Survivor's Candice on Flipping to the Villains' Side: "I Totally Messed Up"

Once a cheater, always a cheater? That's what the Survivor Villains thought when it came to new ally Candice Woodcock, who flipped sides and voted with the Villains to stay in the game. Despite her best efforts to show her loyalty, some of her new allies, particularly Jerri Manthey, believed someone who switched sides that easily could not be trusted. Combine those suspicions with the betrayal felt by the two other remaining Heroes, Colby Donaldson and Rupert Boneham, and Candice was swiftly voted out. Woodcock, 27, spoke with TVGuide.com about why she regrets voting Amanda out, the real story behind her alliance with Russell Hantz and whether she'll play Survivor again.

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TVGuide.com: How did you feel going into your final Tribal Council?
Candice Woodcock: I thought I was in good shape. I thought we were going to split the votes between Rupert and Colby because they were worried that Rupert had found the idol. I thought for sure that they were going for Rupert because Rupert had attacked Russell and was being a jerk. I think I was kind of blinded by my dislike for Rupert. I wanted to believe he was going home. I was so tired of him and ready for him to go. ... There was one red flag for me before we went. Russell came up to me and said, "Wait a minute, I forgot. Who is going to vote for whom? Let's go over it one more time." And I kind of thought, Russell is always on top of things and he's always strategizing. I thought it was very odd that he was saying that he forgot who was supposed to be voting for who, but I just kind of blew it off. Probably at that point, there wasn't much that I could have done; maybe I could have changed something around. I think I just lost focus for a minute.

TVGuide.com: Did you anticipate that your switching to the Villains alliance would backfire the way that it did?
Candice: I didn't think that that was a good argument — that I would flip back, because once you've already betrayed a group of people, are they really going to want to take you back? But I was worried that some of the girls in the Villains tribe would be threatened by me coming over, so I just tried to keep my head down and be nice to people and just be personable. But in a game for $1 million, it's really not about who's nice and who you like as a person because obviously Russell is not all that cuddly and he's there and I'm not.

Survivor's Amanda: I'll never play the game again

TVGuide.com: Had you known your switch to the Villains side was going to backfire like this, would you have voted differently on the night Amanda went home?
Candice: I knew going into it that I should not be voting for Amanda. I don't know what got into me. I totally just messed up. I knew right afterward that it was the wrong decision to have made. I felt really bad about it. I think I just freaked out because I had been miserable the entire time with the Heroes. They didn't want to listen to me. They didn't want to play with me. I was just kind of there and they were tolerating me and I was just so tired of that. I just wanted to do something different, be able to talk to somebody different and have new people to maybe play with. Although I did end up getting along with Amanda in the end, I caught her lying to me that day and Sandra had been going back and forth about whether she was going to vote with the Heroes. ... But, it was a mistake and I knew it right away.

TVGuide.com: Part of the reason you switched to the Villains side was because of Russell, so what are your thoughts on Russell looking back?
Candice: I know that I said I didn't trust Russell 100 percent, but that wasn't the whole story. He did show me the idol and I didn't tell anybody else about it because he was so aggressive. If he saw you go to talk to somebody, he'd go right up to them after that and ask, "What did you say?" So that they didn't have time to make up a story or you didn't have enough time to agree on the story you were going to say. It was really difficult, I felt, to get around him, so I just agreed with everything he said to his face and didn't really go off and tell other people what he said because I knew that would be dangerous for me. I thought he would have that idol for a little bit and that that was a good piece of information for me to have because he was telling me he wanted to use that idol to vote Parvati off. I thought, OK, good, I can use that piece of information and tell Parvati and then we can vote Russell off.

TVGuide.com: Do you think you will play Survivor again?
Candice: When they first asked me, I thought "No, I'm not going to do it again." But then it just kind of kept eating away at me. So I could say no right now and if they asked me again, I would probably do the same thing and I'd have to just go and do it.