This week on Survivor: Philippines, former Major League Baseball star Jeff Kent was voted out during a shocking Tribal Council that flushed out two immunity idols.
Although former National League MVP Jeff Kent made it to the merge on Survivor: Philippines with only one person knowing his baseball past, Kent became a last minute target this week and was surprisingly voted out the game.
What was most surprising about Kent leaving the game was that two immunity idols were flushed out to everyone at Tribal Council, one with Malcolm and the other with Abi-Maria.
When Jeff learned he was going home, let’s just say that the former baseball star was pissed… and still is!
The day after one of the most memorable Tribal Council’s in Survivor history, The Deadbolt caught up with Jeff Kent to learn more about what happened, what pissed him off the most, his thoughts on Penner, and playing the game in Survivor: Philippines.
THE DEADBOLT: What were your thoughts when both of the idols got flushed out at Tribal Council, especially when Abi revealed hers?
JEFF KENT: It was pretty crazy stuff! I think going into Tribal Council, Malcolm was kind of pissed off that they started to throw his name around. He was really pissed off that Lisa had divulged his secret since he trusted her about that.
So it wasn’t absolutely surprising to me that Malcom took [his] idol out and threatened everybody with it, because I really believed at that time he was going to use it as a tool so he didn’t have to use it that night.
Knowing Abi-Maria’s personality as well as we all did, we had an understanding that she may have it, either with her or it was Pete. But we kind of thought it was her. Abi-Maria has the personality, “If you get in my face, I’m going to get in your face first.”
When she hauled that sucker out and said, “here you go, ” I think she understood how Malcolm was trying to play his, so she did the same thing.
It wasn’t so surprising that that was going on. What was more surprising was that we were still scrambling on who we were going to vote for that night.
Carter Williams, Jonathan Penner and Jeff Kent during the seventh episode of Survivor: Philippines, Wednesday. Photo: Monty Brinton/CBS© 2012
THE DEADBOLT: When you watched it all play out on TV, aside from getting voted out, what pissed you off the most?
JEFF: Having my name thrown out there to be voted out 15 minutes before we went to Tribal Council and not really have the time to fix the wrong that was thrown toward me.
You know, a day or two before was a scenario I tried to make happen where I went to Denise and tried to get her to play more of an offensive game and to vote with me, Carter, Skupin and Penner to create an alliance. But she didn’t want anything to do with it. I was kind of upset that I didn’t try harder. But I was playing a fine line because I didn’t want to be too pushy and be overbearing.
That alliance just didn’t work out, so we went in with our tails between our legs. We were going to vote Skupin because he was a veteran player. We all thought that was going to happen but it flipped on us in the last hour. So that whole day, day and a half process, it was just a bad day and I ended up getting the short end of the stick.
THE DEADBOLT: Do you think you focused too much on Penner and not enough on Malcolm or Pete? How do you see it?
JEFF: You know, it was perceived that I was focused and obsessed with Penner, and that’s really not the case. There was never a time when I voted for Penner.
I fed Penner information about how he needed to use his idol because they were coming after him. I was working with Penner on trying to get votes for the Kalabaw tribe, because Denise never wanted to vote with us. She always wanted to go with Malcolm.
Maybe a big disappointment was that I tried to communicate to Malcolm through Denise. I should have probably just taken the bigger initiative and just went to Malcolm – which I did a couple of times but not on a very big level – and say, “Hey, let’s do this instead.” But I never really did that.
I used Denise because I had a better relationship with her since she was with us for a few days. But it didn’t really play out.
How did you feel about Jeff getting voted out this week?