking forward to Combat Missions, which premieres in January.
What does the future hold for Kel? He says he is deciding between two beef jerky companies that want him to represent them. Indeed, he says he thinks it incredibly funny that he may end up making money off of Jerri’s lie (similarly, Keith is working on a book about rice dishes – also spurred by Jerri’s attacks).
He also says he’ll be watching for more RealityNewsOnline articles because of the great writing (hey, he really did say it!) and adds that I have a lot of Canadian fans. So let me close by passing along a big “hello!” to all our Canadian readers. Make sure you stay tuned here – and to Kel on Global TV – for all your Survivor needs!
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