The fifth-place finisher also reveals the inspiration for her savage jury question to Savannah.

Kristina Mills reacts to ‘hurtful’ comments made about her on Survivor 49

The fifth-place finisher also reveals the inspiration for her savage jury question to Savannah.

By Dalton Ross

Dalton Ross is a writer and editor with over 25 years experience covering TV and the entertainment industry. *Survivor* is kind of his thing.

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December 18, 2025 3:24 p.m. ET

Kristina Mills on 'Survivor 49'. Credit:

Robert Voets/CBS

People had been denigrating her game all season long, but Kristina Mills had her final-three speech all ready. She was ready to change minds and change votes, but it was a speech she never got to give.

Kristina was voted out of *Survivor 49* in fifth place during Wednesday night's finale when Savannah Louie convinced allies Sophi Balerdi and Rizo Velovic to vote her out instead of Sage Ahrens-Nichols due to Kristina's proficiency at fire.

But Kristina wasn't done with the game. She came to play as a juror at the final Tribal Council when she requested that Savannah attempt to name a loved one for each jury member. It was the spiciest moment of an otherwise chummy final Tribal.

What went into that diabolical question? Why did she vote for Sophi to win? And how does she feel about all the commentary about her game from other players? We asked the fifth-place finisher all that and more, and you can now watch or read her entire interview below.

**: Look, the natural question for anyone that gets that close to the end is: How do you think you would have done with the jury had you been sitting in one of those final three seats?**

**KRISTINA MILLS:** I think it's really easy from the edit to say, "Oh, Kristina gets in those final seats, and she gets third." But what a lot of people really didn't see is that I had a very close relationship with over half of the jury. All the people that were in Hina plus Alex, we had very much a strong working relationship outside of the game.

There were so many conversations that we had, and I knew exactly what a lot of them thought. I knew what their voting criteria was. I knew who they would have voted for, who they wouldn't. And so I actually think I would've done pretty well had I gone there. I think I could have at least gotten second depending on who I'm sitting with. I think I could have potentially, arguably brought it home. But I think I could have at least gotten second.

Kristina Mills on 'Survivor 49'.

**You said on the show you never got to give your final-three speech. So give us the speech. Let's hear it!**

Essentially, I'm a very self-aware person and I knew everything that was transpiring in the game. Not from like a "who was going to get voted out" — obviously I was for sure blindsided with the Alex vote, as well as the Jawan vote. But I was self-aware to know: Okay, my alliance right now, they are making moves that are very questionable. But I'm still trying to make these moves to get these people out, to get Savannah and Rizo out, and they're just not seeing it.

And it came a point after the Jawan vote that I said: You know what? I have been this loyal person in the game the entire time and it's really not gotten me anywhere. And so now I see what's going on and I'm no longer going to come to my allies' rescue and I'm not going to be playing idols for anyone at this point. I'm playing it for me. And so if you all want to continue to make these moves that you're making, just know that it's getting me to those final seats. Oh, and you're putting people that I really like and that I know on the jury, and I'm getting no blood on my hands.

So that was just kind of my argument. I saw what was happening, but at some point, I said: You know what? They're not voting for me. And so I'm tired of fighting a battle that we're being our own worst enemy at this point. And so I really just wanted to highlight the fact that I saw that. And honestly, it was to my benefit because it was putting people that were potential juror votes in those seats.

Kristina Mills on 'Survivor 49'.

Robert Voets/CBS

**We saw Steven saying your game was sloppy like you were eating spaghetti with your hands, and we saw Soph say you were not a very strategic player. They're not saying that to your face, so what was it like for you to sit in front of your television and hear those type of assessments?**

It was very hurtful, if we're just being honest, because I think most of the slip-ups that I made or anything like that were things that weren't even necessarily impactful to the game. And there was a lot of strategy that was happening. Me and Blue Sophi, we actually got very, very close at the end, and we realized that our games were very, very similar — a lot of the like moves that we were trying to make with our alliance, the way that we were perceived.

I think if you actually… I'm not going to say that, but I just think that we were perceived very much the same way, and I don't think that it was valid. So the same way that I'm seeing some of the stuff that they're saying now, there are also things that I was saying that they didn't get it to see.

**Yeah, and it's tough because you go and you play *Survivor*, you have to deal with everyone on the island, and you have that whole experience. And then, as if that's not hard enough, you have to come back and you have to watch it play out on TV while dealing with the internet. How has that experience for you?**

Um, it has been very interesting, and I keep reminding myself that the 1%, 2% of things that are said on the internet does not reflect the actual viewership of this show. I've been focusing a lot on just the positive and the amount of people who have reached out to me and told me that sharing my story about my mom and her addiction and my grief with her death and how that's impacted them. I've had people reach out and say that they started therapy and that they're in recovery programs at this point. And so that's the energy that I put my focus on. And not necessarily all the feedback that fans, you know, have about the way I played.

Kristina Mills and Jawan Pitts on 'Survivor 49'.

**That was such a powerful moment because you did allow yourself to be so vulnerable and show you were going through, and everyone who has experienced loss in some form can relate to that. Look, it didn't make into the episode, but Jawan told me you were not happy with him voting out a third straight Black member onto the jury at the Alex vote. And that it got pretty heated. What was that conversation like?**

So we have to go back just a little bit. When they came back from the split Tribal, I spoke with Jawan and I said, "Hey, what happened?" And he was the one who brought up the race conversation with me that him and MC had had, and he was just so hurt by the fact that he had to do that. That was the reason that I gave him the chicken. That was the actual genuine reason why I gave it to him, because I was like: I have a Black son, and you all have to be this person that holds everything together. And so that's why I gave it to him.

And so then when it was the Alex vote, we saw that very differently. I said, "If you knew that Alex was going home then and he didn't need to do his vote at all, then I would prefer you just say, 'Hey, guys, I, I know he's going home, but I'm going to do this for my own reasons.'"

Our argument was like, we've had all these conversations about race, and then you have an opportunity and you vote out another person. And so that's kind of what the conversation was. It did get a little heated, but I do understand where he's coming from and I think we just kind of agree to see the situation differently.

Kristina Mills and Steven Ramm on 'Survivor 49'.

**Let's talk about by far the best part of the final Tribal Council, where you asked Savannah to name a loved one for every member of the jury. It was absolutely delicious. She tried to not do it, you would not let her off the hook. You clearly had a reason for requesting that, so tell us what you were trying to do there.**

It was a controversial question, apparently. So if you go back to our preseason interviews, I was asked, WWhat was one of your favorite moments from *Survivor* history?" And I said, "When Kelly in season 1, she was supposed to go home, and it ended up being a Fallen Comrades challenge. And she won because she knew things about her castmates." I love that moment. I felt like it was kind of like a mic drop. And I said, "If I ever make it to final Tribal, I'm going to ask someone, 'What's my daughter's name?'"

I actually didn't plan to do that. I forgot I even had said that. But if you go back and you watch our season, every time we did challenges, any time someone was struggling, we would say, "Do it for this person! Do it for Brandon! Do it for Nico!" We were calling people's names out, so it wasn't just like this random question. It was kind of our thing during the season, was calling out loved ones and saying, "Do it for them." And I was like: You know what? I don't know if she even knows half of the people in our lives because we just didn't have those social bonds, and I was a person where you can go back again to preseason interviews who said, "I'm voting based on social game."

Kristina Mills of 'Survivor 49'.

**So you and Savannah clearly didn't see eye-to-eye out there. We saw some of that on screen. I'm guessing there was more off screen we didn't see. Was there more to some of those conversations?**

Oh my gosh, yes! I actually have in my notebook from Ponderosa pregame, I was like, "Gosh, I hope I'm not on the tribe with this girl! It's just something about her that I'm not happy about." And then, I mean literally from episode 1 all the way to when you all finally did get to see our relationship, there were things that were said on the mat that I didn't really like. There were some other things that transpired that I just really didn't like. And so you all didn't even see we kind of had this internal thing. Like, it was very clear that me and her did not get along. Basically the entire season it kind of came to a head, and that's when you all finally kind of got a hint into our relationship.

'Survivor 49' winner Savannah Louie reacts to Kristina's diabolical jury question

'Survivor 49' star Rizo Velovic says Sophi should have stolen his idol

**So she wasn't going to get your vote for a million dollars. So why ultimately does Sophi get it over Sage?**

She played the game that I wanted to play and I was trying to play. You have to have one or two very trusted allies that you know for a fact they're not writing your name down. And then just kind of like secretly work for information and use it to your advantage. I respected that, and you all didn't see it, but again, me and Sophi got very, very close. I even referenced her in my journal as well. I said, "This is going to be like your little sister." And so we always really wanted to work together the entire time. It just sucked because we were on two different sides of the coin.

Rizo Velovic, Sage Ahrens-Nichols, Kristina Mills, Sophi Balerdi, and Savannah Louie on 'Survivor 49'.

**I gotta come clean about something, Kristina. It doesn't reflect well on me, but I'm just going to keep it 100 with you. I love watching people fall in challenges. I'm entertained by it. I think it's funny. As long as they're not seriously hurt or permanently damaged, I just love it. All that said, how bad were those two falls we saw you take in that final-five immunity challenge? You said you were all right, but you did not look all right.**

[*Laughs*] No, I was not okay. And my knees and my back still hurt, like to this day. My grandmother saw the falls and she said, "You really need to go get checked out!" And you all didn't see how many times I fell. In that last challenge, I probably fell like eight or nine times off that barrel. And they didn't even show the worst one. I was like 20 minutes behind everyone. So Jeff [Probst] had to keep coming up and down checking on me. You know it's bad when Jeff starts encouraging you and not talking about you. Jeff said, "Do it for those babies! Just think about 'em!" And I was like, "Okay, Uncle J." So the falls were really bad.

Nate Moore and Kristina Mills on 'Survivor 49'.

**Anything else that happened out there that you wish had made it to TV but didn't?**

I really wish that you all saw how socially well I was reading things, especially when it came to the Nate vote. I think that people really saw that as just a safe move. And you all didn't really fully understand how big of a threat Nate was. Nate was the trifecta. This man does marathons and things like that. Socially, he was like the cool dad that every person wanted to work with, and he was insulated so well.

And he wanted to work with MC. I picked up on that and that was one of my closest allies, and he clearly did not want to work with me. And so for me, it was not a safe move. It was the move I had to make because if he made it past that first Tribal, then I was next.

**You and I are on the same page, Kristina. After I interviewed you guys on location, he was my pick to win the season.**

He's so intelligent. He's so smart. And he was such a threat to take me out. And I was like, "Sorry, you gotta go."

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