TheWrap’s conversation with “Survivor” host and executive producer Jeff Probst, the last interview he did about the landmark “Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans” season, has already yielded a magazine story and a YouTube video. But there’s more where that came from, including Probst’s expectations when he first took the job and his insights into this past season’s fan vote and the coin flip that doubled the grand prize to $2 million courtesy of internet creator MrBeast.
Here are additional moments from that interview.
Let’s go back to 2000, when reality TV was a novelty and the first season of “Survivor” was about to go on the air. What were your expectations?
We thought, this is interesting. We didn’t know it would be popular. We just thought it was interesting to see one guy, Richard Hatch, sitting up in a tree in a power position as another person, Sue Hawk, was underneath him. And he’s saying, “We need to talk.” And she says, “Where I’m from, we work while we talk.” That’s a collision: “Where I’m from, this is how we do it.” How are they gonna get along?
After the first season, I didn’t know anything about ratings. I had no idea what a big deal it was that 70 million people watched the finale. I knew we’d be doing a second season and I thought we’ll probably get a third before they end it. Next thing I know, I’m walking in Midtown Manhattan with Mark as he’s talking to (CBS Chief Les) Moonves and he says, “You’re gonna do a season called ‘All Stars’ in Season 8.”
I remember thinking, How are we already in an all-star season? And it’s been like that for 26 years.
The show took a turn in 2021, during COVID, when the length of the game was shortened from 39 days to 26 days, with faster gameplay.
I said, “It’s just untenable (to be isolated and quarantined on the island for as long as it would have entailed). Humans aren’t built to do that.” And so I started working out how we could reduce our schedule. I called Matt Van Wagenen, who’s my partner on the show, and we started looking at, Could we do an episode in two days instead of our traditional three days?
A lot of smart people told me, “You’re going to kill the show. You won’t have enough quality content and the episodes will wane.” We didn’t think so. So we went for it and once we realized we could do it in 26 days, we then realized, now let’s design a game around 26 days.
Here’s what I also think is interesting. We went from 16 episodic hours of television on a 39-day schedule to 26 days doing the same 16 hours. Then we went to 90 minutes, so we added another half hour. And now we’re gonna try two-hour episodes on the same 26-day schedule.
The content and the quality is staying at the same level but we’re doing it more efficiently and more quickly, which makes it better for the network. We can still afford our show, because as prices go up, something has to give. We figured out a way to do this and I’m really proud of that.
This season, you had the fans vote for whether the tribes get rice, the kind of challenges, etc. But when you came up with the fan-vote categories, you had to give yourself leeway within that to determine exactly how you wanted to handle what they voted for.
With the fan vote, we had three scenarios. The one we wanted was Scenario 3: Don’t give them rice; don’t give them tools; make fire; have immunity idols. But we also had Scenario 1, which is what (you’d get) if it’s only purists who vote and they say no idols, give them food, give them supplies. All the things we didn’t really want as producers, we were ready for it. It would’ve been a very different game.
I was grateful when the voting started. I could see the trend. With each vote, they’re going to end up giving us the things that we want. The fan vote ended up giving the freedom to go huge with uncertainty. And we did. Once we saw where the vote was going, then we just kicked it into high gear with things like a pairs challenge where we will vote two people out, or a tribal council where we will vote three people out. That was really fun. And it allowed us to have 24 players, because we knew we could get rid of people in new ways.
In every case, the fans voted what we wanted. As producers, it was a sigh of relief, because one thing CBS said to me was, “If you’re doing a vote, you have to do what the vote says. We can’t let you do a vote and then ignore it.” So that was a bit of a roll of the dice.
What was fun about it was that the players didn’t know what the fans had voted for. That alone started tinkering with the way they were approaching the game.
After MrBeast doubled the “Survivor 50” prize money to $2 million with the flip of a coin, are you going to have to go find an internet billionaire every season?
(Laughs) Right? The coin flip was really fun, and it was made fun because one player really did own it. You know, (contestant) Rick Devons made that work and made that coin flip memorable. I’d love to do the coin flip every season. Who knows what the future brings?
But I think it added a really exciting layer to a flip of a coin. And it’s funny, because I’ve had people say, “There’s no way that coin really rolled like that. You all were manipulating it.”
We had a lawyer at tribal council because we had a contract with MrBeast. You get one coin flip. In fact, when we were rehearsing, I looked at the set, and our set has crevices and uneven surfaces. And I said, “Wait a minute. What if the coin were to land on its edge? We’d have to reflip.” And the lawyer said, “There is no reflip. It’s one flip.” And I said, “We can’t do that. It can’t not work.”
She goes, “All right, let me go get the contract.” She came back and said, “We’re all good. We’ve renegotiated. If it lands on its edge, you can flip it again.”
That’s how real it was. And then in midair, he calls it and it lands and I couldn’t even see it at first, because tribal’s pretty dark. We’re lit by fire. And so it took me getting all the way down to the coin to go, “Yes, it worked!” It was one of the best feelings because you kind of knew it was gonna land. It’s like, this can’t not land, right? It’s gotta hit.
We’ve talked about your objection to the online betting markets taking wagers on the winner of “Survivor,” which is known well in advance by a small number of people. Is there a way to make betting work?
We once talked with CBS about how we could take bets on “Survivor.” The problem is, you can’t bet on something that’s already finished. But here’s what you could do: The minute the 20 players get on the plane to Fiji, we were going to put the profiles and the videos of all the players online and open the betting. You have seven days. The minute we start shooting, the betting’s over.
The only clues you have are she’s a teacher from your hometown and she has two kids. “She seems likable, I think I’ll bet on her,” or, “He seems clever, maybe he’ll find the first idol.” That’d be really fun. But you would do it in a seven-day window where the minute the game starts, the betting ends.
When Alex Trebek died after hosting “Jeopardy!” for 36 years, the show tried a number of different hosts and ended up with a former contestant (Ken Jennings).
He’s great.
Assuming that at some point you want to leave “Survivor,” who’s on the short list of “Survivor” contestants who could do your job?
That’s a good question. Who could do it? I’d have to really think about it, if that was really happening. It’s a very, very, very small list. Because the mistake made is the observation that somebody’s hosting the show, therefore you should get a host. The observation’s correct: Somebody is hosting the show. The conclusion that you should get a host is the fallacy. You need a producer who can host. I was never just a host.
So I would say you have to find somebody who knows story. The job of a host on a show like “Survivor” is you have to be able to know when a moment is unfolding and how to nurture it or grab it or get out of the way. That’s a different skill than having the right shirt and a good haircut and somebody in your ear saying, “Remember, the opening phrase is, ‘Welcome to “Survivor”!’ That’s irrelevant. What’s more relevant is who do I want to talk to right now? Who has the more interesting story?
Names get thrown around. I’m not trying to avoid your question, but I really don’t have an answer. You know, every so often I meet a player … There’s actually somebody in Season 51 that in casting, I think I said to them, “You could probably host this show,” meaning your instincts as a storyteller and about people are so good that you could probably sit in this chair and you’d be just fine.
But the job, it’s hard, and the skillset is specific.