'Survivor 47's Tiyana Hallums Reveals Rachel Told Her About Her Advantage Right Before Tribal Council

Survivor 47 is here! Every week, Parade.com’s Mike Bloom will bring you interviews with the castaway most recently voted off of the island.

“My instinct is always right. My instinct is always right.” Tiyana Hallums chanted this mantra to herself as she cast her first vote on Survivor. It had been a long journey for her to get here, both literally from the shores of Hawaii and figuratively in coming back to Fiji after being an alternate the year prior. As such, she pushed for big moves to be made, going against the louder presences in her tribe like TK Foster and Gabe Ortis. Unfortunately, her adamancy made her one of the louder presences as well. Despite being only one of five people up for the vote, Tiyana was reluctantly happy with an easy Rachel LaMont boot and move through with the Tukus. But an eleventh-hour advantage meant time was up for Tiyana, as the flight attendant had reached her final destination: Just before the jury.

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Tiyana had earned a lot of mentions in my chats with the castaways preseason due to her positive spirit. And that carried over to the island proper, as she quickly found herself as the swing vote between the Tuku factions at the very first vote. Despite working closely with TK and Kyle Ostwald, his comments about her emotional reaction to the tribe’s loss had rubbed her the wrong way. So she ended up flipping on the tight trio days after it was formed, showing that she was willing to make moves in favor of the people she wanted to work with. Unfortunately for Tiyana, one of the people she flipped to work with, Gabe, attempted to turn Kyle against her. When Kyle reported this back to her, she erupted like a volcano, and set her sights on a brand-new target.

Tiyana put her new initiative into action any chance she got. At the “Survivor Social Hour,” she told the other tribes about Gabe’s idol hunting and playing. When the game turned individual, she continued to forge those cross-tribal bonds, attempting to form a women’s alliance pointed squarely at Gabe. She faced a huge wrinkle, however, when the tribe was split up into groups, with half of them winning safety. Suddenly, Tiyana was back on Tuku, but with one new member in Rachel. As open-and-shut as a vote for her would seem, Tiyana did not want to put her game on auto-pilot, instead trying to spend the afternoon turning the votes onto Gabe. When Caroline Vidmar pushed back, she reluctantly settled into the easy Rachel boot.

But all players except one were thrown for a loop at Tribal Council, as Rachel had been gifted an anonymous advantage that quickly removed her from the vote and the chopping block. The ensuing scrambling had Tiyana running the emotional gamut, almost stuck to her stump with the anxiety of plans upended. Unfortunately, those emotions turned promptly to devastation as the votes came in. Tiyana was voted out unanimously, and while the other players said “aloha” to the jury, she was saying a very different “aloha” to the game.

Now out of the game, Tiyana talks with Parade.com about her emotional reaction to her blindside, what caused her to flip on TK, and whether she would have moved forward with Tuku or the fledgling women’s alliance had she made the jury.

Related: Read our Survivor 47 pre-game interview with Tiyana Hallums

So, we have to start with where things ended. Devastated would be an understatement to describe your reaction to being voted out. Even before the votes came in, you were crying at Tribal Council at the idea of someone, even if it wasn’t yourself, not making jury. So did you know you were going? Were those tears of finality?
Oh, man. Okay, so when I was going on my monologue about how much it’s gonna mean to be in the jury, I genuinely was crying for myself and also someone else. Because even though I was at odds with Gabe, it still would suck too. I lived with this man for 13 days prior to this, so seeing him leave would still suck. Even though we’re adversaries in the game, it’s just still like, “Man, this person deserved to be here. I know how hard they played.” And so I was terrified for myself and at the same time terrified for them. Because we are so close, and it’s gonna sting even worse because we’re so close.

So you were truly blindsided with your vote-out?
Oh, 1,000%. Once I saw my name written down the second time, I knew I was done. I knew that that was it. I knew that something happened that I wasn’t aware of. And it turns out, I didn’t know how close Sue and Gabe were the entire time ,that he had his two little birds that were basically keeping their eye on me the entire time. And so I did not know that. I thought that we were real ride or dies in that situation. But clearly not.

So you were expecting a unanimous vote against Gabe?
Totally. So, in my personal opinion, my perspective of it was that all I needed was Kyle and Caroline to vote with me. Because actually, leading up to that [Tribal], Rachel actually told me that she had the advantage. So I knew she was going to leave. But that didn’t come into play because she told me right when we were about to leave to Tribal Council. She told me, “I have an advantage. Someone gave it to me.” And I had no time before we went to Tribal Council to tell anyone else that information. And so sometimes I think to myself, “Man, I wish I would have just sprinted to Kyle and Caroline and told them, ‘Hey, she just told me she’s leaving. If we just vote together, Gabe is gone.'” And so I had that regret in the back of my head. But at the same time, I couldn’t have possibly known that Caroline and Sue were kind of like the “little injured birds” for Gabe the entire time.

That afternoon, we see you try to keep Rachel and push for Gabe to go, only to relent when Caroline pushes back. So if the advantage hadn’t come into play, it would have just been an easy unanimous vote against her?
Definitely. Because if I couldn’t convince Caroline, there would have been no reason to put names on Gabe at all. It might as well have been unanimous, 5 v. 1. But as I said in that episode, genuinely, it would not make sense to come back with five. We were going to be at odds. The six was going to pick off the five of our Tuku tribe. And so I’m like, “We literally just lied to them all and said that there was cracks. But clearly there’s no cracks. Rachel couldn’t find a crack. There’s no cracks. So now we’re all just getting picked off one by one.” So I genuinely still think to this day that it was the right choice to vote off Gabe, but it was me instead. So there’s that.

Well let’s talk about a crack that formed a bit on Tuku during your first and only premerge vote. From our perspective, it seemed like you were tight with TK and Kyle, but you had an adverse reaction to what he said on the mat after your loss and you decided to turn on him. But in talking with TK, he had said that it was less you three as an alliance and more Kyle as an intermediary between you two. So talk to me about your perspective on your ultimate decision to vote TK out.
The TK vote out was actually one that I thought about a lot after the game even ended.

Well, I’m sure you had some interesting conversations with him at Ponderosa! [Laughs.]
Oh, absolutely! He was pissed at me, for sure. As he should be, completely valid. when I reviewed it in my head, though, it was that a competitor bumped head was another competitor. Because being [told], “Oh, they don’t care enough about losing,” as a Division One athlete, I took it so to heart. And I was like, “How the hell are you going to tell me that I don’t care about losing? I care about losing way more than you care about losing.” So it was kind of like this bump of egos a little bit. And I completely agree [that] it was TK, me, and then Kyle was kind of the bridge. Because they kind of had that bro out moment. Me and TK never really had that time to really talk. And we say it to this day, we’re like, “If we could have just sat down and talked and gotten to know each other just one on one more, it probably would have been better.”

However, I also was not willing to go to rocks regardless. The options were,TK, goes home, or we go to rocks. There wasn’t really anything that I could do with separating the three at that point. And so I think that for me, the TK vote out was almost like Gabe didn’t even have to play the game after that. Because he had his two injured birds corralled, and they did anything that he wanted to do. So, yeah, the TK vote out, I shot myself in the foot there. But at the same time, how could I have saved him if it came down to rocks? Because I wouldn’t want to go home on a rock on the second Tribal Council! Are you crazy?! No way.

After TK’s boot, we see Gabe tell Kyle that he wants to target you, which obviously gets back to you. Had the two of you had a contentious dynamic before that, or was that instance what kickstarted your antipathy?
I would say both. I think that we were not vibing from that instance. And then also on top of that, Kyle came back to me and was like, “Gabe is drawing your name out there.” And so immediately I’m like, “Okay, so we weren’t vibing from the jump, and then also you’re throwing my name out there.” And that’s also why at the Social Hour, I needed to make that move and be distinctive and be like, “I do not trust Gabe. Please use me as a number,” and distinct myself from the Tuku tribe. And so a lot of people were like, “Oh, that was too big of a move, too soon.” I’m like, “Honestly, I should have doubled down on it even more!”

And then I was also mad at myself because I was gaslit by Sue and Caroline when we got back to apologize to him. And I did not think I needed to apologize to him, because I’m like, “You threw my name out first. So why am I apologizing when you threw out my name to Kyle in the first place? And that’s why I came at you so hard.” And so, in my head when I threw out his name, it did two things that benefited me. One, no matter what, everyone that was at that hot dog social was going to remember that there are cracks. Tiyana literally threw Gabe under the bus, she is out of there and wants to leave. And two, it also put a target on Gabe’s back. So at the same time, I’m separating myself and being like, “Here’s an offering. I’m a number. Let me know if you want to use me.”

The main person who tells Gabe about what you did was Sue. In the preseason, we had a lot of fun with a flight attendant who wants to be a pilot being on a tribe with a flight school owner. But the relationship seemed more complicated than expected. For example, when you see all the red paint around the well last episode and start connecting the dots that Sue may have found something. We saw Caroline approach her and say that she figured it out. Did you do that at all?
No. So once I figured that out, that I was like, “Oh my gosh. Who was the only one person that we actually saw with red paint all over themselves? It was Sue.” And then also, I knew from that paint episode, when I walked away with Caroline, I was like, “She kind of started to scare me a little bit.” Because up until that point, Sue was crying almost like every single day leading up to it. So that’s also why we didn’t press her on it. Because we were like, “Okay, you’re kind of becoming a little unhinged. And that’s why you’re scaring me.”

Once we got into the merge, and I finally realized, I was like, “Oh my god, Sue has something.” I was loyal to Sue because I thought that that was going to be on our alliance, the girls’ vibe. I had no idea how close Sue and Gabe were, and I didn’t know that Sue just kept chirping back to Gabe everything that I said. And so I had no intention of throwing Sue’s name under the bus at all. But I think that she thought, because I threw Gabe name under the bus, that I would do the same to her. But that wasn’t the case. It was because me and Gabe were adversaries, and I thought that we were good. So I was never going to throw her name under the bus.

Or under the plane as it were! So you speak about the women’s alliance, which we saw a seedling of at the beginning of the last episode. Let’s say you had gotten what you wanted and Gabe left instead of you. Would you have moved forward with that group, or stuck with Tuku instead?
Should I have survived that vote, I was absolutely going with the women. There was no question. I feel like I had great vibes from Teeny, great vibes from Rachel. Obviously, I wanted to save her, and then I ended up going home myself, so that was fun. [Laughs.] I had great vibes from Genevieve. I knew that they’re all intelligent, they were strong, they were charismatic, they could talk to a bunch of people. And so I knew that if we just planted our seeds in different places, we would have multiple ways to get to the end if we all just worked together. But I definitely would have been done with Sue and honestly done with Tuku at that point. Because I would have known that they were backstabbing me at that point. I [would be] like, “Okay, well, this is no longer the vibe. I’m gonna go ahead and see myself out.” but I definitely would have gone with more of the cross-tribe alliances rather than just staying Tuku strong. Versus Gata and Lavo, I would have wanted to work with people that I actually felt aligned with. 

The devastation was clear as the night sky on your face and body language as you got voted out. Talk me through decompressing from your boot with the knowledge that your worst nightmare had come true and you didn’t make the jury.
Thanks so much for bringing that up. Go ahead and twist the knife! [Laughs.] No, genuinely, it was the worst thing ever. I think that once I saw my name written down the second time, I completely blacked out. Because I thought that Sue, Caroline and Kyle had my back more. So once I saw it a second time, I’m like, “What in the hell? There’s no way that this is happening to me.” So it was really just raw emotion. And I knew that I was going back to TK, and I had to explain myself as well. And really just being so close actually makes me viscerally want to throw up, being that close to the finish line and tripping, it was really sad. Because when I thought about it, it was almost like I was a little kid at recess and I was waiting for someone to play with me, and I’m like, “Hey, here’s a great idea. Let’s go ahead and do an intelligent, big move.” And no one wanted to play with me in the sandbox and build sand castles. That’s what it felt like.

Because I’m like, “Damn, Kyle voted my name down too?!” Someone who I thought was going to be my ride or die, and someone that I would have never voted their name down put my name down. And then also, that same episode, Caroline actually cried to me, and was like, “You would never put my name down, Tiyana! It means so much to me.” And I was like, “No, I got you.” And so that felt below the belt as well. Because I’m like, “Why are you crying to me if I’m this scapegoat? Cry to your alliance members!” And then also with Sue too, it was almost below the belt as well. Because what wasn’t shown was Sue was crying almost every single day when we were in the Tuku tribe, and I was the one that was constantly being like, “Sue, we got this. I’m there for you. I also miss my family.” And I don’t know if that was gameplay or if that was something else.

And then also Sue, before the TK vote out–I think this is also something that was really big with the TK vote out. Sue kind of attacked TK’s character, and not him as a threat in the game. And so I was more inclined to believe her, because I’m like, “Man, this goes outside the game. And me being a girl’s girl, I want you to feel good. I want you to feel confident. I don’t want you to feel like you’re not being heard.” Turns out it was all a lie. And so that’s something that I legitimately do want to sit down with Sue later on in life, and break it down. But she genuinely came for his character and not him as a threat in the game. And so therefore I was like, “Man, I’m gonna trust her, because she’s confiding in me with all this information and being very vulnerable. And that’s also a big reason why TK has to go as well for just overall morale.” But turns out, none of that was happening. So when she said that she was going to outrightly tell me anything to get me to vote TK to Gabe and Caroline, she was right. She did anything that she possibly could to get TK out.

Ending on brighter prospects, you are the first Native Hawaiian resident to compete on the show. And you spoke last night about how your family would hate to see you cry the way you did at Tribal Council. So what’s been their reaction, and the reaction of your entire community, to your time on the show?
It’s been absolutely unreal. I think what’s so amazing about the Hawaiian community in general, and just people in Hawaii, we rally behind anyone that’s representing Hawaii in different places, different spaces. It’s so incredible to be able to see my family also just get so invested in this game that I love. It’s so cool to have them be like, “Ooh, strategy-wise, maybe I could have aligned with Genevieve.” They’re just throwing out different names as to, if they were to make the merge, how they would have played the game. And so it’s so fun to play these hypotheticals. Because actually knowing these people, it’s so funny to see that my family is so invested in their lives, even though they’ve never met. So it’s been incredible. I would never change anything for the world. And I think that I learned a lot about myself in the process.

Next, check out our interview with Rome Cooney, who was voted off in Survivor 47 Episode 6.