‘Survivor’ star Rome Cooney says Kyle Ostwald ‘swore on his kids’ life’— and made a ‘comment’ he ‘won’t repeat’
All villains have their downfalls.
“Survivor 47” star Rome Cooney’s aggressive gameplay came back to bite him when the 12 remaining players kicked him off the island on Wednesday’s episode.
The 31-year-old e-sports commentator exclusively spoke to The Post about his final days on the show, including unaired drama with Kyle Ostwald.
Cooney claimed that Ostwald, also 31, “swore on his kids’ life” and lied in a conversation about the game.
Furthermore, Cooney said Ostwald made a personal “comment” about two of the other contestants.
Read Cooney’s full interview below.
New York Post: Who of the group of 13 made you so comfortable that you thought you were staying?
Rome Cooney: Honestly, it was Sam and Tiyana and Sue and Caroline. It was once I went and told them what Kyle had said, once I relayed that message, they were all in on Kyle. Then we go to the immunity challenge. We come back and Kyle was like, “I won immunity. Not going to be me. It’s going to be Rome. Forget that guy. He’s throwing my name out there.”
I find out later — it didn’t make the edit — he swore on his kids’ life that he didn’t say those things about Tiyana, so that’s the reason Tiyana believed him and never came back to me to compare notes, essentially. It is kind of odd, like if I tell you, “Hey, this person’s gunning for you,” you go and talk to them and they’re like, “I’m not gunning for you,” you’re going to come back to the person that originally talked to you at least to be like, “So are you lying?” And that didn’t happen because Kyle swore on his kid and Tiyana didn’t think that someone would do that unless they were telling the truth.
Kyle realized he was in some hot water because he realized he talked crap about four people and then immediately had those four people wanting him out the game. So he flipped it on me, and props to him. In “Survivor” you got to do what you got to do. Lie, cheat, steal. And hey, he did it. Everyone plays the game differently. I would never do it, but everyone plays the game different.
Can you elaborate more on things that may have happened with Kyle that did not make the air?
Kyle said something about Sue and Caroline, about them personally, that I won’t repeat. I’m not going to bring it up. I told Sue and Caroline. And that was kind of the reason Sue was so mad at Kyle in the episode. And you can see it. [To the viewer,] it’s like, “OK, I get he’s targeting her, but why was she so mad?” It was because of the comment that I relayed to her that he said. It was just something that I wouldn’t say. I would never host anything again if I ever said it. It’s one of those type of things.
So it’s just something I’m not going to repeat. It didn’t make the show for obvious reasons, but that made me want to turn on Kyle. So pretty much I took what Kyle said personally. And I think if I went back and changed anything, I wouldn’t take what he said personally about someone else that had to do with stuff outside of the game. I wouldn’t take that and want to target him in the game for it.
You and Sol were oil and water out there. Why couldn’t you get along?
Me and Sol did not see eye to eye. It was even after the first immunity challenge. Literally that night I’m talking to Sol on the beach. It was just me and him and I’m like, “Hey, man, we should talk about who we want to sit out of this next immunity challenge.” And he’s like, “Bro, you need to stop thinking about that stuff. Stop thinking about the future. Don’t worry about that.” And I’m like, “Bro, we need to talk. These are things we should at least address now, because we know we’re going to have to talk about it tomorrow.” The dude was trying to tell me how to think, and I’m like, “Bro, I do not rock with that at all.”
He’s telling me don’t look for idols — when he was out looking for idols just as much as me. It didn’t get shown. So there was a lot of reasons why me and Sol didn’t get along. He had moments like that with Genevieve as well. It wasn’t just me that didn’t see eye to eye with Sol. It was very cut and dry that it was me and Genevieve against pretty much Sol and whoever Sol wanted to work with.
Why did you vote for Sam at tribal council?
At the merge, Sam was way too comfortable with every single person. I’m watching Sam talk with people he’s never talked to before in his life. You just see somebody schmoozing over all these people that he’s never met. I’m just like, “I’m clocking what you’re doing, bro.” So that’s why I held up his name and I said, “Sam, you are way too comfortable in this game, and I want to see you shake in your boots when you go back to camp.”
You’ve been labeled a villain by some of the other contestants and the fans. Would you label yourself a villain?
I would label myself as someone that was fiercely loyal to their alliance. I don’t think that anything I did was truly villainous. A lot of people might say Rome was playing hard, but everything I did was in the context of the game. You never saw me lie about something outside of the game. You never saw me talk down about somebody about their personal selves. I’m a gamer, and I took the game for what it was, which is a game.
So I’m not sitting here making personal assumptions about people that are outside of game. And that’s what I feel like came back to bite me. That’s what ended up getting me with Kyle: I took something personal that I didn’t like that he did from an outside-the-game perspective, and I used that to target him in my own head.
“Survivor” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.
