'Survivor 46's Hunter McKnight Reveals Who Kept Him from Playing His Idol

Hunter McKnight

Survivor 46 is here! Every week, Parade.com's Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the castaway most recently voted off of the island.

Entropy is a thermodynamic concept that encapsulates the amount of chaos and disorder that exists within a system. And if there's anyone in Survivor 46 who understood the concept in theory, it's science teacher Hunter McKnight. The Mississippi native aimed to bring the order he maintained in the classroom to the island, setting himself up as a stable force in challenges and around camp. Unfortunately, while Hunter knew the most about entropy, he couldn't be prepared for the Survivor version of it. He struggled to keep his head on straight as chaos erupted around him, spiraling into a series of paranoia-fueled decisions. And while he had a great knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics, he broke a cardinal Survivor law: If the votes are coming your way, play your idol.

Hunter was initially overwhelmed by the big energy that the Nami tribe provided. But he found a kindred Southern spirit in Tevin Davis, who brought him into the fold socially. Alongside Soda Thompson, they ran the discordant Namis like Andy Griffith's sheriff department. All the while, Hunter was succeeding in his preseason mission, able to use his "good ol' boy" perception to fool the players into thinking he was just there for the adventure. It disguised the smarts of a man who nearly became a doctor, and some of his more underhanded maneuvers. This was most apparent when he successfully found his tribe's idol, keeping it a secret from friend and foe alike until the eleventh hour. After helping lead Nami to be one of the most dominant tribes in Survivor history, Hunter knew he was the number one challenge threat in the individual game. So he was thrilled when fellow Mississippian Q Burdette suggested an alliance of the strongest players to protect each other.

Unfortunately, unlike Hunter's island bed, it proved to be incredibly unstable. "The Six" never voted together once, and culminated in a wild Tribal Council where Q attempted to hijack the game and quit while everyone else blindsided Tevin. Hunter felt his game was demolished by Q and Nami, and knew his back was against the wall. So, trying to get the votes off him, he scrambled up and down the beach, revealing his idol to all who would hear. At Tribal Council, Hunter was the unruly kid in class, whispering to everyone to make sure the Q plan was locked in. His head as scrambled as his Survivor viewing experience, he felt safe with the new people he put his trust in, choosing not to play his idol. But it turns out the competition left him, much like the end of his impressive challenge win, looking upside-down. Chaos claimed another victim, and Hunter went out stunned and irritated at his own error.

Now out of the game, Hunter talks with Parade.com about what caused him to not play his idol, how his relationship with Q built and deteriorated, and how much he feels his experience building challenges helped him in the game.

Related: Read our Survivor 46 pre-game interview with Hunter McKnight

Hey, Hunter! How are you doing right now?
You know, it's weird. But it's nice I've ripped the band-aid off, that everyone knows. And it's tough with just how the edit looks, just how abysmal it looks like I am relating to people. [Laughs.] But it's the show and I know it happens.

Well let's get into it. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't start with you not playing your idol. You walked into Tribal Council ready to do it. So was there a particular person or interaction throughout the evening that had you ultimately deciding not to do it?
No, man. I was sick the whole time. What I'm frustrated about was, that last Tribal during the Tim vote out, I was very active. Like I was in the conversation going at it. But this one, I was spending time trying to read. Because with the fact that my idol had gotten out,  I told people. Which I don't think is a bad move, but it can be. Back and forth on that. Because it had gotten out, I knew they were gonna have to scramble and split votes. And so what I was trying to do was figure out how they were going to split the votes. I knew three people were at least outside of the vote. And that was revealed in the edit when they talked about, "Hey. Don't tell Q. Don't tell Liz." And honestly, I'm the third. So they have six people. And when I went to Venus, and I told her the plan, she knew there were three people that were willing to work with me to vote a certain way.

And so as I was sitting there, Tiffany just goes at Q. You saw a fraction of it, but it was so aggressive. [Laughs.] I mean, not unwarranted, mind you. It's not unwarranted at all. But she was very pointed, and they got to arguing back and forth. It was like Jeff was no longer the moderator. It was them going at each other. I began to think. I'm 90% sure Kenzie is voting for Q. I'm 90% sure Venus is. I know Charlie isn't. I know the Siga three are not. Kenzie had a conversation earlier, where she told me before I even talked about the idol, "The Siga three are writing your name down." So we had pretty good rapport. And so when I'm sitting there and Kenzie's like, "We're voting Q," I know that I can trust Kenzie. Even if the plan isn't to get Q out. I know she's writing Q. I know Venus is running Q.

And so it came down to Tiffany. If Tiffany right is writing Q's name down, it's three and three. And if Q writes my name down, it's 4-3. But Liz right now is so mad at Q and doesn't want to go to the plan that I was trying to go with Ben. If she writes Q and I write Q, I'm going to get to this Tribal with my idol still. And so when I spent so much time asking, I'm trying to read. I'm like, "Okay, Charlie's obviously lying." But it was Tiffany. Tiffany was the one! I've got to get a read on Tiffany. But she was so mad at Q for good reasons. There were multiple reasons why she should be frustrated at Q for blowing up lots of different things in her game. And so I was trusting that she wanted to end this dude, and they were going to split 3-3. Because if they split 3-3, I make it through with my idol, we're having a completely different conversation. Because now Hunter's at Final Eight and still has the idol. I knew I was getting at least three votes. But it was four and so that's what did it.

It seemed like absolute mayhem for you the afternoon before. You mention, after the Tevin vote, you basically have to start over building trust with people. You get approached with this Tiffany plan, but then you get worried it still may be you, so you start running around telling everyone about your idol. Talk to me about everything that was happening during the scramble.
So, when Jeff puts the necklace on Charlie, and it's like, "Guaranteed a spot in the Final Eight," in my head I'm like, "I got a guaranteed spot too, because I'm playing this idol tonight!" What it doesn't show, and this is bad on my part. I can look back retrospectively, it's terrible. When I'm on that thing, they are actively cheering for me to fall off. They are wanting me to be the guy that falls off of this thing. I can tell. But I'm like, "I've got a chance."

And so I go back, and I want to work with Charlie and Maria. Q did a lot of damage to my game just in this sporadic gameplay. After the Tim vote, he instantly started me against Tiffany. He came and said Tiffany was trying to vote me out. And then the next day he goes around telling Tiffany that I'm the one who's throwing her name out, I'm the one telling her everyone about the idol. And so Tiffany now viscerally does not want to work with me. And by default, Kenzie doesn't either. Venus doesn't like me, for whatever reason. And then Liz just blew up our game by voting out our tight alliance of three at Final 10. And so who am I supposed to work with?

So my only chance is to work with Charlie and Maria. I respected their game by not telling Tevin. I was like, "I have to have some weight in that game." And so I go and I talk with them. When I go, they make that approach about Tiffany. "We're gonna blindside Tiff." And I was like, "This feels fake. But I will think about it. We'll try to do it." I was too trusting. I'm like, "I'm not going to tell Tiffany they're trying to do it. And I'm not going to tell Venus." The moment when Venus comes up to me and is like, "Hey, Mr. Strategy," that was after the conversation I have where we were gonna blindside Tiffany. And so I'm not going to tell Venus anything of what's happening. And so that's why I was pretty quiet with her on that.

Interesting! So that talk with Venus and Q actually happened after the challenge, rather than before like we saw in the edit?
Right. So I was sitting on the boat with Maria. And they left and Q came and sat by me. And that's when Venus came over. So we had the plan to vote Tiffany in that moment, and we can't tell anybody. So Q and Venus were both trying to work with me. I'm like, "I've got a plan that I'm working on. I'm not going to go with y'all. Because nobody wants to work with y'all." And so I just sat there and spent more time. And when I saw Ben and Charlie and Maria speaking in hushed tones on the boat, I was like, "Okay, logically, it doesn't make sense why they would want to vote somebody else out."

If they get me to a certain point, I have a good chance. Whenever we get past the "you have to last as long as you can challenges" to the "you have to go as fast as you can" challenges. I think that's the point where I'm going to really take over in these. And so I was like, "It doesn't make sense. "And so that's when I started doing the math in my head. And I'm like, "I've got to not just use my idol. I've got to use my idol in a way that puts me in a position to do better later."

And so I went to Q, and I said, "This is what we've got to do." I knew if they split 4-2 then we had to have three. And so I went to Q, and I went to Liz. And I even went to Venus. Because the four of us, weirdly enough, we're all on the bottom. It's not like we have great alliances. And so I said, "We can have four and four. And after this vote, we can draw rocks. We can be that serious about it." So I wanted to give him a chance. Obviously, Venus was it for it. But I was going into Tribal like I was playing my idol. Even before that, I said, "I'm gonna play my Shot in the Dark. If it fails, then I'll play my idol." That was me going in. But when we get there, and I know they know I have my idol because I know Venus told everybody, and because Kenzie had told me the truth about the Sigas coming for me, and then she changed and said, "No it's gonna be Q," I got lulled in there.

Yeah, talk to me about this relationship with Kenzie. Because you call her your number one in the last episode after you lost Tevin. Was this a deep-seeded relationship, or something that popped up recently?
No, this was something that I had been working on for a while. When we got to the merge, I didn't trust Siga at all. Tim hadn't told Maria about the alliance. Siga was like best friends. You couldn't get a read on who was with who. And so I didn't trust Siga at all. And so what I wanted was the three Yanu, Q, Tiffany, and Kenzie. And then me, Liz, and Tevin. Me, Liz, and Tevin were very, very close. It didn't show it. We were super close. And so I said, "I've got to work on Kenzie. Because Kenzie is outside of the group." Whenever she says she already knew about the six, she knew about it because I had told her way back. I said, "Look, Q trying to push this whole 'two from each thing.' I'm trying to push a six, that's three Yanu and three Nami."

And so when we were at the Siga beach for the Tim vote, me and Kenzie spent a ton of time together. She had all those flowers in our hair. I had found this flower field and we went out there and I was trying to weed this flower crown for her. And we're just chatting about life. I spent a lot of time with her there. And then back at the at Nami, I had this like secret room of this tree where I kept my idol hidden. It's a really cool spot that I love because I'm a nature person. And I showed Kenzie and connected on that. We just talked about some similarities that we had with some different family stuff, and collected seashells. And so I had been fostering a relationship with Kenzie for a while. I wanted to work with Kenzie. And so it was burned because whenever Q went to Tiffany and is like, "Hey, Hunter did all this stuff against you," it was also against Kenzie. But I was still trying to foster that. Because I had to work with somebody. I was doing damage control not from my own gameplay, but from someone that I had gotten into bed with, I guess.

Well let's talk about that guy you got in bed with. Because you and Q were clocking each other from the beginning as both being from Mississippi and wanting to work together. Talk to me about how your relationship developed, and then deteriorated.
That was really tough. The moment I saw he had a Mississippi tattoo and an Ole Miss backpack, I was like, "Okay, this is a guy from home. I feel like I can work with him." And I think he was very gung ho about it as well. But I want you to think about this. Whenever we were going into merge, I was very much working with Q. And so by default, I thought I was working with Tiffany because they seemed like they were really close. And so if we hit it off very quickly, a lot of trust was there.

But the moment he came and instantly told me, "Tiffany's trying to vote you out" after the Tim vote, it's like, "Oh, this guy can't take his foot off the gas even for a second. He can't chill out for a second." Because he just turned on his number one who has an idol to me because, in his words, "All they do is kiki on the beach. I can't have that. That's all they want to do is kiki on the beach." And I'm like, "We're in such a good spot. Why are we doing this?" But he was so aggressive. The other group hadn't even got back from Tribal. We hadn't seen who was there. He was so aggressive about it. And I was like, "Whoa, this is this is wild."

And so then whenever he brings up wanting to vote out Tiffany, because she mentioned Maria. I was there with Tiffany. Tiffany, Q, Kenzie, and me were all together openly talking strategy. I was so much with the Yanu four, because I'm the fourth. But whenever she mentioned Maria, it was in passing. She's like, "Or we could do Maria because she's a mom, and she's gonna be big threat in the end." He takes that and runs with it. He goes and tells Maria, I'm there when he tells me. I'm like, "What are we doing?" And then he tells Tiffany that I'm the one who told Maria because it blew up on him. And so I'm like, T"his guy is trying to vote out his number one ally who has an idol with him."

Think about the position that we were in. Me, Tevin, Q, and Tiffany were pretty locked in at merge because of just connections. And because of Q's workings, he had a guy working with him that had an extra vote, a girl who had an idol, and another guy who had an idol all around him. And he was able to completely blow up at least two of their games and ruin it. Boston Rob had this great strategy of working with his big group and commandeering, I think he tried to do that. Except Boston Rob had the mindset of, "We're going to make the other people the villains. We're going to villainize the people on the other side." Q villainized the people in the group! [Laughs.] He did not work to give us together. And then I hear that he's trying to throw the challenge to get me out. I'm like, "Come on, man!" You're the D-1 football player. Why are you trying to throw challenges for the guy who's from Mississippi, who you want to work with?

You helped lead Nami to one of the most dominant challenge performances we've seen in Survivor history, let alone in the new era. So did it surprise you at all to see your group fall apart completely when the individual game hit?
No, that was not a surprise at all. I was preaching that to everybody who would listen, "Nami hates each other." The moment I wasn't there for Tribal, they all went after each other. They were trying to kill each other. What wasn't shown very much at Mergatory was I was actively having to campaign for Venus to keep her to stay. She was working so hard to get herself out of the game. The way she was scrambling, everyone was like, "Venus we cannot work with her." I'm like, "No, we've got to get rid of a Siga because they're so close together." And so I went to bat for her. I was like, "She's got to stay." I went to talk to her. I said, "Venus, please. Just don't try to push it on somebody else. We don't have the control. They're willing to work with us if we're willing to do what they say." But she was just going crazy. And so it took a lot of me having to go to bat for her, which makes me not understand why she resented me so much. But that's okay.

But I wish I was there for the Soda vote. Because something that kept Liz so unified to me and Tevan was her disdain for Soda. Maybe "disdain" is too strong a word. Her wanting to get Soda out. Liz was willing to work with me and Tevin, because it was our avenue to get Soda out. And so I probably would pushed a little more Venus. But it was tough because Q was trying to tell Tevin how to play his game before he went to the vote. And so then it's hard for Tevin to say, "I'm gonna vote Venus" when Q just told him to do that. And so that is what caused the rift. And then all of a sudden, everyone's trying to claim this big move. It's like, "Guys, they came in 11th place. You're gonna claim this for how long? Come on!" [Laughs.] And then Liz was trying to make a big move at Final 10. I'm like, "Why are we making a big move against the guy who trusts us so explicitly?! Why are we doing this now?" I have worked so hard socially with the people who want to destroy each other.

Lastly, we saw all the challenges that you made for the Survivor games you run with your students and got to practice before coming out. But now that you've been through the show proper, how much do you feel that was able to prepare you?
When people say "prep," and I love that every time I did well in a challenge, that one was all of a sudden in my backyard. And people would say, "Well, he practices in his basement or whatever." I didn't really practice. I do these games, and I build them. And the kids do them twice a year. And then they stay in my house or they stay in my storage area. And so it's not like I'm practicing.

But there are basic things in Survivor that, if you're good at, then you're going to do well in challenges. Balance, tossing things, swimming. Those are all things that I've done growing up for years. My childhood in a nutshell was all these little games. But with the puzzles, it's not because I made replica puzzles. It's because I get the idea of how puzzles work, like the idea of them being reversible and things you should look fo. Don't focus so much on the pieces; look at the design on the pieces. Those things helped me. I had to be on the producer side and say, "Hey, what would be a fun challenge to make?" And so you get to see the idea of it. And if you spend that much time thinking about challenges and making them, whether you practice them or not, it usually helps. [Laughs.]

Next, check out our interview with Tevin Davis, who was voted out in Survivor 46 Episode 8.