Fifteen years after Survivor premiered, Survivor: Second Chance began. The first day of filming for the new season was the 15-year anniversary of the show’s very first episode, a fact that Jeff Probst made sure to tell the surrounding crew out on the water with only a few minutes to go until the game truly begins. There was a sense of ancient history in the air — and an even stronger notion that history was in the making.

Kelly Wiglesworth was the lone representative of the original Survivor season on Second Chance, but she was not focused on that ancient history. She was focused on the task at hand. No time for nostalgia; only business.

Wiglesworth was the first to leap off of the Ta Keo raft, into the air, and through the water, swimming like a Rattana out of hell toward a small vessel containing a basket of rice. Eight words repeated over and over in her head as she cut her way forward: “Get in the water. Swim. Get the rice.” Rinse and repeat.

It wasn’t pure instinct. It was a calculated plan, one she devised with the rest of the tribe, according to what Wiglesworth tells me on the phone, several months after May 31, 2015.

“We needed to lighten the load of the boat,” she says. “That’s what we did in Borneo. We had so much stuff on the boat and we had so many people that the boat was starting to sink. Several of us jumped off and swam. So this time, in the few moments we had to prepare, when Jeff told us our teams and what we were doing, Woo and I had talked. We were the strongest swimmers on the team. So one of us would jump in and start going for the rice, and then the other one would eventually jump in and back the other person up.”

The strategy paid off, as Woo was able to provide the necessary back up for Kelly once Joey Amazing Anglim of Bayon came nipping at her heels. In that moment, racing through the waters of Koh Rong, perhaps those ancient voices of 15 years ago finally started sailing through Kelly’s ears. At the very least, the reality of her situation finally dawned on her.

“This is real,” she remembers thinking in the moment. “This is really happening. People are throwing stuff around. We’re cutting the boat loose. Yep… we’re here.”

It’s a testament to how Wiglesworth, the very first runner-up in the history of Survivor, viewed the game during her original season, and even now. She’s a woman of action, someone who throws herself into the physical necessities of the game, if not the strategic side of things.

Take last night’s episode, for example, which presented Wiglesworth with another opportunity to jump in the water and claim a prize. During the immunity challenge, which involved balancing on a sea-dwelling dog house that would leave Eddie Fox breathless with bright ideas, Probst offered players the chance to abandon the challenge and secure an advantage in the game.

“By the time the buoys popped up, they were already in the water,” Wiglesworth says, speaking of Stephen Fishbach and Spencer Bledsoe, the only two who pursued the twist; Fishbach ultimately won that race. “But I wouldn’t have done it anyway. I was extremely confident in my ability to win that challenge.”

“Also, I felt like going for that advantage puts another target on your back,” she adds. “Unless the advantage is getting the immunity necklace for that night, I didn’t want any part of it. I knew I was a target. I knew every vote was a possible vote for me. I wanted that necklace — and I didn’t want anything else.”

Go ahead and add “drama” to her list of “anything else.” Wiglesworth tells me that she kept her head low and avoided conflict as much as humanly possible in the game, which is her explanation for why she received less screen time than her fans were hoping and expecting to see.

“I understand that I wasn’t given a lot of attention because I wasn’t involved in any of the drama,” she says. “It’s good and bad. Everyone wants to see a little more action or whatever, but when there’s so much other drama going on, that’s the focus. I’m glad I wasn’t a part of all that drama. That’s not how I am in my life, and I’m glad I wasn’t portrayed as being involved in any of that, because I wasn’t.”

But Kelly’s Second Chance experience wasn’t entirely drama-free. In fact, her time in the season is book-ended with drama, beginning with the first Tribal Council where Vytas Baskauskas was sent home, courtesy of her ally Jeff Varner — someone she supposedly had an alliance with dating back before the game even began.

For her part, Wiglesworth downplays the pre-game partnership, even now: “I didn’t firmly believe we were completely set up. People had reached out to me and it was a very vague thing. I wasn’t making commitments to anybody. I wanted to figure it out when we got out there. I didn’t even know if we would be on the same team. But when we were on the same team, it was great.”

Turns out it wasn’t so great, at least not for that first vote, which saw Varner working with the so-called Beach People over the Shelter People. It was a wakeup call for Kelly, who told me at Ponderosa before the game that the play style of Survivor had not changed much since the days of Borneo.

“It was very shocking,” she says now, adding that it completely changed her view of the game. “You vote with whoever you need to vote with to accomplish what you want to accomplish and get the next vote. I didn’t see much loyalty with anybody’s alliances, really.”

Even as she grasped the new momentum of the game conceptually, Kelly says she never embraced it philosophically: “It was such a bummer that if you worked hard in camp, if you went to get food, if you helped win in challenges, that that makes you a target and completely expendable.”

She uses Joe as an example: “He’s largely the reason [Bayon] never had to go to Tribal Council, and that’s what makes him the biggest target. That seemed… I mean, there were people who never went to fill the canteens once! People who never dragged a stick of firewood, never helped build the shelter, never got food for anyone. Those people stay longer in the game. They bond together to vote out the strong people, and it just… it just sucks!”

Wiglesworth might not have cared for the new pace of the game, but that doesn’t mean she was oblivious toward it. Indeed, in the hours leading up to her blindside, Kelly smelled something fishy in the air — coming not from Fishbach, ironically, but from firefighter and supposed ally Jeremy Collins.

“Right before we got ready to leave, Tasha and I kind of looked at each other and thought something was up, because Jeremy was acting strange,” she says. “He wouldn’t look she or I in the eye. He would barely talk to us. That was very telling. We couldn’t figure out what was going on, but we knew something was going on.”

It was enough to get Wiglesworth and Tasha thinking about changing their alliance’s perceived plan to split the votes on Kelley Wentworth and Ciera Eastin at the last minute, but they weren’t able to rally the counterstrike in time: “Tasha had turned to me and said, ‘Let’s not split the votes. You, me and Kimmi will vote for Wentworth.’ But we didn’t have a chance to communicate with Kimmi. So what can we do? We just had to stick to the plan, because there was no time — but we knew something was wrong.”

Their instinct was right, and that something worked out wrong for Wiglesworth, voted out for the first time in her Survivor career. If there was a silver lining, it’s that she was able to get some food and shelter at Ponderosa, in the middle of one of the most intense storms ever caught on camera in Survivor‘s 15-year history.

“It was a hell of a night to go out on,” she says. “I was super bummed to be out of the game, but a few minutes after, I was like, ‘Man, I get food! I get to sleep somewhere warm tonight!’ It really was miserable out there.”

Following her blindside, Wiglesworth shifted to a new role in the game, becoming the third member of the jury. She was infamously on the receiving end of one of the most vicious verbal lashings in television history, when Sue Hawk delivered her infamous “Snakes and Rats” speech at the end of Survivor: Borneo. Don’t expect to hear the same venom dripping from Wiglesworth’s lips when she gets her turn to speak at the end of this season.

“I don’t feel the need to compete with Sue Hawk or anyone who makes a speech of that caliber,” she laughs, “but I did find it pretty cool and interesting to be part of the jury and still be a part of the game and have a say in what happens. My attitude was, ‘This is not going to be an easy vote for me. I want to see who played best. I’m not locked into any one decision.'”

Even though she didn’t win, even though her torch was snuffed sooner than she expected, Wiglesworth still feels she fulfilled key aspects of her quest for fire, fifteen years after her first journey. For one thing, she wanted to provide an example for her young son, when he’s old enough to watch the show.

“I wanted to show him that you need to try no matter what,” she says. “When an opportunity presents itself, you have to go for it, even when you’re scared, even if you don’t think you’re going to win, even if you think you’re going to fail. Just put yourself out there and go for it. Even though I didn’t make it as far as I had hoped, I made it pretty far. I made it to the jury. I think one day we can look back and watch it together and my son will be proud of the game I played and the person I am. That’s more important to me than doing whatever you have to do to win a million dollars.”

Not that she wouldn’t mind the million dollars, of course, or the shot to claim it once again. When we spoke at Ponderosa, Wiglesworth was clear-eyed and adamant about wanting to play Survivor one last time before retiring for good. But now, with the blood of the game still fresh in the air, she whistles a different tune. It sounds that she would jump into the waters of Survivor again if given another shot.

“It’s sort of a weird addiction,” she says. “Joe and I talked about it a lot. ‘What is it about Survivor?’ People say it’s the money, and sure, I’ll take a million dollars. I’m not saying I wouldn’t gladly accept it. That’s awesome. But for me, and for him when we were talking about it, it was more about loving the challenge. I love living in the moment. Many of my professions, being a river guide and a yoga teacher, are all about living in the present and reacting at what’s thrown at you right at that moment. To me, that’s the seduction of Survivor.”

PREVIOUSLY: Andrew Savage Returns to the Night He Lost Survivor

Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, Comic Book Resources, Digital Trends and more. He is the co-author of The Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.

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