TK Foster says 'the water is nasty' on Survivor

TK just got TKO’d. (Sorry, bad boxing pun. Couldn’t resist.) Tk Foster didn’t like how his tribe reacted after losing the day 5 immunity challenge on Survivor 47, and he let them know about it. But that reaction to the loss may have contributed to TK losing the game, as he was later voted out by the Tuku tribe, with only his island BFF Kyle Ostwald sticking by his side.

How surprised was TK by his ouster? Does he think his comments after the challenge were responsible for him being voted out? We asked the 31-year-old athlete marketing manager about that, while also inquiring if he learned about Gabe’s idol, why Tiyana chafed around him, and keeping a sleepy Sue Smey awake on the beach.

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What happened? Why are you talking to me right now?

TK FOSTER: There are a lot of things that happened. I think honestly, my downfall started as soon as I did that first one-on-one challenge against Aysha to go get the supplies. Having that additional time to talk to my tribemates that I missed really set me back. I didn't even realize that Gabe and Sue had a thing from day one. I had no idea that that was even happening. So when I came back, I didn't realize I was already so much behind the eight ball there by the time we get to the challenge, where I kind of just let out and expressed my emotions. I'm just a fiery competitor. I've been competitive my whole life. My whole family's that way. So we hate losing, doesn't matter what we're doing.

There's a point in that challenge they don't show where Gabe and I are essentially talking when we're maneuvering that ball through. And I remember telling Gabe like, “Oh, I know how to get around this hole. There's a certain way we need to do it.” And I remember him kind of just shunning me almost, and was like, “No one voice, only one voice should be talking right now.” So that built up some frustration where it was like, “Oh my God, this is supposed to be the ultimate communication challenge here and we're not communicating.” And I really just wanted to stress that to my tribe at that moment, “Guys, we are too strong of a tribe to lose challenges and I think we need to communicate better.” But apparently I didn't communicate that well enough, so it ended up not working out.

You said at one point after you all lost the challenge that “If you’re going to be on my tribe, everybody needs to have the same mindset that I have.” And you also said, “I’m going to start telling people what we’re doing.” Was that part of your problem, that people didn’t want to be told what to do?

No, not really. Because the only people I really actually had any type of strategical conversations with were myself, Kyle, and Tiyana. There was really no one else to tell to do anything. Again, this is all with the mindset that I had no idea Sue and Gabe were a thing, so I thought Gabe was with us as well. So I'm thinking. "Hey, we keep this simple. We get rid of Sue." But when I'm talking about “I'm going to start telling people what to do,” I mean more along the lines of we need to communicate better after these challenges. We need to do a debrief, see what we did, we'll see what we didn't do well.

And that's something else they didn't show: After every challenge we lost, which were most of them before I left, I would talk to my tribe and just say, “Hey guys, we need to up this because we're going to end up being third. If we're second, that's very close to third, and that's very close to last. So we need to get this together and try not to be here because the next one's an immunity challenge.” And that's the situation we ended up being in.

So I don't think it was something where I wanted to tell everybody what to do as far as their gameplay, because I think anybody who worked with me will tell you that I always sat back and said, “Hey guys, this is what I think. I would love to hear what you guys think.” And I've done that every time in every decision we make. But it's just a mentality where you can't come in being okay with the prospect of losing. And when you have that mentality, it makes you not go as hard as you can.

Beyond Jeff’s comment that people were smiling, did you see a lack of effort or focus during the challenge?

Yeah, again, to the point where Gabe's not communicating with me at all, but then also my tribe is behind him. They see me trying to communicate with Gabe and nobody's like, “Gabe, listen, because we're dropping at the same point every time.” And I think at one point Kyle literally stops and says, “Alright, Gabe, maybe we should listen to TK. I think he has a different vantage point than you. He might know how to get around some things.” And Gabe's like “One voice, only one voice talks, we're only listening to me.”

So at that point it just let me know: Okay, we're not operating as a tribe here. We have people who are on solo missions here and they have their own different things they're trying to get accomplished. But if I had known how secure Gabe was, I would realize why he was as confident to be that way, because he had his three, and I had no idea that that was the case. And now it makes sense why nobody said anything when Gabe was not listening to me, because that was their alliance member. So it hit me really quickly that the game that's on the island when you're doing your social game quickly can transition into the challenges as well, because it determines how you handle certain things.

You went into Tribal Council thinking you had a solid alliance of four, so how surprised were you in the moment when you saw your name came up four times?

After the challenge, nobody really came to me to give me a high five or say good job or anything like that. And this is before I even spoke my mind. So I already was feeling a little bit like: Okay, what's going on here? So once we got back to the island, I knew Gabe wasn't with me entirely, because as you can see in the show, I wasn't with Gabe entirely either. I was a bit surprised that he chose to go that route, but ultimately now watching the show, I understand why he went that route. But prior to seeing it, I had no idea that that was going to happen. So I was fairly surprised, but I wouldn't say I was shocked, like “I can't believe this happened.” I knew there was an opportunity that it could, I just didn't think Gabe would be the one to do it.

You caught Gabe finding the key to his Beware Advantage box. What happened after in terms of your conversations with him about that. Did he tell you he found the idol? Were you asking? Where did that all go?

Fairly quickly after we had that whole quick conversation, I realized that Gabe's lying to me about a lot of stuff. Kyle and I were hunting for crab one day, and Gabe comes up to me and he pulls me to the side and he's like, “Hey, TK, I still haven't found that advantage yet. As soon as I find it, I'll let you know.” And you can tell if somebody's being genuine with you or not. And at that moment, I can obviously tell Gabe was not being genuine with me at all. So the moment he said that to me, I was like, “Okay, Gabe's lying to me.”

So I immediately went to Kyle and said, “Gabe has an idol and I just need you to know that, and when it's time, we're going to let Tiyana know as well.” And then we let Tiyana know. So everybody eventually knew he had an idol, it wasn't a secret. I think Gabe already had it and his intention was that he was going to play that idol once everybody knew. And we all knew that as well. So the conversation was really around, “We can't vote for Gabe.”

Because if it was up to me and he didn't have that idol, to be honest with you, I would've voted for Gabe that night because of how he was playing. He was playing very erratic. A lot of people knew what he was doing. He got caught by multiple different people, multiple different times. There's even times I caught him talking to Caroline at like two, three in the morning. I catch them on the beach conversing together, and it's just like: Alright, this guy is not trustworthy.

But at the same time, what opportunities do I have? I had to get four people. If me, Tiyana, and Kyle are the three, I had to swing somebody. Sue and Caroline were a pair that we all knew about. They even told us that on the island. Sue and Caroline said, "We're not going to vote for each other.” So they're literally a pair. So the only person you really have is Gabe. So it didn't leave me many options.

Why do you think Tiyana was having issues with you out there? Clearly, she was chafing a little bit at how you guys were interacting.

Honestly, I have the same questions. Tiyana and I rarely spoke when we were on the island, I tried to talk to Tiyana a couple times. We had a couple conversations that were casual. I think we had one really, really good conversation where we talked about a lot of life things — just getting raised, how our fathers in our lives are not in our lives, whatever the case may be for our separate situations. And if I want kids, if she wants kids, and how I see myself as a dad. We had all these conversations. We were breaking down and crying again about certain stuff.

We had these moments, but I'm not sure exactly why she decided to take that moment so personal when I never at any point in time said, “Tiyana’s dropping the ball here.” I don't know why she took it so personal. Especially if you're supposed to be in an alliance with me, why would you automatically assume that I was talking about you?  

So that was just a weird situation all the way around because I think at the end of the day for Tiyana — in my mind, I didn't think she would flip because it didn't make any sense to go from being a part of a strong three to go be the four with someone else. It didn't make sense. But again, I guess as Gabe said in the show, he took advantage of the fact that Tiyana was emotional at that point and wanted to make her make an emotional decision. And she did. And I guess the chips will fall where they may as far as if she made the right decision or not. But obviously, in my point of view, I don't think she did.

Okay, what happened on the beach when Sue and Tiyana were trying to sleep, and you and Kyle having a brodown throwdown right next to them?

Man, that was such a weird…. I just want to know why was I soloed out as the only one who was talking? It was just like, “Oh, why is TK talking?” We're both talking! I'm not talking to myself! We were all laying down. We were chilling. Kyle, I would say, talks the most out of anybody on our tribe. He was constantly talking about something. And I think at one point Kyle and I are just sitting there, and we can't sleep and we just start talking.

We're just having a conversation about, I mean, you're on a beautiful island. You're looking at this great view. We're on the show. We're on the greatest game show of all time. Why are we pressing about sleeping? We weren't anticipating sleeping anyway before we came out here. Let's talk. Let's chop it up. Let's get to know each other. So I just felt like that was weird that if they were so bothered by it, why they didn't just get up and move over? There's a whole island that we pretty much own. You guys could go right down the street a little bit and take your nap over there. I didn't realize it was that irritating to people to just be yourself and have a conversation. That one threw me for a loop as well, but I guess I couldn't do anything right at this point.

We saw at the challenge how much you hate losing, so how did you handle being voted out first from your tribe, because I’m sure that was not easy.

It was a little tough. But at the same time, I can say that coming into this, I knew I was going to be top priority number one to get out. Also, a lot of people were really excited when they saw our tribe because they're like, “Oh my God, we're so strong!” Me, to be honest, I wasn't that excited when I saw our tribe, because I said, “Well, this essentially takes my biggest asset out of the picture because we have a lot of strong people in our tribe.”

So I mean, yeah, I'm the strongest, but you don't necessarily need that when you have five other strong people. Now, if I'm on Gata or Lavo, I'm probably an indispensable piece until we get to the merge because they need that physicality on their side, as opposed to us where we have three really strong guys. Sue is really strong. Tiyana's the strongest woman out there. She's probably stronger than a lot of the guys that were also out there. We have a lot of strong people in our tribe, so when I saw that, I realized: Okay, I'm cutting it a little close here. I don't have much of a buffer that I anticipated I would have coming into it. So it hit reality pretty quick when I saw my tribe and I said, “Oh, this is going to be a problem.”

What’s something that happened out there that we did not get a chance to see?

There's a couple that come to mind. I want to bring up one, it's a funny moment, but it was also scary as hell. Kyle and I were going for crab every day. By the way, that's all I could eat. To give you context also on why I had a little bit of a blowup that day, I didn't eat for essentially five days. I hate coconut, so I would eat the little bit of coconut that they would give me, but I hate coconut. It is not my thing. So I wasn't big on that. I wasn't really drinking the water. The water is really nasty. I don't know if anybody knows this. I don't know if people have said this in previous seasons, but the water is not appetizing. I was not drinking my water either, so I was probably drastically dehydrated, and I'm hungry as hell.

And the one thing I'm excited about, even more than immunity was: Oh my God, we're about to get fishing gear! I had been talking about that fishing gear for two days straight. I'm like, “Oh my God. The moment we win fishing gear, I'm going out and we're getting fish every day. We're going to be eating good.” And so that also gives a little backstory on why I was so frustrated when we lost, because I hadn't been eating at all.

But also there was a moment when I remember Kyle and I were crabbing, and he ran after this crab so fast and were on slick rocks, and he falls and almost breaks his back on these rocks. It was so bad, and I thought we were going to lose Kyle that day. I mean, I've seen his life flash before right in front of me. And I just remember that happening and I'm like, “What the hell am I doing out here?” Because this guy, he lives in this type of stuff. He does this type of stuff all the time. I have no idea what I'm doing. So if he's hurting himself out here, what am I doing out here? I need to go back and sit by the fire and relax. So that was just a realistic moment where you’re like, "Oh my God, I'm really doing something really extreme out here. I'm really out of my element.”

But then the last thing I would say that was a really important piece that wasn't shown is Caroline and I actually had a really, really good conversation on that island, which also gave me some confidence that maybe something could happen with us. Because Caroline and I had a really long talk. She didn't feel like a lot of the people in the tribe were listening to her when she would talk or mention different things about challenges.

We had a good 45-minute talk around six in the morning. We both woke up. I noticed nobody was around, and I just said, “Hey, Caroline, I noticed you were feeling some type of way. I really just wanted to discuss with you and see how you felt.” And we had a whole conversation about it. And she just told me like, “Oh my God, TK, I would love to work with you.” I was like, “I would love to work with you too.” I think if we had had this conversation two days earlier, maybe there was something there, but at that point she was so locked in with Sue. There was no way to pull her out of that. But that would've been my ideal four, would've been myself, Tiyana, Caroline, and Kyle.