Tevin Davis says he can’t comprehend what Q was doing at “Survivor 46” Tribal Council

The ousted player also reveals he and Venus had a secret safe word.

Tevin Davis was the first voice we heard on Survivor 46. But he will not be the last. Tevin was blindsided out of the game after Liz Wilcox took offense at him taking all the credit for getting Soda Thompson out, and then the rest of the tribe chose not to take Q Burdette up on his offer to quit the game. After a wild scramble at Tribal Council, Tevin was almost unanimously voted out, with only Andy Griffith alliance partner Hunter McKnight staying true (although Hunter did not tip him off, nor give him his immunity idol).

How does Tevin feel about his undoing? Was there more to his vote-off than we saw on TV? Does he think Q was really trying to quit? And did he ever come clean to Soda at Ponderosa? We asked Survivor 46’s second jury member all that and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: First off, I want to apologize for making you my winner pick, because that has become something of a jinx for people, so I feel this may all be my fault.

TEVIN DAVIS: Your fault, Dalton. It is your fault. So thank you for that.

How shocked were you when you saw your name coming up at Tribal Council?

I was shocked, but I had a feeling that day that something was wrong. And I actually had gone to Liz that day and said, “Liz, something isn't right. It could easily be me tonight. I feel something is off.” She was like, “No, you're fine.” But I felt like something was off. But when I did see my name, I was very shocked because I did feel comfortable, and I mean, that's the point of a blindside — to make the person feel as comfortable as possible. And I did feel like there was no way. And then when Q went chaotic like he did at Tribal, I was so confused and the thought of me going home completely was out of my brain and I was like. I don't even know what's happening anymore. So it was a big shock.

Are you surprised Hunter didn't give you a heads-up that your name was out there, or play his idol for you? You were his ride-or-die.

Yeah, I was a little shocked that that had happened. And during the Tribal, I kept looking back [at him] like, “What's happening?” I knew that something was happening, but I wasn't sure. And then whatever Q was referring to, I was like: "What is he talking about?" I wasn't in on whatever the thing is he was talking about and maybe they knew. I was looking around and I was shocked that he didn't let me know. I'm not exactly sure why, but that was shocking to know that information.

What was it like for you after you had a moment to process everything, because you can fool some people with that million-dollar smile of yours, Tevin, but I know how competitive you are, and I know on some level that had to hurt.

It definitely hurt to be voted out of the game, but I had been saying the whole time when I first got there: Me being here is the win. So that is where my positivity and optimism comes into play real strong because I think about where I've been and where I am now and the fact that I even got to play the game, that I got to do all these amazing things and show my true authentic self in the way that I did. So I was hurt by it, and I was sad, and I was like: "Oh my God, I wanted to win." And how life-changing it would've been to win with what I was playing for. But once I sat down and thought about how far I had come and how proud I was of myself, I didn't sit there too long.

We'll see how long this lasts, but was it tough having to sit on the jury and look over and see Venus still in the game?

It was, but they got me. You know what I'm saying? That's the game. They outwitted, outplayed, and they outlasted me. And yeah, Venus is still in there, but I'm like, "God, they got me." So I wasn't harboring any ill feelings to anybody over there. Y'all got me. Y'all did the thing. That's what I came here to play.

What was the experience like watching it all play back on TV last night?

It's crazy. Anytime I watch anything on the show, I don't actually remember ever saying any of that stuff. And I'm like, “I can't believe I just said I'm out here for money!” It's things that I just don't remember because you're so zoned into the game and I don't recall everything that I did. So watching it back was kind of like, wow! Some stuff I remembered, some stuff I didn't.

And then to see the stuff that's left out, what people were saying, how they were starting to plot, what they were saying to me, how they were trying to convince me, or other people's motives and how their games were absolutely not in alignment with mine — seeing all that play back, it was interesting to watch and fascinating to see how people's brains work. The thing about the game is that watching Survivor and playing Survivor are two different sports. They're not the same at all, so people will watch it and see something, but when we're out there, we don't have the same information as the viewers have. And so the decisions that we make are based solely on what we know at the time, and I just didn't know all of the information at the time. And so that's why a lot of decisions were made.

As viewers, we can only judge on what we see and what they show us. So was your exit as simple as you just taking too much credit for the Soda vote in front of Liz, or was it something more?

There is a lot more, actually. I personally feel like there were a lot of things that were not shown in my specific edit that is critical to explaining how we got from moment one on the beach to my demise last night. One of the things to understand is I wasn't trying to take any credit. So I did not say “No” at Tribal after Venus had said that was taking credit for Soda. What I did was swallow. What I also did was inhale and exhale and pretend that I was shocked that Soda was going home, knowing full well that Soda was going home. So I was very much like, “I can't believe this is happening.” But I did not say “No.”

And I wasn't trying to run around and make everyone know that I took credit. I told Liz, but I was working with Liz at the time. I wasn't flagrantly running around telling everyone that I was the person for Soda's vote.

Why take out Soda at that point?

The way that I chose to do Soda, I know there are questions about like, “Why wouldn't you pull Venus in as a number?” Or “Why did you go after Soda? She was your ally. Why would you go after her? Why wouldn't you get Charlie? He was right there?” There were so many other things happening in the game that you didn't see. From the journey on day two, Maria was like, “What was the color of the pen on the vote card if you had it?” And I was like, “I don't know.”

Jelinsky knew what the color was. I did not. And I said, “Maria, listen, I can't offer you anything to prove my trust to you. I don't have any money, I have nothing, but what I can offer you is an alliance. So if you and I can make it to merge, we can work something out later.” And then at some point, Jelinsky kind of got in on that and I said, “Shall we make a deal on it?” And that's actually in the clip when I crossed my arms and said, “Shall we make a deal?”

So I thought: I can't vote Charlie out of the game because that's going to rattle Maria. That's going to ruin the trust that I've been trying to build with her since day two. I thought about doing Venus, but I couldn't do Venus because after that immunity challenge where me and Maria were the last two, Q pulled me out of the water from the platform and he said, “Vote Venus.”

And I thought about it and I was like, "Oh, that's so great. I can vote Venus. I know what to do." And I got back to camp and I went: "Q's been telling everyone what to do and he's not going to tell me what to do. He's not going to run this game, because if he gets to the end and I get to the end, then he's going to have a lot to say about how he was running this game and that's not going to happen here." So ironically, him telling me to vote Venus ensured that Venus didn't go home that night, even though that was my initial target. And so it is so much chaos just all around and there were a lot of things that weren't shown that added to why I chose the things that I chose.

Why did you and Venus chafe so much around each other? It seemed to happen pretty quickly and never got better.

I actually was very excited to meet Venus when I first got to the beach. I wanted to work with her, and I was like, I think I'm really going to like her. And it was quite immediate that our energies didn't align. And I set very clear boundaries for myself. I said, "I'm coming into this game authentically as myself and I will refuse to allow someone to treat me any kind of way, to be disrespectful to me, or to treat me as if I'm not worthy of any type of respect. And so Venus was crossing some of those boundaries with me and I kept trying to tell her, “Hey, this is something that you're doing.” And every time that I told her, I felt like I was being met with, “Well, you're just interpreting it that way. That's not what I'm doing to you at all.”

And I'm like, “There's intention versus impact. Though I understand you may not intend to do this, the impact is what I'm telling you I feel.” And there's a deleted scene where it looks as if Venus pulls me to the side and kind of confronts me. What actually happened is that I pulled Venus to the side and confronted her, because I wanted to talk so that we could start respecting each other a little bit more. And this was quite early. I was trying to explain why she might've been on the bottom. And every time I would try to explain that, she would say, “Well, actually, here's my reason for why this happened.” And she would never let me fully explain my perspective on things. So it got a little tense.

I said, “Let's go a little bit further and go sit down and start this conversation over.” So we sat down, we talked for a lot more. That's also in the scene, but it's only kind of through her lens. We talked for what I perceived to be about an hour. And while we were talking and discussing things, I was like, “Okay, Venus: How about I tell you what your problem is with me, and you tell me what my problem is with you? So we understand each other very clearly and we can respect each other going forward.” I told her, “I'm making you feel like a social pariah. I'm ignoring you. I'm not listening to you. Your voice is not being heard. Is that correct?” Yes. “Now, Venus, what's my problem?” And she was very much like, “Well, I think you're just interpreting what I'm doing wrong.”

And I was like, “Okay, this isn't going to work. How about we make a safe word? How about the word be sunflower? If I say sunflower, if you say sunflower, that means one of us has done something to hurt the other one. We can talk about it, we can address it, and then we'll move on and we can discuss it at a later time.” We agreed. We were good.

The last thing I said to Venus in that spot was, “Nobody would expect you and I to work together. You and I can run this game from top to bottom and nobody would ever know it was us. Do you want to be in an alliance with me?” She said yes, and we agreed. I said, “Now when we go back to camp, let's keep it cute. Let's just pretend like we are still on opposite ends of the spectrum. You don't like me, I don't like you, and let's just keep it like that and let's play the roles.”

We went back to camp and you'll see in the scene in the show that we kind of stormed back to camp. That was all part of the play, but that didn't last too long because she immediately started throwing my name around. And so it kind of immediately crumbled, and I resigned myself from it and said: I tried and I had been trying.

And honestly, every person on Nami tried to be very nice. They didn't show how much Soda was bending backwards for Venus. They didn't show Liz being extraordinarily nice. They didn't show Randen going out of his way — well, they did show it a little bit. I'm going out of my way, Hunter’s going out of his way. We all went out of our way to really try to make her feel comfortable, and we had to talk one night about how she wasn't being heard. And we really listened to her, but it didn't work out.

So I want to get your perspective on what was going on with Q at that Tribal Council. What do you make of him saying he wanted everyone to vote him out? Was he trying to quit? Because we've seen other instances where he has seemed to flirt with the idea of tapping out. Or, as I'm sure he is going to tell us next week, was it all some mastermind ploy?

This is where it gets confusing because. again, watching Survivor and playing Survivor are two different things. So as a viewer watching, I'm going, well, he's already quit a couple of times, and then he flips it and says, “Oh, I was kidding. That was all part of the plan.” So I don't know what to believe anymore. But in that moment, when I was sitting there playing the game, I genuinely thought he wanted to quit.

But I didn't understand it because whatever he was referring to about him being partially responsible for what happened, I didn't understand what he was saying. So I thought he was going to go, which is why I said, “You leaving would affect my strategy, but if you want to go, you're a grown man, this is a game for a million dollars. I'm not going to coddle you to stay. If you want to go, you can go.” So I did feel like he was being serious, but as a viewer I'm like, “Ah, I don't know.” But then what is his rationale for why he did that? I can't comprehend it.

You put the vote on Venus the previous week because you wanted to protect against an idol or a Shot in the Dark, and you also wanted to keep Soda in your good graces on the jury. So what did you tell Soda about your role in her vote out when you got to Ponderosa?

Oh, I told her. I told her that it was me that was doing it and that I absolutely did it.

How did she react?

I think Soda respects game. We saw that in the episode and how she was like, “Venus, you got me. Good game.” So she respected game and that was kind of it. And I think that she understood that it was something that had to be done, because from my perspective, I understand people may view Soda as my ally. I didn't view Soda as my ally. Hunter was my number one. They didn't show how close Soda and Venus were, but they were absolutely joined at the hip. They would argue and fight. They’d come back together. I mean, it was crazy to watch.

And so when Soda came to me and told me that she was my number one, I said: Two things are possible and one of them is true. Either Venus is still is your number one and you're lying to me to make me comfortable to get me voted out of the game, or Venus was your number one, in which case you are willing — if your game depends on it — to cut your number one in order to get better positioning in the game. Either way, that leaves me at a disadvantage. And she said in her exit interview that Venus was her number one, which means that my read on that was correct. Either way,  I couldn't trust her because of those things. So I think she respected it.

What’s something else that happened out there on the island that didn’t make it to TV that you wish we had a chance to see?

Maria and I didn't know that we had extra votes until the basketball challenge. And when I saw Maria sit out that challenge, I immediately raised my hand and went to sit out, and I asked her, “Who did you pick for the vote card? And she said, “I picked you. Did you have it?” And I said yes. And so that was the moment that we found out, and that was the reason that I wanted to sit out. Otherwise, I didn't really want to sit out any challenges, but I needed to know that information.

I think that built a little bit of trust with me and Maria on top of the trust that we had started building from the journey on day two. You didn't get to see that, which was another reason why I didn't go after Charlie. And then [voting for] Soda was even more of a like, “Let's do that!”

I thought I saw you looking for an advantage or something under the bench at one point. So I was like, maybe that's why he sat out.

Oh, once I got there, I was like, "Maybe something's under here!" But then I was like: They'd have to put one under both, and then two people sat out at Siga so it doesn't make sense to put one out here. But more importantly, I wanted to sit out to talk to Maria about our extra vote because that was critical to me at the time

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