Getting a strong winner’s edit from the very beginning, several Survivor superfans were devastated to see Kellie Nalbandian leaving the island after a devastating blindside last night (November 15).
When Kellie’s closest ally, Bruce Perreault, won the grueling immunity challenge (despite losing his vote during the return of the Survivor Auction earlier that day), Kellie thought Jake O’Kane would be the easy vote at tribal council that fateful night, due to the chaos that he caused at the previous tribal council while trying to save Kaleb Gebrewold from elimination. Unfortunately, that was not the case…
Seeing Kellie as a bigger threat, the Reba majority — consisting of Julie Alley, Dee Valladares, Austin Li Coon, Drew Basile and honorary Reba member Emily Flippen — blindsided Kellie, causing her to leave the game in a state of disbelief.
“What the hell guys,” she repeated over and over again while grabbing her belongings, followed by longtime host Jeff Probst snuffing her torch.
While the critical care nurse played a game that was nothing short of spectacular, there was one individual who hindered her gameplay time and time again — the one and only Bruce Perreault.
Causing a great deal of controversy throughout the camp (primarily with Katurah Topps, as well as Kaleb Gebrewold), Bruce was not a very well-liked castaway during his Survivor 45 journey, with Kellie describing him as an “anchor” time and time again, constantly weighing her down.
How did Bruce negatively impact Kellie’s game, and what does she have to say about their less-than-ideal relationship in hindsight? Keep scrolling to see what she said about “Uncle Bruce” in a post-elimination interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Reporter Dalton Ross asked the ousted castaway, “How would you describe your experience of playing with ‘Uncle Bruce’ out there?” Naturally, Kellie Nalbandian sang like a bird…
Praising Bruce for his kind heart, prefacing that he is truly a good person inside and out, Kellie admitted once again that he was “a little bit of an anchor” during her journey on Survivor 45, negatively impacting her game on numerous occasions.
She dished, “He was hard to work with. He just is a little bit his way or the highway. He had a vision of how he wanted to play the game. It’s kind of old school vibe, and I’m able to sort of look past like, ‘Oh, someone said this about me, but I need them for this vote,'” whereas Bruce would often hold a grudge.
The New York City native continued, “That’s not really how Bruce was approaching the game, and that’s what made it so frustrating to play with him, but it was one of those things where it was day two and Bruce is like, ‘You’re my number one ally.’ I was like ‘Really? What?'”
As for why she kept him around for so long, Kellie admitted that Bruce was beneficial to her more often than not, despite causing issues within their alliance time and time again. In addition to this, a large reason as to why she refused to cut Bruce loose was due to the hidden immunity idol that he found while living at the Lulu camp, which Kellie hoped he would use on her if needed.
“I didn’t feel that concerned with him still having his idol, because I thought that there was a decent chance that if I knew I was going to go, that Bruce would play his idol on me,” she gushed. “We did explore that just a bit, but with him not having to vote and being immune, he’s basically a spectator at Tribal Council.”
Knowing how hard it is to convince Bruce to do something he doesn’t want to do, Kellie did not push too hard for Bruce to use his hidden immunity idol on her, something in which she will regret for the rest of her life.
While Kellie Nalbandian is already greatly missed on our television screens, to see how the rest of Survivor 45 unfolds, catch 90-minute episodes of the beloved competition series every Wednesday at 8pm ET/PT on CBS.