‘Survivor: Worlds Apart’: Jeff Probst on taking inspiration from ‘Cagayan’ greatness
When it comes to pure entertainment coupled with strategy, “Survivor: Cagayan” may be one of our favorite seasons ever. (“Survivor: Borneo” may have a slight advantage overall, but only because it was so different and new.) You had a fantastic winner in Tony, other great personalities like Spencer and Kass, and even some early boots like David Sampson, Garrett, Alexis, and Brice who could’ve been great had they made it longer.
Really, we’d be fine if this season served as an inspiration for every season of the show moving forward, and based on Jeff Probst’s recent comments to Entertainment Weekly, it may have also played a role in casting “Survivor: Worlds Apart.” We haven’t really gotten around to profiling the cast yet (we’ll start that early next month), but Probst insists that he feels everyone went about finding people in a way that works better for them:
“It probably had a hand subconsciously … The biggest thing that helped this is realizing the mistake that we made in season 29 [Survivor: San Juan del Sur], where we chose our theme first and then cast to that theme. That’s what you do on a traditional television show or a movie, but Survivor is different. What we do best is find the best group of people and then figure out the theme. And so we were very determined this season that that was not going to happen again. So we have this group of people and we kept looking at the different ways we could break them up.”
We’re a little surprised that Probst is expressing his disdain for this past cast so soon after it aired, and we only think that what he mentions is part of the problem. The other issue is that you’re casting for couples, but couples don’t necessarily equal great individuals. One person may know the show, and the other may not really want to be there.
Everyone this season seems to want to be there, and our early feel for the group is that there are some hardcore fans in the mix (at least a few, anyway).
Want to see some other news related to “Survivor”? We’ve got our early impressions up here, and you can sign up to get some more scoop via email, courtesy of our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)