Survivor 46 star Q Burdette is actually making a Q Skirt to sell

Q Burdette made a BIG MISTAKE on Survivor 46, but it had nothing to do with hide-and-seek. The real estate agent turned reality TV provocateur became the fourth straight player this season to go home with an immunity idol in their pocket when he was blindsided out of the game.

It’s actually something or a miracle that Q even made it this far considering the player threatened to quit multiple times — the last instance coming at Tribal Council, which seemed to anger pretty much every single one of his tribemates. But Q carried on, until he got too close to Maria Shrime Gonzalez. And once Maria won immunity (again), the rest of the tribe decided to take him out — removing an ally from the game’s most dangerous player.

Why didn’t Q play his idol? Why did he ultimately not go through with his plan to quit the game? How come he refused to let anyone give up their Applebee’s spot for Liz at the reward? And why wasn’t he more successful in challenges? We asked the inventor of the Q Skirt all that and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Would you or would you not describe your decision to not play your immunity idol as a… Big Mistake?

Q BURDETTE: Oh my God, man. It's a mistake, but it's one of those things, it's like it's a calculated mistake. It was a mistake that I made the decision before I even got to Tribal that I was going to roll the dice and I would be okay if it didn't go my way and I was to go home with it. Because I knew if I would've left that Tribal with that idol still in my Q Skirt, they were in trouble for final three because none of 'em could beat me in fire.

How surprised were you when you kept seeing your name come up?

I knew I might've gotten maybe one vote, maybe two, and it was going to be a tie, I would've assumed. But when I saw two, I knew it was like, “Okay, they finally decided to get me."

You said that you knew you could beat anyone at fire. Did they know that? Do you think that played into the calculation to get you out?

So I'm not sure if that was a discussion around camp or not, but I knew because one day everybody was just sitting around just doing their thing, trying to make fire, and this was when Venus was still in the game and they were having trouble. And I just came, boom, boom, boom, boom. Got it. But I don't think that was the reason. I honestly think it was one of those things of: Hey, you go to the casino enough that luck is going to run out if you have it. And it ran out for me.

It ran out on everyone with an idol this season. What was the vibe like at Ponderosa when you got over when you reunited with all those other people that had been voted out?

It was all love. Of course, some of 'em cheering for you, some of 'em not. But at that point in the game, I felt like everyone on that side was kind cheering for me because they wanted some sort of excitement left to be able to vote for, I would assume. But it's just one of those things, once you're out of the game, the game is over. Now it's time to become human again. Become friends.

You can go over there and you can mope around or you can go over there and be cute and be excited, happy, and just thankful for the opportunity. So I made sure that my attitude and the way that I was going to approach them was in check before I got there. And man, when I got there, it was all love. They were singing, dancing, hugging around, and everybody wanted to know what was going on since they left. And they didn't even know I had an idol! I had to tell ‘em “Man, I had the dang idol in my pocket! I should have played the dang thing!”

How do you think you do with the jury if you make it to the final three?

My story and my ability to tell stories I think would've helped me out a whole lot simply from the standpoint of you take a guy who's beginning of the game, nothing went right. But as far as a voting standpoint, everything went my way for 17 days in the game. I was in control. There was no question about it. 17 days straight, who was the man who was calling the shots? And it was day 18 where I raised my hand — we'll talk about that — and said, “Hey, you guys send me home.”

That’s where things shifted. But in that shift, I had to make the decision to go down and take the backseat for a while. But then around day 21, I started to regain that power again. I started to run around and do some of those things I was doing before day 18. And there's the combination of that and being able to tell that story of, “Hey, no one's name here came up more than mine. And because I was in the game, Hunter goes home, Tiff goes home, Venus goes home, and now Q goes home because of Q!"

So if I make it to the final three, you got to think now Q would've had to play the idol, or survive and played an idol at five and send somebody else home. It would've been five straight people that would've went home because of Q, the existence of Q. And if you take Q out of the equation for some of these votes, there's no blindside. These people actually playing these items, including Q.

Well, let's talk about what you just referenced about raising your hand and I'll tell you my take watching it and you tell me if I'm right or wrong. You were in control, and you're an alpha who’s ready to lead and ready to coach. And all of a sudden, you hit this wall where you realize, “Oh, wait a minute, I'm not in control anymore.” And my take was, that's why you were ready to tap out. So walk me through that, and also the decision to ultimately stick around and not tell everyone to put the votes on you?

Yeah, so it was never a thing of, “Oh man, Q wants to quit.” What happened is, right before they told me earlier in the day about Tevin, I tried to switch everything around so Tevin wouldn't go home. Then I went and told Hunter, who then went to Liz, and when Liz came back and she was crying. You guys probably didn't see this, but Liz was crying. This is before the Applebee's stuff, by the way. Liz is crying and she's upset, and now she's like, “Okay, I'll just do whatever you guys want.”

That bothered me on a personal level because I'm one of 17 kids. I have four sisters. All of my sisters are Liz's size. And for me to then see this bigger person go up, and then I felt like at that time, like, dang, I screwed up. I went and told Hunter. I shouldn't have messed up her plan, and now she's crying and now she's just going along with the flow. I felt bad because I was like: Man, if that was my sister, there's no way in the world I would feel good about what I just did to her plans.

That was part of it. That goes into it where I always say: If it's my fault, I'm willing to take the bullet. I'm willing to take the heat, I can deal with it. I'm man enough to say I screwed up. And if it comes to me having to go home in this game, I'm prepared to do so, and I would raise my hand. And if they don't do it now, that's on them. But my thinking was: Well, crap. I didn't do right about Tevin because I have yet to even go to Tevin because I'm trying to fix all this by myself and thinking I can sway everybody to get the vote off Tevin. I didn't even go to him to give him an opportunity to protect himself, and I brought him within the Six.

So I was like: Dang, bro, I screwed up. And he's about to go home. Tevin's dream was to be out there and win the money. Most of everybody out there, I would say 17 of them was there to win the money. I was there to win a title. That was it. The money is fine, but it's not going to make a difference to me. So when I start to just calculate: Okay, I'm here to win the title only, but these people, this will change their life. I was like: I'm going to try to save Tevin. If they don't do it, I can't do it.

Now, a lot of people need to understand: I'm a alpha guy. I am. I'm a person that can make a decision and I can say deuces. If I was trying to quit, and you can ask anybody in production, if I was trying to quit, I would've just left. It wasn't a trying to quit thing. It was a Q had a human moment in the game. He did something that he felt responsible for.

Were you surprised then that everyone was so angry at you after that? You think in your head that you're trying to do this selfless maneuver, and then you get back to camp and everyone's pissed.

Everybody's pissed because I told nobody what I was doing, and I was involved with so much at that time, but my name had not come up one time. I was really still the person that was like the glue to everything that they had going on. Now they're thinking, “Wait, he's part of this plan for tomorrow. He's part of this. He's just going to walk out and leave?” That was the feeling.

At that moment, me and Tiff were still locked in solid from her standpoint. She knew nothing about anything, about even me telling folks about her idol. Then she finds that out at that Tribal. So a lot kind of happened in that moment that I think pissed a lot of people off, but I think it caught them off guard more than anything. But I say this: Had I not done that, had I just stayed the course the way I was, the way I am in control, no mistake like that, I would've left sooner.

Right, because then everyone was like, “We can deal with him whenever we want.” Okay, let's talk about Applebee's Gate. I understand there was more to that. Tiff told me that Kenzie and Maria both were trying to give up their spot for Liz, and you were like, “No, no, no.”

Man, that's true. So again, I'm an alpha guy. If I make a decision, I like to stick with my decision, regardless if people think it's right or wrong, if I make a decision, I'm staying with it. So in that moment, I want the reward. I'm bringing these people for reasons that I think is best for my game, and I'm not about to allow someone else to ruin my moment because they're hungry. Everybody's hungry, they're crying. I mean, I'm sure everybody wants to cry. So I didn't let them give up their spot. It's because if you want to give up their spot, I pick you, you can go back over there, but I am picking somebody else. You're not just giving it to someone. That's not how this works. So that was my thinking.

It was nothing really against Liz. It was just, first of all, when she did that outburst, I was like, I definitely don't want her over here eating Applebee's now obviously — screaming at me. And then, secondly, it was just one of those things of she just voted for me. And although everybody else switched their vote on the second vote, you thought it would be great to just to write my name down again just for the hell of it because you said you would never write Hunter.

And to get to the Hunter thing, a lot of folks they're asking, “Well, Q, why did you write Ben?” A lot of folks need to understand this: There was never ever a Tribal until my vote that I did not know where every single vote was going. I calculated how many votes could be on me and how many votes wouldn't be on me.  And I also told Hunter — being a Mississippi boy — I knew he was going home if he didn't play his idol. If he played his idol, I was going home. I wasn't going to write Hunter's name down because I wanted to be able to say, “Hunter, listen, you wrote my name down. You told me you wouldn't. I did not write yours down the night you went home. Boom!” Maybe I could have gotten his vote on from a Mississippi boy being loyal. So that's just how that went.

Finally, when are we going to see you on Shark Tank with the Q Skirt?

Man, look, we don't have to go to Shark Tank. We just have to get it up and running and going, and we got the resources to push it. We don't need the Shark Tank money. We just need folks here locally. And I got banks that are ready to jump on this thing like crazy.

So we're in production right now. We have the first prototype coming. I want to test them all out before I start to put 'em on shelves. But we're working, I mean, we had to buy a lot of 'em. I got a company out in China. I met with another local guy who knew a guy from big places that he watched Survivor. He was supportive and he was like, “Dude, I think we can help you out with the production of this.” So it's going to be crazy.

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