It was a rocky road for Rogue who, on the first days of getting to know her tribe mates made some comments that have since caused backlash for the writer-director.

Speaking to 10 Play, Rogue responded by saying, “I’m heartbroken. I’m deeply humiliated that my words have caused offence. I made a silly comment, very much in jest, since I was born in Africa and have lived in America, and in no way did I intend to cause disrespect to Nina or anyone else and I really, wholeheartedly apologise.”

It was a truly shocking Tribal Council after some heated discussion when Rogue said she was listening to what had been said, and asked for the tribe to write her name down and vote her out.

“I knew they were gunning for me [and] I knew they were gunning for Gerry,” Rogue told 10 Play. “Gerry’s a sweetheart and I thought, the people there who were real heroes — and the types of people I thought were only going to be on the tribe — were Gerry and Matt. People who had dedicated their lives to saving people. I didn’t want Gerry to go home.”

For many, being on Survivor is a lifelong dream, so seeing someone give up the chance to play the game, and the shot at $500,000, could sting.

“Not to say I wouldn’t love half a million dollars, of course I’d love half a million dollars,” she said with a laugh, “I could go off and do another beautiful film on giraffes that are going extinct in the wild. I’m passionate about that.

“But my feeling at that point was, it was me or Gerry and I wasn’t okay with that. He was having a great time, he saved so many lives and the best thing I could do was save his,” she continued, “and that was my decision, so I said write my name.”

Part of the reason Rogue decided to go on Australian Survivor in the first place was to expose more people to the work she did with animal conservation, including her documentary where she went undercover on and off for six years as a budding photographer and videographer interested in filming trophy hunts.

“I’m still trying to get the film seen by as many people as possible so that people know lions in the wild are going extinct,” she said. “Whether you like me or not, don’t worry about it. Just know that the lion is the most symbolic — it’s the first animal that children recognise, the king of the jungle.

“It affects our ecosystem if we don’t have the lion and I think, more than that, if we lose the lion it makes a statement about conservation as a whole and humans as a whole,” she continued.

“I thought, oh my gosh, I have an opportunity to expose more people to save lions. I thought I can handle this, I can get over my phobias, I’ll work out and go to the gym more and I’m in the water every day. I wanted to do it for the right reasons."

During the filming of the documentary, Rogue fell backwards off a cliff and in the resulting scans to see the severity of her injury, discovered she had breast cancer.

"I did try, wrongly or rightly, to be a good role model for female cancer survivors. Have I done a good job? Can't tell you that. I don't know. That's what my aim was. That's what I wanted to do," Rogue added.

"I wanted to do that, I wanted to bring about attention to save lions from extinction and try to be a good person... so that makes everything even more heartbreaking to me."

Australian Survivor: Heroes V Villains airs Sunday - Wednesday at 7.30 on Network 10 and 10 Play on demand