By John Powell – GlobalTV.com

Nobody likes a to be bossed around especially on Survivor, especially on a small tribe of only six players. While Terran “TK” Foster admits he went a little overboard at times viewers never got to see the compete TK.

John Powell: Hey, TK how are you doing today?

Terran “TK” Foster: I’m good, man! I’m good. I mean, obviously a rough night last night but a good day today.

John Powell: You did say you don’t like to lose. How are you feeling about your exit?

Terran “TK” Foster: Yeah, a big loser yesterday (laughs) but I feel like it’s still okay. I think for this, I came in with the mindset that the reality of me winning this is so far-fetched. I’m not a person who can blend in and typically those are the people who win. I can’t blend. So, I felt like I wasn’t going to probably win but I wanted to just get as far as I could. I did what I did. I went out on my own terms so I can’t be too upset about it.

John Powell: A big deal was made about the comments you made after the challenge. Were you expecting it to go over as it did? Was it a shock to you that it didn’t ring true with some people?

Terran “TK” Foster: It was a shock to me because I literally had this same speech with them after every single challenge we did! We didn’t do well at any challenge up until that point so I’ve had the same speech where I’m like: You guys, we’ve got to work on this communication. We got to figure this out. We’ve got to figure out who needs to do what.

Everybody always was nonchalant about it. We were second place. We’re fine and it’s like: Second place is really close to last place, guys, so we need to figure this out! I feel just as a competitor it doesn’t matter what I’m doing I want to win and I think I wanted my tribe to have that same fire.

When I can hear from Jeff (Probst) that people were smiling and having a good time it was frustrating but it was also a little bit frustrating once you understand, John, like what actually happened in the challenge that’s not shown, which actually caused me to really be frustrated.

John Powell: What happened? Explain it to us.

Terran “TK” Foster: Essentially, going into that challenge, Gabe myself and Kyle, we offered to be the three who go on and complete the platform part, right? Gabe, he was so adamant. He wanted to be in the middle. ‘This is going to be my show.’ Whatever. I’m a team player. John, you really rarely see me trying to jump in front of the camera to do something like that. I’m doing all the teamwork stuff. If I need to get out and grab something, I’m getting out and doing it.

So Gabe is just like: I want to be in the middle. I want to be the highlight of this thing. I’m like: Okay, Gabe, cool. He gets in the middle of the challenge and essentially mid-challenge we fall at the same spot, like, seven times. You can see me in the challenge I’m telling them a couple times and they’re not listening.

At one point I tell Gabe that I have a different vantage point than him. There’s additional space on the other side of this thing. If you listen to me I can tell you how we can get around this…There’s an easier way to go around these things and Gabe literally yells at me: ‘One voice, my voice, nobody else talk!’ I’m like: What are we doing? No one else said a word to Gabe about it. So that was frustrating for me because there was no accountability in our tribe.

It really rang true for me with Gabe too because Gabe is actively hunting for idols every day. Nobody’s making this a big deal. What is Gabe doing that? I don’t know about that. No one cares when he’s doing these things so that was frustrating. I think it just came out and me letting the team know that I just expect more from us because I thought we would be a really strong team on paper.

John Powell: Did you think Tiyana would take your comment so hard and so personally?

Terran “TK” Foster: Yeah, it was weird, man. I still to this day don’t really understand why she took that personal to her. It was just a weird concept. Tiyana and I rarely talked on the island so even though we were a three, it was really more me saying we’re all three strong. We need to work together but Kyle was the intermediary between myself and Tiyana. Tiyana would talk to Kyle to get information to me and I realized really quickly Tiyana’s not really a fan of me. I even told Kyle that. I said: Kyle, I felt like Tiyana’s trying to edge me out and become your number two. It doesn’t seem like she’s a fan of me.

I was super thrown by her response because I’m like: Why are you so upset? You know we’re working together? Why would you think I’m calling you a loser? If I just said I don’t associate with losers and you’re in my alliance how would that make any sense? It doesn’t add up.

I don’t know what that came from, but what I will say, John, none of us are eating out there. None of us are really sleeping out there. A lot of us are irritable and I would say I was a little bit irritable too so I can understand if Tiyana was as well and maybe her mind just took that information in another way than it maybe would have if we weren’t in that situation.

John Powell: Most people in Survivor don’t want to take that leadership role because obviously a lot of times that puts a bull’s-eye on you. When there’s three tribes and there’s not very many people you have to work with sometimes you find people having to take that role because there’s just no other choice. Did you feel that way out there?

Terran “TK” Foster: Yeah, honestly in the competitive aspect of it I felt like I really set the tone for a lot of us when it came to challenges. I felt like when we were back at camp I also was always trying. Hey, let’s go find some food! Hey, let’s go do this! Hey, let’s do that! I felt like it was a lot of that.

There was a time when Caroline felt like she was being talked over by a lot of people in the tribe. I remember she mentioned that. I would catch people when they were talking over her and I’d be like: Hey, let’s let Caroline finish her thought.

So a lot of times I’m trying to help people and make everybody kind of be comfortable. I felt like at the end of the day, John, when I watch Survivor, the people I respected in the game were the people who did what they wanted to do. They made their own path. Other people who followed them? Great. I never in my life have been a follower and that just wasn’t going to work with me. I’m a good team player. You can ask Kyle. You can ask Tiyana. At any time we made any decision I said: Hey, are we all comfortable with this? Does anybody else have another idea we can talk about or consider?…At the end of the day I’m going to go what I want to do because if I go out I want to go off of what I did.

John Powell: We saw a bit of your relationship with Sue, the rocky one that it is. Do you think she came to the island with a bit of a chip on her shoulder? What do you think was going on there because she was quick to come after you.

Terran “TK” Foster: She came after me immediately. I’d say, John, this game, to be honest, we try to minimize it but everybody comes in with their own biases and things that they believe when they come into this game. You can’t really plan for how somebody’s going to react when they get into the game. When watching the show you can see she connected with Caroline because she’s like: “Oh, you look like my daughter so we’re close now, you know? That’s not really how you’re supposed to make relationships.

I mean, I don’t think she came in with the mindset of a strategic player. I think that everybody out there knew she wasn’t a strategic player. I think that’s why Gabe went to her immediately because he realized this is somebody he can manipulate. That’s kind of what that was. I think that she absolutely got manipulated but at the same time I don’t think she ever had a plan in any shape, way, form or capacity to connect with me because I think when she looked at me she didn’t see somebody that she can easily build some type of bond with but she didn’t try. I tried to talk to her on a multitude of occasions and she shut it down every time.

John Powell: Is there anything that happened on the island that you wish fans, viewers were able to see?

Terran “TK” Foster: I really wish they showed a lot of the real one-on-one conversations I had with my tribe. I think that episode really made it come across as if I was just like a tyrant and everybody was just tired of me running things or whatever the case was but that wasn’t really the case.

Caroline and I had a really long one-on-one conversation where we talked about a lot of things in life and just helping her with her confidence and things like that.

Tiyana and I had one really good conversation where we sat down and we talked about our relationships with our fathers. We talked about potentially having kids down the line and how we see that. She was like: You come across as a person who wouldn’t want a daughter. You seem like you would just want sons.

I’m like: Absolutely not! I would love to have a daughter! I’m explaining to her why and she starts crying…We had this breakthrough moment and she’s like: I didn’t realize that you were like this or you were somebody who was in tune with your emotions and things like that.

The only person I really didn’t have a conversation with was Sue. At one point, I did get Sue to just talk about her daughter a little bit and when she did she started crying. I’m like: Your daughter would be extremely proud of you just for being out here and I giving her all these words of affirmation and she still turns around and says: Oh, he’s a terrible person! Get rid of him!

I wish they had just showed some of those conversations but they really only showed the me trying to run everything but they’re not showing where I was getting these ideas of what was going on from.

John Powell: You bring up a really good point because people come into the game with their own preconceptions. Did you find that that’s what you were facing on the island a lot? Did you feel that you had to break through some of those perceptions, whatever those perceptions may have been?

Terran “TK” Foster: Kyle was the only person who came to me with an open mind and was like: Hey, man, you seem cool as hell. Let’s chop it up. I’m from a town with two waterways and we start talking about everything and we just start going and just having a conversation.

Gabe and I are from around the same area. He’s from Baltimore, I’m from ‘PG County’. They’re an hour away from each other. I went to college in Baltimore so we connected off of that. So that wasn’t really a big deal but I think what everybody else they probably just saw me as a jock who was coming in here, who was just this or that, and they didn’t really give me an opportunity.
Tiyana included. They didn’t really give me an opportunity to show who I was and even Caroline said the same thing at one point…I understand it’s TV though. You got to create somebody as the…you know…so I get it. I totally understand it.

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Survivor airs on Global TV on Wednesdays at 8:00 ET/PT. You can watch the latest episodes here.

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