“Everyone Was a Little Unclear on How to Jump” – An Interview with Survivor: One World’s Kourtney

Kourtney made the kind of Survivor history nobody wants by being the first woman evacuated due to medical reasons and the first one to leave before the first Tribal Council due to such reasons – obviously not a “record” she was shooting for! But that pales in comparison to the current medical issues she is facing.

Indeed, because that situation (which she discusses below), I wasn’t able to interview Kourtney in my usual manner, and was instead part of a group call. So some of these questions are from other interviewers, while the best ones (of course!) are from me. We’ll start with mine, since I was apparently the only one on the call who knew about her current medical situation, some of which she’d hinted at through Twitter, where she linked to a clip of Kindergarten Cop with one of the kids telling Ah-nold that he has a “tumah” and then talking about her “breakfast of champions” on Tuesday being “pain meds and a bag o' fluid.”

Reality News Online: I understand that you are currently having some medical problems that are bigger than your wrist. Do you want to talk about that?

Kourtney: I had emergency surgery this week – they found a tumor in my abdomen and had to remove a few things. It was a pretty traumatic experience. My dad’s in Afghanistan and my mom doesn’t live in Austin. I was in the hospital pretty much alone. And I’m deathly afraid of having my blood drawn.

I went through all these tests and I had these sneaking suspicions something wasn’t right and sure enough they found a grapefruit-sized tumor on my ovary. I was hoping it wasn’t terminal or something crazy like that, but it was not benign [meaning it was cancerous]. I’m waiting back on some test results but my surgeon is really optimistic.

RNO: Let me speak for all of us at Reality News Online and readers who have already contacted me to say we hope you’re doing better and were sorry to see you go in the way you did, and now I’ll only add similar thoughts on your current situation. I can’t believe you’re doing interviews now!

Kourtney: It’s kind of nice instead of staring at the hospital wall. It’s a good change of pace.

RNO: Well, continuing with that change of pace and getting into the game, if the situation had been reversed and one of the men had been injured instead of you, do you think your tribe would have continued the challenge or taken the easy win?

Kourtney: They absolutely would have taken the win. I noticed some of the girls said it was kind of chicken$#!+, but come on, everyone was exhausted and tired! It was a really hard challenge and we weren’t all the way into it yet. It was an easy win and anyone would have done it.

RNO: Since your time in the game was short, and the first episode focused more on Alicia/Matt/Chelsea/Christina/Michael arguing, is there anything about your game that you feel should be noted?

Kourtney: I did find a little clip online that wasn’t in the first episode – the girls all wanted to eat chicken but nobody wanted to kill it. So I stepped up to the plate and did it. I’m not a country girl but I remember when I was a kid, seeing a farmer hacking the chicken’s head. And I wove so many palm fronds for both tribes and there wasn’t much about that either. I would like to say I worked my butt off to try to make tribe life as comfy as possible.

RNO: I don’t want to sound callous and there is no easy way to ask this, but I have already heard from numerous readers and people on Twitter and the like, so I have to ask: Why did the women, in particular, seem to have problems jumping into the net in the way Jeff Probst told them to?

Kourtney: That’s a rough question. I think everyone was just a little unclear on how to jump into the net. I think it just wasn’t as clear and concise as it seemed to be. Let’s leave it at that.

Another Interviewer Question: Was there any instruction given on jumping into the net before the challenge started?

Kourtney: Yeah. There was. My understanding was to put my feet out and go butt-first. Another understanding of mine was if you were to grab the net to help yourself from bouncing, that could save time. My main concern was to save time and not have my knees come up and hit me in the face, which is why I jumped the way I did. I honestly never heard anyone say anything about pulling my hands to my chest, but we were all excited and it could have been something I didn’t hear.

Question: You’re still in the hospital and watched the show there last night – what was the atmosphere like? Were you a celebrity there?

Kourtney: No, I didn’t tell anybody until they walked in and were like, “Whoa, hey.” They got a kick out of that. One of my friends and their baby and my ex-husband and my son were all piled up in the hospital room watching. Even thou we’re not together anymore, he could still poke fun at me and we all got a good laugh.

Question: Was there ever a real possibility of getting back in the game?

Kourtney: No. I knew it was broken from the moment I rolled off that net.

Question: What was the process once medical arrived?

Kourtney: It took a while to get from camp to any sort of civilization, but once we got there, I had to wait quite a bit before I could see anybody to see if my bones were broken. Once they saw, they determined I couldn’t go back. I had no sense of time, really, when we were in the game so coming back into the real world it was pretty rough transition even after just three days. It was weird.

Question: How is your wrist now?

Kourtney: Doing a lot better but still working on building strength and range of motion.

Question: You’re a motorcycle mechanic, is that injury going to affect your livelihood?

Kourtney: It already really has. I came back, I tried to work, it was excruciating, I couldn’t even degrease an engine. Then around the same time my boss hired a new apprentice to take my place while I was gone, then he was robbed on top of that. He was in a harder situation than me so I told him [I would part ways]. I want to keep working on motorcycles as a hobby but when you work in a garage, you work on everybody’s instead of your own.

Question: What was the reaction from people who knew where you were at and they saw you in a cast?

Kourtney: They had to contact my closest loved ones, so they were prepared for it. My dad was in shock with the whole thing. I had not told my ex-husband so when I picked up my son, I had them both convinced I’d been attacked by a shark.

Question: When you arrived at the beach, what was going through your mind?

Kourtney: I didn’t think there would be any past contestants. I think it had happened too many times. I was more afraid of Redemption Island. [The two tribes sharing one beach] being the twist took a minute to register. Then I was pissed off ‘cus they had the better section of the island.

Question: What kind of interaction was there between the tribes?

Kourtney: Everybody went in with the mentality, “this is my tribe, this is your tribe.” That kind of stuck. Everyone was on that [wavelength] except maybe a couple girls who wanted to milk what they could out of the boys.

Question: Before your injury, did you think you were going to be safe if you lost the challenge?

Kourtney: I was – I don’t think I would have been out. It was pretty confirmed Christina was going to be out if we lost the challenge. Monica and I stayed up late that night to figure out what we were going to do to keep Christina from going out.

Question: How certain were you?

Kourtney: I’d overheard conversations and I’d even been asked would I do it [vote her out] too.

Question: After seeing the girls throw each other under the bus at Tribal Council, are you kind of glad you didn’t have to go through that?

Kourtney: Actually, I was looking forward to venting and telling some of the girls how I really felt about them.

Question: Were you able to form any alliances?

Kourtney: I was in the underdog alliance and had a solid bond with Monica and was confident with Christina and Nina.

Question: Were you aware of the five-person alliance of Alicia, Kim, Chelsea, Kat, and Sabrina?

Kourtney: Yeah, though not to the extent that it had happened. It was all in the body language, all in the eye contact. It was very transparent the way that it happened.

Question: In your time on the show, was there a clear leader of any kind?

Kourtney: Yes and no. I had my assumptions but it wasn’t very clear yet. I kind of felt like Sabrina and Kim had the potential to be puppet masters, but wasn’t quite sure yet.

Question: What did you think about Alicia?

Kourtney: She… oh gosh. She really rubbed me the wrong way, I can’t lie.

Question: Did you have any idea Sabrina had found the idol and given it to Colton?

Kourtney: I learned she’d given it to Colton afterwards but I knew she had found something because all she did was look for the idol all day, every day instead of working around the camp.

Question: What did you think about her giving it to Colton?

Kourtney: I think giving him that idol, she was putting a lot of confidence in his ability to stick around and have any clout.

Question: Matt came across as arrogant – is that what you witnessed?

Kourtney: I stayed away from the men as much as I could. My interaction with Matt were nice, so I was surprised to see the show. I thought he was a human Ken doll. He was never that way towards me. I guess I didn’t interact with him as much as the other girls did.

Question: You mentioned at the very beginning of the show that you thought you might have trouble fitting in with the women. Did you end up fitting in with them?

Kourtney: I was relieved to have bonded with the women I did bond with in the way that I did.

Question: Who left in the game does not stand a chance to win and why?

Kourtney: I would say Colton because he’s going to exhaust his resources if he doesn’t pick a side.

Question: Why did you stop at catching only two chickens?

Kourtney: Catching the chickens was not my department. The boys had the coop so the girls were keeping them in burlap sacks. That’s one of the reasons why we ended up killing one. We couldn’t make a little housing to secure them. The guys tried a few times but Chelsea was a rock star when it came to that.

Question: You had mentioned in a web clip that you were concerned and hoped your son would take something positive out of this – how was his reaction?

Kourtney: He was really excited to see me on TV. That excitement overruled the shock of seeing me break my arm. I think he was really excited to see Mommy on TV and was bummed I wouldn’t be on any more episodes.

Question: Was this your first attempt to get on Survivor?

Kourtney: It was my very first. I had never watched Survivor prior to this experience. You could say I was recruited. I did have to fill out an application and video, but they found me.

Question: Would you do it again?

Kourtney: Yeah, I think I would.

You can follow Reality News Online on Twitter and on Facebook! On Twitter, you can get up to the minute notifications on article postings and other reality TV news by following us. So head on over to Reality News Online’s Twitter page! On Facebook, you can become a fan, join discussions, and more!

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent Survivor: One World articles here on Reality News Online:

David Bloomberg is the Editor of Reality News Online and has been covering Survivor since the very first season. He can be reached at RNO@pobox.com. You can also follow him on Twitter!

Be sure to sign up for our e-mail update so you can stay informed about new articles on the site! Don’t forget to take a look at the rest of the site and buy reality show stuff at our Reality TV Store, and don't miss The Reality TV Hall of Shame!

For more news about Survivor, be sure to check out SirLinksALot: Survivor and Survivor Fever!