‘Survivor: Philippines’: Katie Hanson interview highlights

Katie Hanson was the sort of contestant on “Survivor: Philippines” who, more than anything else, fell victim to bad circumstance. Even though Jeff Probst frequently made her the poster child of failure during some of the challenges (even though she often did not deserve it), she was still part of what was presumably the dominant alliance until Dana Lambert left thanks to an injury. Due to this, Denise Shipley flipped over to join the men, and she was sent home on Wednesday night’s new episode.

When it comes to Jeff Kent, the former beauty pageant queen told reporters in a conference call Thursday that she was “shocked” when she first learned that Jeff Kent was actually a former baseball player, but also said that it made some sense given that he was an older guy who was still “in really good shape.” We asked her as to whether or not she would have gone after him had she known whether or not Jeff was a baseball player, and she admitted that she “could have gone either way,” since he could have still done well had he made it to the end even if he already had a great deal of money.

When it comes to the frequent anger that Probst threw her way, Katie claimed that she “didn’t even realize he was yelling at [her] so much” during some of the challenges. In addition to that, it was always merited; when it came to the ball-catching challenge Wednesday night, she said that “the ball was never coming [her] way,” and it was really Carter Williams who was the brunt of most of the Kalabaw tribe’s struggles thanks to Malcolm really taking him down time and time again.

Finally, Katie also explained that “Denise was originally going to side [with her alliance], but then Dana ran off and got sick.” This ultimately changed everything for her, and was the end of her survivor game. What we did find refreshing was that they did have a pretty strong gameplan before Dana’s exit to take out Carter rather than Jonathan Penner or Jeff right away, mostly because everyone knew Penner had the idol and this was a way of possibly flushing it out and getting rid of a weaker player at the same time.

We had some sound difficulties on our end this week, which explains the different interview format; our normal Q&As will resume next week.

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