Dissecting this season's 'Survivor' drama with the latest castaway (2024)

The legend of #FigTayls has come to an end.

Survivor power couples are a rare thing -- mostly because hooking up with another player immediately paints a target on both backs. It's a game, first and foremost, and a physical relationship represents the closest possible alliance that can form. It's an immediate threat.

That's what led to the end of the game for Jessica "Figgy" Figueroa in the latest episode. Her former millennial tribemate Adam Klein recognized the threat that she and partner Taylor Lee Stocker represented, so he flipped to join his Gen-X tribemates Ken McNickle and Jessica Lewis.

Hey Figgy!

I don't like your name very much.

Oh no, you probably don't. I'm so sorry. Not for my name, for what happened.

Hey, it's the game, right?

First thing I want to ask -- and I'm sure you're hearing this a lot today -- is how's FigTayls going in the months after Survivor?

What do you think?

What do *I* think? I don't know. It's hard to predict. It was pointed out during Tribal last night, you two knew each other for all of two weeks. That was certainly a funny moment with Jeff throwing out the "I'm ordained, by the way" bomb.

Taylor and I are ... OK. [laughs] The legend of FigTayls is no more.

Awwwww.

Well, no. Not aw. I'm OK. I'm totally fine. But there were real-life situations that are in the way of FigTayls existing that I found out after the game. So I'm happy that FigTayls is no more. It would have been the shortest wedding ever. We would have gotten divorced real quick. It's for the best.

Gotcha. Thank you for that update.

You're welcome. Now the interview's done! Bye bye!

Look. Power couples, they are a scary thing on Survivor. There's precedent for this. Did you have any inkling going into Tribal that this was how it was going to end?

Yeah, of course. I sensed it walking up and I whispered to Taylor. I said, 'I think it's gonna be me.' And he's like, 'No, you're fine.' And I'm like, 'Gah! You really are stupid! You really don't know what the f*ck is going on in this game right now. To think that we're just all peaches over here; that is NOT what's going on. So quit trying to act like we're about to go snowboarding in Alaska or wherever the f*ck you want to go.'

So then I got voted out. Sorry, but it is what it is.

So I walked in with this feeling, like this was gonna happen. It's what it looked like. It was tug-of-war with Adam in the middle. Me going one way, Ken and Jess in the other. Taylor wasn't really helping me at all.

So I'm doing everything I can to get the game on my side. And they ended up voting out the one who could think, the one who was smart, the one who was the strategist of the power couple. Because now you just have someone on the island with you that's like, 'Oh bro, look it's an ant. Oh look, there's mosquitoes. Why does it have to bite us? Like why?' That's what you get with [Taylor].

So it was smarter long-term for them to take me out, versus taking someone like Taylor out.

Sure, I think any Survivor fan watching that saw the strategic value of that move.

Yeah. So I definitely felt it coming and it was in the best interests of everybody who wanted their lives in the game to go on. I would've been a force to be reckoned with down the road.

That's my next question: How ready and willing were you to cut the cord on Taylor down the road?

I think it would have been one of those things where ... OK. The post-game interview [with me] is up on CBS right now, and when you watch that, I'm very into Taylor. I probably would not have voted him out. But the thing is this: Taylor was never there for the money. He says that in the beginning and he says that in all these little secret things.

He kept saying, like, 'A million dollars gets you 10 years of fun, but with a partner like Figs that's a lifetime of fun, and that's a million dollars right there.' That was one of his quotes, and I love that quote. It was really sweet. I don't give a f*ck now, obviously, but it was really sweet.

But the fact that he said that, I could have sat him down on a tree stump and been like, 'Hey, it's either me or you and I'm going to have to write your name down.' And he would have been fine with it. It was like talking to a 5-year-old and explaining what was going on [with Taylor]. And he would have been like, 'Goo goo, gah gah, ok,' and it would have been fine.

So down the road, if I'd needed to I could have cut the cord and been like, 'It's your or me and I care about you, but I want to win this game.' And he would have been like, 'Totally, go do your thing.'

Now no one goes into a situation like this expecting something like that to happen, but was there ever a voice in your head saying, 'Uhhh, we should really just not do this at all because of all the [potential repercussions]'?

So when we started our little thing, I was like, 'Ok, so I kinda dig you.' But when we ended up doing the tribe swap, I'm like, 'F*ck. We need to lay low. Like 007-secret-agent-right-now Figs is about to come out.

I tried, but the fact that I brewed this badass love potion and casted it into Taylor, and he was just completely taken away by it, it f*cked everything up. He could not stop looking at me with these googly eyes, he could not stop wanting to kiss me, he could not stop telling me how hot I was. Ultimately, he just couldn't control himself.

Is it jarring to re-watch yourself being kicked out even though you knew it was going to happen?

Yeah. At that point I think I had three beers and a margarita so I was sitting pretty. I'm good. I'm chilling. It's perfect. To watch it with my friends and family who didn't know, it was devastating because they were like, 'Oh my god.'

But to re-watch it and see my reaction -- because that's exactly how I felt. My hands went to my face immediately. I stood up and I felt like I died ... and my ghost was grabbing the torch and walking away, or whatever the f*ck ghosts do. I was just so not there. I feel like I blacked out during that Tribal Council. To re-watch it, it sucked. So I just had another beer. [laughs]

I've been ending all of my exit interviews with this question, but I feel like I don't even need to ask you. You would do it again.

Oh, f*ck yeah. Are you kidding me? I would do it again in a heartbeat. I'm waiting. Every morning I wake up and I'm like, 'Has Jeff called me yet?'

The day I get the phone call for a second chance it'll be the best day of my life. Because not only will I not play with someone like f*cking Taylor, but I'm gonna redeem myself and it's gonna be f*cking amazing. People will see the Figgy that is capable, [The one] that people didn't get to see this time around.