Most castaways on Australian Survivor: Brains V Brawn have been wasting away on their meagre rice and lentil diet, but Kez managed to maintain her fit physique.
How did she keep her body so strong as days in the Aussie outback stretched into weeks?
It all came down to a moment that never made it to air.
“I was known as Smeagol on the show because I would squat down next to the cook pot and I would scrape out all the leftovers,” Kez tells TV WEEK.
If it sounds familiar, that’s because Smeagol is another name for Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings.
Kez earned the nickname ‘Smeagol’ on the show.
(Ten)“Everyone said I looked like Smeagol because every time we cooked, without fail, I would be eating out of the pot with my hands because I did not want anything going to waste,” she continued.
“Doesn’t matter what it tasted like, I would eat it.”
While Kez is a whole lot prettier than Gollum, her ‘Smeagol’ strategy gave her an edge on Survivor as she would eat literally anything to keep her energy up.
“The food was pretty horrendous, the lentils were nasty,” she laughs over the phone, but that meant there were always leftovers for her.
But all her physical strength couldn’t save her from the blindside that saw her booted last night.
She and the majority alliance were gunning for Laura, but when Hayley played her immunity idol for Laura, Kez was eliminated.
What’s worse; she had her own immunity idol in her back pocket but didn’t play it!
“It was a crazy blindside!” she says. “As soon as my name got called out I was like ‘oh I should’ve played it’.
“I never thought that I was ever going to be on the chopping block [that night].”
She admits that her physical strength may motivated the votes against her, as she was a huge contender in the gruelling outback challenges.
“You don’t want to be a physical threat in the game because your head is always going to be chopped off when you are,” Kez explains.
In fact, she held back on her physicality to stay under the radar and hadn’t even shown her full potential when she was eliminated.
But Kez says her body building background helped her mental resilience even more than her physical endurance.
“Body building is so much harder than Survivor!” she laughs.
“When you’re in Survivor you have 12 other people bouncing off you, they’re going through the same thing as you… everyone is tired, hungry, sleep deprived.”
Kez won plenty of challenges, meaning plenty of extra food.
(Ten)In the real world, body builders like Kez have to struggle through intense workout regimes and crazy strict diets solo.
The determination that has fuelled her body building success meant she was ready to take on the physical and the mental challenges in Survivor.
And Kez says the hardest part of the show wasn’t the hunger, sleepless nights or physical strain – it was missing home.
“That’s the one thing I missed so much,” she says. “You don’t have [your family] there… you can’t go to them for anything.”
Now she calls her fellow castaways her “new family” and says she couldn’t be happier with the experience she had with them.
Kez said she found a ‘new family’ on Survivor.
(Ten)“It completely changed my life and the way I look at things,” Kez says.
“You can roll around in dirt and live in a house made of sticks and I was the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Having the best of everything; it doesn’t matter to me anymore!”
As for who she thinks will come out on top in Survivor: Brains V Brawn, Kez says Dani is the one to watch because “she has everything going for her”.
“She’s bloody tough,” Kez says. “Even the face gets you, the way she looks at you and stares through you almost!
“She’s quite frightening but she’s made some really good moves and she’s the underdog. She’s going to take everyone down.”
Australian Survivor airs Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 7:30pm, on 10.
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