The forty-fifth season of Survivor, the OG reality competition show, premieres next week. (Sidenote: looking at recent photos on social media, host Jeff Probst doesn’t seem to age.) I’m not a super fan, but I’ve still watched a good handful of seasons, and I enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at how this season’s final players were selected. Over eight months, the crew whittled down a pool of 25,000 applicants to a shortlist of 30 hopefuls, then 24, and eventually the final 18 players.
What are finalists’ audition videos like? What traits do the producers look for? (Spoiler: drive, self-awareness, and the ability to tell a good story.) Dalton Ross traces the journeys of five different players from the new season. Snippets of their audition videos are entertaining to watch, and Probst’s notes on people’s interviews are also fun to read.
The approximately 24 people who make it past all of that are eventually brought out to Los Angeles in February for the in-person meetings that constitute the last round of casting finals. “If a player is going to panic, this is the stage where it happens,” says Probst. “The pressure ratchets up when the room is full of producers and CBS executives. This too is by design. If you drop the ball at this stage, you probably won’t get on the show this season.” Once those in-person L.A. interviews are complete, the casts for the next two Survivor seasons are finally set.
It’s a long, arduous experience. But for Brandon Donlon, the casting journey started much, much earlier than all of that. Brandon still remembers watching Survivor for the first time during the Gabon season in September 2008. “It felt like this religious experience,” he explains. “It felt like I was watching some higher power who was like, ‘This is going to change your life. Whatever this thing is, you have to do it.'” He immediately sent in an application. Just one problem: Brandon was 11 years old.
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