Survivor Castoff Bradley Kleihege Speaks Out

Episode seven of "Survivor: Ghost Island" featured steak, several blasts from the past and an Immunity Challenge loss for Naviti. Libby and Bradley were both on the chopping block and ultimately, Bradley was voted off the show.

Bradley chatted with CBS Local about what went wrong for him, why he said everything was going great at Tribal and what he loved the most about his Survivor experience.

Why do you think you were voted off?

Bradley Kleihege: It was a bummer. I've thought about it every day since then. Every morning I think about what I could've done. Stepping back and stepping away from it, I got to be an entertaining character on my favorite TV show. I chalk that up to being a win. It was tough to watch last night and tough to live last night last June. It's a bummer, but in the end one person wins. It would've been nice to make it one more week so I could've been on the jury.

You told Jeff Probst that you thought everything was going swimmingly with you and your tribe. Did you really feel that way?

BK: No. I will first say that the edit makes it look like it was a very bad strategic decision for Dom to have flipped on me because I would be a goat at the final Tribal Council. But, in the game at that point, that was not how I was perceived. Dom voted me off and flipped on me because he thought I was a threat. I think if you look at it that way, it makes a little bit more sense. I got the feeling after the Immunity Challenge that something was up and that things weren't good. But, I had nothing to really go off of. My concern was that I didn't want to blow up at Tribal Council and try to do something or in some way convince them to vote somebody else off. I didn't know and wasn't sure enough that they were actually going for me. I didn't want to end up voting myself off. I chose to say that everything was going great, but everything wasn't going great. Things were going fine with Dom. The interesting thing about Dom was that he was a massive target back in original Naviti. We never ended up going to Tribal Council, but it probably would've ended up being Dom to get voted off. He definitely would've been the second to go if Angela was voted off first. He was definitely not in a great position. I was working with him and on several occasions, I told him to take a breather and chill out. He was putting a target on his back and people were throwing his name out there. I had a vested interest in him and wanted him to stay. He interpreted that as me talking down to him. That's not what I was doing. Dom played up for the cameras and I played up for the cameras and that's what you get.

What was the best part of your Survivor experience?

BK: The best part of the experience was getting to meet everybody without social media. Many of these people have become some of my absolute best friends in the entire world. We did have a lot of really great conversations out there. I did get along with almost everybody. I only knew what people had told me about themselves. I couldn't go and look up their Facebook to see what they looked like 10 years ago or what they were doing with their lives five years ago. It was a really cool thing because we don't meet anybody and truly get to know anyone on a very deep level without technology. That was very cool. As a Survivor fan, "Survivor" was 100 times cooler in real life. Seeing the production of it and getting to be apart of it was better than you could ever imagine. I could've stayed out there indefinitely, it was a blast.

Who would you like to see win now?

BK: My girl Kellyn. Kellyn or Michael. Going into the merge, those were going to be my two best alliance members.

Watch "Survivor: Ghost Island" every Wednesday at 8pm EST/PST on CBS.