IT was while staying at Borneo’s luxurious Magellan Sutera Hotel that ex-“Survivor” Stacy Stillman first snapped.

Some time shortly after being booted out of the most famous game show in the world, Stillman claims to have learned that she was the victim of a producer’s manipulations.

About a week earlier, her fellow contestants had voted the 28-year-old San Francisco lawyer off the tiny Malaysian island of Pula-Tiga and out of contention for the game’s $1 million grand prize.

But at the hotel, on or about March 28, Stillman had a chance meeting with fellow castaway Dirk Been, who – only one day earlier – had been on the losing end of a tribal council vote.

And that’s when Been first told Stillman how the show’s producers had suggested to him and co-contestant Sean Keniff that it might have been a good idea for them to vote her out of the game.

“Dirk came to me and gave me this information,” Stillman said during an interview on “Good Morning America” last February, just days after she had slapped “Survivor” producers and CBS with a lawsuit.

In the suit Stillman alleges that the show’s boss, Mark Burnett, had manipulated the vote and broken the FCC rules set nearly 50 years ago after the infamous quiz show scandals that were portrayed in the 1994 film “Quiz Show.”

Burnett and CBS deny the charges.

But Stillman’s suit – and a similar lawsuit filed last month by participants in a rival reality show, “Temptation Island” – seem to pose a clear danger to the popularity of TV’s hottest new fad.

How will fans react if and when these cases get into open court and they find out perhaps what they are seeing is not so “real” after all?

Is reality TV headed for its own quiz show scandal?

Or are audiences much more sophisticated now than they were in the 1950s when the revelation that game-show contestants were being fed answers – and ordered to take dives – in order to enhance the drama of the programs?

“The idea that this will expose the underbelly of the show, that its in fact an unscripted drama rather reality, is not quite right,” said Syracuse University’s media maven Prof. Robert Thompson.

“We’ve all known that from the beginning. In reality, these people would not have been on the island in the first place. It’s not like in the Outback there are these mazes and challenges that they happen to stumble upon,” Thompson said.

“Seventy-five to 80-percent of these things are set up and For the most part, I think viewers could care less,” he said.

Make no mistake, there are secrets to protect and the producers of “Survivor” have gone to great lengths to keep them under wraps.

Two weeks after Stillman filed her suit, CBS and “Survivor” sued her for $5 million, claiming she violated the Yellow Page-sized confidentiality agreement all “Survivor” players are forced to sign.

And while Been’s testimony remains sealed – ostensibly to protect him from a CBS suit similar to the one Stillman faces – people who work in and around reality TV believe that no matter how much background information is exposed, the popularity of “Survivor” is in little danger.

“Even if this stuff comes out [during a trial] it’s not going to effect it too much because “Survivor” is a hit,” said entertainment PR guru Dan Klores.

“Some of [magician] David Copperfield’s secrets were exposed and that didn’t hurt him. The plotlines from this season’s Sopranos were also revealed and that didn’t hurt either,” Klores said.

At least one reality show producer agrees.

“I think all its really doing is make us pound even harder into the contestants that ‘you are entering into an entertainment program and that you will be portrayed in a way that you may not love,” the producer, who asked to be unnamed, told The Post.

“The ratings will go down when people get tired of the genre,” the producer said.

Still, there is something deeply personal about the suit by Stillman – and a last month’s suit by a couple who appeared on “Temptation Island” who claim they were humiliated by the show’s producers when they were thrown off the show for not disclosing they had a child together, in violation of the rules.

The couple says the producer knew all along that they had a baby.

Also, Stillman is not seeking the $1-million grand prize, but a more modest $70,000 in damages – money she says she was out of pocket for missing work and pay for her own hotel room in Borneo after being kicked off the island.

The lawsuits come from participants who feel unfairly treated by the shows. Not only are viewers led to believe that reality TV is on the up-and-up. So are the contestants,

Stillman plans to call to the witness stand many of her co-castaways, who will testify (Been was deposed by lawyers last week), and expose the show. She says she hopes to change the way people view the show as “reality” and maybe even cut down its stellar ratings a notch or two.