Murtzcellanious: Murtz Jaffer Interviews Survivor: Fiji's Kenward 'Boo' Bernis

Interviews, Shows

After a lot of work and effort, I finally managed to catch up with Boo and get his take on everything Fiji. I believe that I am the only writer who interviewed him in Canada, and it’s great to bring his unique take on the game to the world. I found him particularly interesting and he definitely has an engaging personality. While we were at the same parties over the weekend, we never got a chance to talk and it was great to be able to quiz him on his strategy.



Murtz Jaffer: You weren’t shocked at all when you were voted out. Did you know it was over when you lost the immunity challenge to Yau Man?

Kenward ‘Boo’ Bernis: Yeah, I knew before when he was at his last drawbridge that I was going home.

MJ: Really?

KBB: Yeah.

MJ: There were many strong guys this season and you were one of them. My question is how was Yau Man able to keep winning the challenges over guys like you?

KBB: I think really everybody kind of looked like they were strong, but they really weren’t that strong competitively. I would have thought Dreamz was better or Earl but they really didn’t win any challenges. They weren’t even close. It was either me or Yau, first and second or second and third in everything.

MJ: What do you think it was about Yau? He’s kind of old. I mean you are obviously pretty strong but what was it about Yau that made him do so well?

KBB: Most of the things really didn’t have to do with just strength. Balance… even some of the challenges that I won, I just got kind of lucky sometimes. Shooting the ball through the hoop and pulling it down. I got it on my second try one time and it took me like 30 times one time. And Yau did the same thing. I just happened to get the last one really quick. It had to do more with having dexterity and balance and being nimble. A lot of those qualities. Some of the other things, provided you needed strength (like the one where I had to climb the pole)… he wasn’t in that one and he probably wouldn’t have been able to…

MJ: Pull that one off…

KBB: Yeah, he doesn’t have as much upper body strength.

MJ: If you had rejoined your original alliance with Edgardo, Alex and Stacy… do you think you would have been able to take out Earl’s group because you seemed to turn on them right away?

KBB: It all stemmed from Stacy turning on me. She didn’t like me in camp. She saw an opportunity to get Alex to get away from me. The thing with Alex was very early on, when we voted Liliana off, I was trying to show the girls that I was with them. I wanted me and Stacy to go to the finals because I figured I could beat her. So I was throwing her a bone and doing that pissed off Alex because he strongly wanted to send Cassandra home but we all agreed to do it uh… shoot….

MJ: Democratically?

KBB: Yeah, democratically.

MJ: It’s cool. I gotcha. I hear what you’re saying. But what I want to know is why you and Stacy seemed to have a problem because originally you were in an alliance together. What happened? What went wrong? Why did she turn on you?

KBB: It was the camp life. When we would tell stories that really have no regard for what the girls thought. We didn’t have any social filters out there and she’s a high-maintenance type of girl who likes to get her way all the time and it bothered her that I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t have any social filters as far as she was concerned. I passed wind. Talked about women and the college days. I was doing that a lot with Edgardo who had the same personality. I had somebody to share stories with. We wouldn’t leave the camp to tell our funny stories.

MJ: I got you. Why did you decide to join Earl and Yau, when you knew that they would take you out after the Horsemen were eliminated?

KBB: I wasn’t sure. I was hoping to have Cassandra because I had taken care of her at camp since Day 1. And she had Dreamz. I was hoping I had a chance there. And then I was thinking that I definitely had to win challenges, but the thing was that I knew that they were voting me off. I found out that night after they switched the tribes and Michelle went home. I found out that they were against me and I wasn’t sure until then. But then after that, the only thing that I could do was go under Earl’s umbrella.

MJ: Was your strategy to just keep winning immunity until the end because it seemed like you were banking on winning every challenge?

KBB: Yeah. Even before that last challenge, in the truck challenge, I had been taking care of Cassandra. When we got up to the line to start throwing the axes to win the truck, she starts yelling ‘GO YAU MAN!’

MJ: (Laughs).

KBB: I was like what are you doing? What are you doing?

MJ: (Laughs).

KBB: Go Yau Man? I figured that something was wrong. They had made a deal to give Dreamz the truck and to throw the challenge. They made a deal to throw the challenge so that Dreamz could get the truck. Unbeknownst to me, everyone else was going to throw the challenge that I was in so I wouldn’t be able to eat any food.

MJ: (Laughs). That’s hilarious! Your final tribal council question really asked Dreamz about his religious values. Are you very religious?

KBB: I wouldn’t say religious but I am very spiritual. I have my own relationship with Christ. I was born a Catholic, but I don’t follow all of the Catholic views but I have been born-again at a young age. I do backslide like everyone, but it’s more of a personal thing. A lot of people don’t realize that about me because I’m not somebody that goes out and tries to recruit people into my beliefs. I just have my own personal relationship with God. People bring it up to me and I am comfortable talking about it, but it’s just in the situations that I am normally in, in public, it doesn’t come up that often. So when people hear me say things or see me say my grace at dinner or something, they wonder… ‘what are you… religious?’

MJ: What do you think about what Dreamz did?

KBB: It’s not a major thing. Where I had a problem was admitting he swore to God, he swore on his son (maybe not his son’s life) but he wants his son to see that he is a man of his word and even in his private sessions, in his interviews, they were like ‘are you going to give immunity back’ and that’s the time that he could have been honest with everyone saying ‘I am not going to give the immunity back. It’s totally part of the game.’ In that private, honest time for himself, he says ‘I am going to give the immunity back.’ He’s still saying that. I went out with him last night and he’s still saying that he was doing it as a game the whole time. It’s like beating a dead horse. I have given up saying ‘Dreamz, come on. We know better.’

MJ: I really liked the argument that you made to Earl before he voted you out. Where did you come up with the idea to try and get them to take out Dreamz?

KBB: Well, at that point, I really thought Dreamz was the most popular. Alex and Edgardo and Mookie and them, they didn’t seem to be angry with him. They weren’t communicating with me I guess. I thought he definitely had people on that side to vote for him and people on the new side to vote for him. So I thought he was the most dangerous. I thought he was the danger in a vote.

MJ: I don’t think that you could take Earl or Yau Man out, so really Dreamz was the only guy that you could point at instead of you.

KBB: Right. Well, I was throwing at Earl and I knew Earl wasn’t taking Yau out. I thought maybe he could take Yau out at a certain point because he did tell me he didn’t want to take Yau to the final two. Nobody wanted to go against him in a vote or in a challenge that was similar to the peg-standing that we thought it might be like.

MJ: When the twist happened, you picked Michelle to be a member of the New Moto tribe. Why did you pick her?

KBB: See from the beginning, we slept together in the caves and kept each other warm for two days. We made eye contact and said hi and bye’s everytime we were at the challenges. I figured that she… I could get that alliance strong again and I wasn’t sure but she was kind of playing both sides. She was playing my side and she was playing Earl’s side but I think she was more Earl’s side. That seemed to be my strongest alliance in the very first two or three days. So I was trying to nurse that back.

MJ: It seemed like you were trying to pull in Michelle and Cassandra, but did you know that they really weren’t on your side? That they just told you that they were?

KBB: Michelle, they never really showed anything on the show of her not being with me. It was just Earl saying that she was with him, but on the island she also said that she wanted us to be together. And I asked her at the finale, I said I never got to see it. But she was kind of playing both sides. She was finally going to use that to her advantage at whatever point she needed. Like if she thought I was going to be more valuable, she would have probably went with me. If she thought that it would have been better for her to get Earl out at a certain point, she probably would have done that.

MJ: We saw you get injured a lot on the show. What is the current status of your injuries and how are you feeling?

KBB: I feel good. My knee injury is a torn ACL, but with an ACL, you can do a lot of things after it heals, you just can’t go 100% like in running or jumping. You have to try and keep a bent knee. And in my fighting, I have to keep out of certain positions that can only come up maybe every 10% in a month’s practice. As long as I am aware of some of the things that I am doing and I try to make sure that when I run, that I don’t fully extend it and snap it, it should be okay to do most things.

MJ: What do you think your best strategic move was and what was your worst?

KBB: My best move was trying to get Stacy to go to the final two with me because nobody would have voted for her. And if she would have stayed loyal, it would have worked. We could have controlled the guys, but she didn’t. So that was part of a bad move. Really, it’s hard to have a best move because nothing worked out for myself.

MJ: (Laughs).

KBB: The worst thing was to wait until an alliance picked me as opposed to me going out and picking an alliance. Then I didn’t hold the cards.

MJ: Right. My last question is that Earl and Cassandra never seemed to be in danger during the course of the show. Why do you think everybody just allowed them to skate through to the finals?

KBB: Cassandra was on the block from the beginning and the game saved her the first day. The second time I saved her because the girls wanted Liliana gone because they didn’t want another good-looking girl there and then later on, they targetted Cassandra one more time but then targetted Earl, but we flipped it on them. After we got Edgardo, then there was no danger and they would just put any name down. They didn’t have any strength in numbers at that point. They didn’t go the whole way. Earl had a target on his back at one point but it was too late. Cassandra had it up until Edgardo was voted out. Her name came up three times in that vote. After that, they just had enough numbers. Earl knew that he had an easy vote with Cassandra and no competition in a vote or in a challenge. She was the obvious choice to keep around and I was the obvious choice to get out because I was winning most of the challenges. And if it wasn’t me, it was Yau Man and they wanted to keep Yau Man until the end because that was a vote.

MJ: People said that you talked a lot. Do you think that you talk a lot?

KBB: Yeah, definitely.

MJ: (Laughs).

KBB: In the helicopter ride. A lot of people talk. They wanted me to tell a story. Every night I told a story before bed. They wanted to hear one of my crazy stories. They didn’t show a lot of that because it didn’t go with the finish of the show. I had definitely tried different strategies and tried to play people but because none of it really worked, they didn’t really show it.

MJ: How did you get the nickname ‘Boo’?

KBB: My grandmother. It’s an affectionate term in Cajun-Land. My grandmother started calling me that when I was born.

MJ: That’s awesome. Thank you so much. What’s next for you?

KBB: To tell you the truth, I hope I get invited to the All-Stars.

MJ: Well, I’ll be pulling for you. Don’t worry. I’ll pull some strings because I know a few people.

KBB: Hey, pull ’em because I have an easy road to backstabbing people because I was portrayed as someone who just wouldn’t do such a thing in the game. So if I get a chance to go now, it’d be easy to lie to a few people to step forward. Everybody’s like ‘you didn’t stab anybody in the back.’ Well, I didn’t really get a chance to. Maybe that’s why I was at 5, instead of the top 3. A lot of people get confused. They are happy that I played my way. They are unhappy with Dreamz. The thing with Dreamz is that he wasn’t playing the game when he made that deal. He went back in private and said that ‘I’m giving him it back.’ He went back on his own word against himself to say Jonny Fairplay who in the interviews who said ‘I am playing all you suckers. They think I am doing this.’ That’s a game-player. I can respect that. Instead of Dreamz going against his own word and I would definitely take a shot at playing a move like Jon’s. Maybe not something that big but definitely lying to someone as part of a game strategy. My heart and my mind, when I make that promise… it’s part of a game. Not make that promise in my heart and my mind and then go back on that.

MJ: I gotcha, I gotcha. Well, we didn’t really get a chance to meet this weekend but hopefully we will soon.

KBB: Definitely man, I appreciate it.


Born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, Kenward “Boo” Bernis works in construction during the day and manages the bar he owns at night. He has previously worked as a crawfish farmer and health club worker.

Bernis attended the University of Louisiana in Lafayette where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in General Studies. He enjoys participating in mixed martial arts fighting and Olympic lifting. He describes himself as strong-willed, outgoing and adventurous. He considers himself to be a cerebral athlete, a great problem solver and strong both mentally and physically.

Bernis continues to reside in Lafayette, Louisiana. His birth date is June 21, 1972.


Survivor: Fiji airs on CBS on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Survivor: Fiji airs on the Global network in Canada on Thursday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

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Please credit Murtz Jaffer & RealityDish.com when using this interview. If reposting, please post just an excerpt and link back to the rest of the piece.

Murtz Jaffer is the world's foremost reality television expert and was the host of Reality Obsessed which aired on the TVTropolis and Global Reality Channels in Canada. He has professional writing experience at the Toronto Sun, National Post, TV Guide Canada, TOROMagazine.com and was a former producer at Entertainment Tonight Canada. He was also the editor at Weekendtrips.com.