Kay Carlson has entered the chat. The Temptation Island alum is speaking out following the cast's unofficial reunion on The Viall Files, and she's holding nothing back. In a new hour-long YouTube video, Kay dished on her Temptation Island experience and what really went down with her and Tyler.
They may have left the island hand-in-hand, but it's no secret that Kay and Tyler didn't stay together post-Temptation Island. In fact, they both confirmed in an initial post-show interview with Tudum that they never even tried to date. As for why it didn't work out, Tyler implied that he and Kay didn't date after the show because he wasn't comfortable with her OnlyFans account. He told podcast host Nick Viall that he only found out about her account on their final date, saying that until then she had “withheld very important information.”
Kay, however, remembers it differently and she uploaded an hour-long video to her personal YouTube account to tell her side of the story. Don't have an hour? Here are the main takeaways from Kay's Temptation Island YouTube vid:
Kay believes Tyler knew about her OnlyFans before their overnight date, but admits that was the first time they spoke about it.
Kay admitted that she hadn't explicitly told Tyler about her OnlyFans page before their overnight date because she wasn't comfortable speaking about it on camera. That said, she also hinted that he might have known all along.
According to Kay, everyone in the house knew that she had an OnlyFans. And she noted one particular interaction that suggested Tyler knew: “At one point, he came up to me and was like—which is so odd to me, and definitely a red flag—he came up to me and was like, ‘So, I heard you make, like, a lot of money.’”
Still, she made a point to tell him about her career before the Final Bonfire so he could make “an informed decision.” So, yes, he was telling the truth when he said that they hadn't spoken about it before, but it wasn't necessarily information that she “withheld.”
Tyler continued to pursue Kay after learning about her OnlyFans, including during their last 2 days in Hawai'i, but she was never interested.
On The Viall Files, Tyler said that nothing happened between him and Kay after they wrapped filming, though he did admit that he, Kay, Natalie, and Grant did stay in Hawai'i for two extra nights. But Kay tells a slightly different story of their last few days together. “We were definitely kissing and like all on each other the whole time,” she said. “It was definitely not friend vibes. But again, nothing more than a kiss.”
Describing it as “a summer vacation romance,” Kay said that while she had no interest in continuing a relationship with Tyler in the real world, the had fun together. It was Tyler, she said, that continued to text her for a few months after filming. “Him saying it was only friend vibes immediately after he found out about the OF is totally B.S,” she said in the video, sharing screenshots of flirty text messages supposedly sent from Tyler after they went home.
What seems to annoy Kay more than anything is Tyler's hypocrisy. “Don't act like that was a deal breaker for you,” she said in the video. “He flat out told me, 'Your honesty last night with everything is what confirmed to me that I am leaving with you.’”
At the very end of the video, she criticized him for bringing up her OnlyFans on the podcast, saying he could have either not mentioned it or defended her professional choices, but instead, he “took that opportunity to make himself look morally better and like he's on this moral high ground.”
Tyler told Kay he loved her during their overnight date.
Calling their overnight the “worst date” she had on the show, Kay revealed that in the middle of the night—after she listened to him “talk and vent and trauma-dump” about his ex wife for hours off-camera—they got into a fight. “I just wanted to go home at this point,” she said. “Then he's like talking, he's like, ‘I care about you so much and I love you, and this and that.’” According to Kay, he kept talking, so she never had to address his declaration.
Tyler told Kay that he and Taylor were broken up before arriving on Temptation Island.
One potentially major bombshell from Kay's video: She claims that Tyler told her that he and Taylor had already broken up when they got the call that they were cast on Temptation Island, but they agreed to do the show together because they wanted to be on reality TV. (Fair.)
Needless to say, she was shocked when she finally watched the season. “I didn’t expect to see her sitting and crying in the other house when he’s telling me, ‘Yeah, we were done. We mutually decided not to be together anymore.’”
But Kay and Taylor are totally cool now.
Kay made it clear she has no beef with Taylor, revealing that the two actually talked on the phone after the Viall Files recording. “She told me that he went home and had a conversation with her and was fully dragging me about this situation,” she said. “Which is news to me because he told me that he had no contact with Taylor after the island.”
Kay revealed other Temptation Island fun facts.
Finally, Kay also dropped some fun behind-the-scenes details about the show, which I've rounded up below:
- All 12 Temptresses shared a bedroom with one bathroom and no AC. Kay also said that there were “fire ants” all over her bed, which is why she was so interested in sleeping in Tyler's room.
- The girls' bathroom was the only room that never had a camera, so they would go there to have private conversations.
- Kay and Tyler were not allowed to talk to each other off-mic until that final overnight date. “They would not let us have any conversation the entire month off-camera,” she said, adding that “we weren't allowed to speak if we were in the same car and not on camera.”
