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The 45th season of Survivor starts next Wednesday, September 27 and for the first time, every episode will be 90-minutes long. This season was once again filmed in Fiji and just like seasons 41 through 44, this one will last only 26 days instead of 39 (booooo, give us the 39 days back!). In an interview with Parade to promote the upcoming season, host Jeff Probst confirmed that Season 45 will continue to be full of twists, gimmicks, and advantages, something he says production created to force players to “live in a constant state of uncertainty.”
In the same interview, Probst also gives us some insight into what we can expect from Season 45, its twists, the longer length, his favorite moment (*spoiler* it’s Cirie and the balance beam during “Game Changers”), the number of babies made from people who met while working on Survivor, and how much he loves getting paid to watch human behavior for a living. You can read the full article at Parade, but here are some of the highlights:
After 45 seasons, has he seen it all? You would think that after 23 years I would say that I’ve seen it all, but I know I haven’t and it’s for one simple reason: people are unpredictable. When you put people in a crisis situation like Survivor, where you’re forced to survive in a real jungle while simultaneously conspiring against each other, it’s impossible to ever predict what any one person might do because every single person comes into the game from a very specific place. Their upbringing has impacted things, their friendship circle, the success they’ve had in life, how they were parented—all of that makes each person unique.
It’s all the players’ fault that they’re forced to overdo it on twists: I don’t think I’ve figured out how to answer this question [about new twists] yet, but the big twist is that you don’t know what’s coming. In the past, up until we got to Survivor 40, the players had figured out a lot of the game and they could kind of tell you what they thought might happen. It’s going to be one of three or four things here, it’ll be one of these two things here, and we realized that. We realized that the players had taken over, they knew the game so well that we had to completely blow up the game and start over. We tried to make the game so unpredictable that your only choice is to stop trying to figure it out.
What 90-minute episodes mean: The 90 minutes doesn’t affect the game at all, but the audience will see a huge difference in the depth and variety of the storytelling because 90 minutes allows us to show more reality scenes at their beaches. It allows us to show an “Immunity Idol” hunt, for instance, where we can take you much deeper into the hunt for the idol and the drama that comes with the discovery of an idol.
He really loves getting to watch human behavior for a living: I get a front-row seat to the thing I love the most, watching humans behave. I am endlessly fascinated by taking a group of people and putting them in a real crisis situation. Even though there are cameras there, there’s no help. You’re dropped in a jungle, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a pot, a machete and a flint. If you’re unlucky, you won’t even have that, you will have nothing. How are you going to do night one, let alone night 25?
…And this is no exaggeration, I cannot believe that it’s what I get to do for a living. I can’t believe that the thing I love the most, I get paid to do. And I get to help design the game that’s going to take you on this crazy journey. And you’re going to have some very low lows and some big highs, but there’s one thing guaranteed, you will not be the same person when you’re finished.
Kudos to Jeff for genuinely loving his job. He gets paid a ton of money to work a couple of months a year on a gorgeous island in the Southern Pacific Ocean. That is the dream right there. I think it’s a little weird that 23 years into this gig, he’s still so fascinated by watching people in a real-life crisis situation that he’s helped create, but cool. Cool cool cool. Then again, every year, there’s no shortage of people who love the game so much that they’re willing to put themselves into those situations. Hell, I’m like 85% sure I’d play Survivor if given the chance. There’s also approximately 7.5 million people who still watch the show each season, so I guess maybe on some level, we’re all fascinated with watching people put in those situations.
Oh, and Jeff sounded a little salty when he was talking about why they have so many dang twists nowadays, didn’t he? He gets so much s– about them from the online Survivor fan communities, hahaha. I say let’s just have an old school season where we have no twists or advantages other than maybe – maybe – an immunity idol. Anyways, I’m still not into the 90-minute episodes, but I am looking forward to this season. We need more characters like Yam Yam and Carolyn, please!
