‘Survivor 50’ Star Kyle Fraser Opens Up About His Painful Injury and Exit From the Game: “Tough Pill to Swallow”

Kyle Fraser’s Survivor 50 run ended not with a blindside, but with a torn Achilles. The season 48 winner had entered the milestone season with one of the biggest targets in the game, yet appeared to be navigating it — embedding himself in multiple alliances and even quietly learning about the season’s unexpected Billie Eilish Idol before most of his tribe knew it existed. That momentum came to an abrupt halt, however, when he ruptured his Achilles during the immunity challenge, forcing a medical evacuation on the very first episode that aired this week — just as his strategy was beginning to take shape.

In an exit interview with The Hollywood Reporter below, Fraser breaks down the moment he realized his game was over, why he believes he was in a strong spot despite his threat level and who he was targeting before production stepped in. He also reflects on building a tight strategic partnership with Genevieve and what it’s like to leave the game not by vote, but by circumstance.

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How are you feeling, how is the ankle?

It’s good. The Achilles is recovering. I’m about eight months out. I just started to run a few weeks ago, so the next step will be sustained running, then sprinting. After that, the world’s my oyster.

Dr. Joe thought that was the injury. So it was a torn Achilles?

Yes, it was a full tear in the Achilles. I had to get surgery immediately when I got back, so that’s an eight-to-12 month recovery. As an athlete — and I’m not calling myself an athlete — but if you are an athlete, it is probably the worst injury you can get. So it is what it is, but that’s what it was.

We saw that you were very reluctant to go, but I’m assuming the thought of a life-debilitating injury was something that clicked in your head like, “Okay, I really can’t keep going.”

Yeah, I went back and forth with Jeff [Probst] and Dr. Joe for quite some time, and that’s what I wanted to know. I was like, “If it’s anything but that, I’m staying. But if it’s something that could eventually cause harm down the line,” then I was like, “I got to get out of here, I guess.”

Let’s go back to how you got hurt. What wasn’t shown was that you already got up the wall, but went back down to help Colby get up.

Q ran up the wall first, then I ran up, got up there myself, and then Colby was sort of the engine of this thing. Q and I were pulling people up from the top, and Colby was picking people up from the bottom. That’s a really tough job. I think Colby was pretty gassed, and now the wall is also covered in mud, so it’s just a lot of force that needs to be put into the wall. And Colby’s a stud athlete, but he’s in his 50s. So I had to go down and help him up, and then essentially I had to try to run up the wall again with the mud.

I had two more attempts, so what you saw was my second attempt, but that’s actually not where I tore my Achilles. It was on the third attempt, which the doctor told me was from putting the foot into the wall back to back to back in quick succession. That, unfortunately, forced the rupture.

Did you know how badly you were hurt, or did you think, “Okay, I can work my way through it?” 

When I first had the injury happen, I was thinking it was just a sprained ankle. Though when it happened, I looked down at my foot, and it was just dangling to the right, and I was like, “I’ve never sprained my ankle, I’ve never had ankle issues, but I don’t remember people saying that this is what it’s like. And it also was really, really painful, and I couldn’t put any weight on it at all.

So when that happened in the moment, I was like, “Oh man.” Dr. Joe actually came to camp the next day and did another examination in the morning and said, “We think it’s an Achilles. We’re going to give you a little bit more time to heal to see if this thing gets better, but this could most likely be a full tear, at which point we’ll have to pull you.” When he did the examination, even though I was trying to wiggle my toes and get out of it, he came to the conclusion it was probably a full tear, and that’s what I knew I was getting pulled.

When they come back a second time, which is what we saw on this week’s episode, you have to know it’s not good. What is going through your mind when you know that your time is over?

I was really down and out, because I also think that not only is my game over, and it’s not over for anybody on my tribe, but Colby had just lost his vote. Q has lost his vote. Fortunately, Genevieve has found this idol, but she doesn’t get to keep it. And me and Genevieve were doing a great job of managing these narratives together, so I was trying to put myself in her shoes, and I felt really bad. And then obviously I felt sad for myself. I loved the experiences that I was having, and the people on my tribe were just awesome. So it was a tough pill to swallow.

Let’s go back to the marooning, what was your first impression of your tribe when buffs were opened and you saw who you’d be working with?

I was actually pretty scared at first because I just didn’t know where I was going to fit in. Also, I was very scared about Rizo. Lo and behold, I thought Rizo was awesome, and I loved seeing him and playing with him in the game, but I did not see where I fit in socially on the tribe just yet, and I’m glad that it worked out for me so well, because we really melded together great.

Physically, I was excited, because I thought Stephenie would be sort of a secret weapon for us. She could do some of those utility things. Aubry also has a unique skill set, and then Genevieve for the puzzles and stuff. And then me, Colby, and Q probably had the most amount of muscle mass collectively out of all the other tribes. So I was like, “Okay, these early challenges should be ours if we play it right.”

As the game progressed, it seemed like you had some core people you could work with and the beginnings of what could’ve been a strong alliance. Who was your real number one?

Genevieve was my number one, undoubtedly. Then Genevieve and I formed a foursome with Stephenie and Colby. And then Q and I got pretty tight too, and then so me, Q, Genevieve, and Rizo, who Genevieve was getting close to and I was also getting close to, formed a foursome. I know that Q was a little bit worried about the New Era, Old Era thing. That was sort of a narrative that he was pushing. So Genevieve and I kind of had to keep on having checking-in conversations about who we really wanted to work with the most. To be honest, I was leaning more so towards Colby and Stephenie, but I really liked Q and Rizo too, so we were kind of just going to see how things played out.

On the flip side, Angelina and I were close personally. Angelina and I have talked about life, we get along really well. I really enjoy her. I thought that maybe her and Aubry were a twosome, but then she explained to me that wasn’t the case when I asked her, sort of, just like we were feeling each other out, and she was like, “I want to be your number one.” Then me and Angelina started working together, and I formed a threesome with Angelina and Aubry, but I told Genevieve about that. I was like, “I’m going to be transparent with Genevieve about everything, because I don’t want Genevieve to hear something from somebody else, and then that will shut down our good thing going. I need somebody to manage these narratives.” I was in the middle of everything, which could have fallen apart, but I was having a lot of fun.

Genevieve shared the Billie Eilish Idol information with you, so was she like your Kamilla this season?

Yeah, for sure. I mean obviously what Kamilla and I had cannot be replaced, but I wanted to do something cool and new with Genevieve. She sees the game in a really cool way. Genevieve, she’s confident but she’s not arrogant, and she’s also very smart, and easy to talk to. I think that’s a very good combination just as a human being, but also as a Survivor player.

And so I really enjoyed getting to know Genevieve. That was really on my mind a lot. It kind of felt like you were a kid getting pulled from class a little bit early when they were going on a school trip the next day or something. I was really looking forward to playing the game with Genenieve and continuing to develop a friendship, too. So I liked working with Genevieve a lot.

You knew with season 50 that there would be some surprises, but what were your thoughts when you saw the Billie Eilish Idol revealed? That could not have been on your radar.

Genevieve, obviously, found that with Stephenie, but Stephenie put it in her bag. Genevieve walks up and she’s like, “I got to show you something before Stephenie tells you,” because Genevieve wants to be transparent with me. And then so Genevieve tells me, and then we don’t want people to think we’re close, so she’s like, “Pretend like you don’t know.” Then she tells Stephenie, and Stephenie comes and talks to me, and I pretend like I don’t know the information.

Stephenie’s like, “Okay, we found the idol,” but she’s like, “please don’t laugh.” And I’m like, “Okay, what is it?” She’s like, “It’s the Billie Eilish Idol.” But I just go start cracking up. And she goes, “Who’s next? Beyoncé?” It was such a great moment between Stephenie and I, like it was our relationship, sort of just lighthearted and fun.

If you’d stayed in the game and lost the next immunity challenge, who were you likely to target? 

Aubry. I had a working relationship with pretty much everybody, including Aubry, but she is very hard to read. Aubry had thrown out Genevieve’s name, and so Genevieve and Rizo’s name were floating around the beach a little bit. Looking back, she wasn’t too alarmed about that, which was very funny to me, because I would’ve been like, “Yo, what?”

Then of course, I didn’t realize that interaction that Genevieve and Aubry that was shown in the episode at the time, but Genevieve was obviously very locked in on Aubry because of how Aubry acted during that conversation, and Aubry had thrown her name out, so I would’ve pushed for that most likely.

What’s something we didn’t see that you wished made the edit?

That Stephenie thing was really funny. And my working relationship with Angelina, which I talked about, I really had a great relationship with her. Honestly, maybe more of my conversations with Colby. I think it’s just cool for people to see that. Colby and I come from such different places, although not too different, I grew up in Southern Virginia. But we’re in such different stages of life and we’ve lived such different lives, but Survivor is at the center for both of us in a lot of ways during these core formative years.

And the way that Colby sees life, and thinks about the world, and being open to it, and possibilities. I see the world in a similar way, and I think it would’ve been cool for the viewers to sort of see the bond that we had. Oh, also Q, man. Q is such a cool, charismatic, charming guy, and he comes across on the screen in a very funny way, but I don’t think people realize just how human he is and how fun it is to be around Q.

In your time on Survivor you’ve won and been a medical evacuation. Are you satisfied with your experience or would you play again if asked?

Both. I’m satisfied with both seasons, 48 and 50, for diametrically different reasons, but I’ve learned so much from both of those seasons. I just love the game. I’m looking forward to my wife having this daughter, us raising her, and spending time with my family and slowing down my life right now. Because it’s been so go, go, go.

But in a different chapter of my life, kind of like what just happened for some of these players on 50, the older members of the cast. I would love to have that for myself. I’d love to see what a little bit of a buffer could do for me as well.