Go Inside the ‘Survivor’ Casting Process

Jeff Probst has hosted Survivor since its inception in 2000.

CBS Jeff Probst has hosted Survivor since its inception in 2000.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how the reality TV sausage is made, a former casting producer is dishing the details in a recent interview about her 11-year job casting Survivor. Read on to find out how the process changed over time and what type of person they almost exclusively cast now.


‘Survivor’ First Cast Almost Entirely From Applicants… And Then Things Changed

Reality Blurred recently interviewed former Survivor casting director Jodi Wincheski, who kind of fell backwards into her casting job after she appeared on season 17 of The Amazing Race and met longtime Survivor casting director Lynne Spillman, who was with the show until 2018.

Wincheski said in her interview that as a casting producer, she was tasked with finding “specific types of people,” which is what is referred to as “recruiting” cast members. These are people who don’t apply; they’re found by casting producers and encouraged to go through the casting process.

If you’re curious about the makeup of the various casts, Reality Blurred came across a spreadsheet some fans made that identifies if a cast member was an applicant or a recruit. In the early seasons, almost everyone was an applicant — i.e., they took it upon themselves to apply for the show and were selected.

Then for a while starting in season seven, “Pearl Islands,” there were four or five recruits per season, but then by season 13, “Cook Islands,” there were now only six applicants out of the entire cast — 14 were either recruits or were originally cast for another reality show and made their way to Survivor. From season 13 to season 22, “Redemption Island,” the majority of casts were made up of recruits in almost every season, and the show didn’t start to return to nearly all applicants until season 32, “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty.”


Now It’s Fans Only

Wincheski said that the casting process has “changed a lot over the years” and that they “only do fans now; we don’t really recruit.”

When asked why the change back to the old way of doing things, Wincheski said the producers “really just want people who really know the show and are going to be good strategists … That’s the way they’d rather go, [rather] than finding somebody and then having them cram and become a fan.”

Part of that shift happened because apparently, there were “a few people that were recruited” that the producers “just didn’t feel great about” when they were finally on the show. And no, Wincheski doesn’t name names, though that is some tea we would happily drink.

But she did say the producers want people who just “know how to play. … It’s just better television when you have people that really know the show.”

So, if you’ve always wanted to be on Survivor, there’s no better time than now to make your application video. Winncheski has even founded a company to help people get cast on reality shows called Casting Reality.

Survivor hopes to film season 41 in the spring of 2021 for a fall 2021 premiere.

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