Image credit: Monty Brinton
Each week, host Jeff Probst answers a few questions about the most recent episode of Survivor: One World.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, Probst, you’re sitting in your tarp-covered shelter and feeling toasty and roasty next to your nice warm fire. Then the soaking and shivering other tribe comes by wanting to help themselves to your fire and shelter. By letting them in, you can be a decent human being and perhaps curry some favor for later on. By shutting them out, you can keep them weak and demoralized for your next challenge. What do you do?
JEFF PROBST: I let them in. It’s in my nature. It’s why Survivor works. Our nature determines our actions. I don’t think of it in terms of helping them vs hurting them. If I saw Chelsea shivering and near tears I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to offer comfort. I’d still want to kick her ass in the next challenge, but for the moment, I’d offer some fire.
In the immunity challenge, the women were way behind when they got to the tree puzzle, but then had the advantage — even with the teams using different colors — of being able to copy off what Bill had already completed. We could clearly see Christina and the other women staring and even at one point moving over to get a better look at what he had already finished. Is there ever any discussion on challenges like this to have a partition of some sort set up between the two tribes, or is this just part of the game that savvy people can us to their advantage?
When it comes to tribal challenges — sometimes we put up partitions and other times we don’t. There is no hard fast rule. In this season we like the men vs women rivalry and we like the overlap of interaction so we let it go. The bottom line is the men had the lead and they blew it. That’s how I see it anyway. To be clear, with individual challenges we always strive to keep it fair and to prevent two or more people from ganging up on one person by working together to knock them out.
Obviously, a lot of people are going to be talking about Colton referring to Bill as “ghetto trash.” You had a very similar situation back in Survivor: Samoa when Ben said the same thing about Yasmin. How do you guys decide where the line is in terms of showing racially insensitive remarks? (For example, I know Big Brother has an inconsistent record on this, showing some comments while opting to not show others.) What’s the Survivor philosophy as far as this is concerned?
I don’t recall us ever editing someone because they said something we felt was racially insensitive. Anytime it comes to issues that are as charged as racism, the only thing we ever are concerned with is making sure we show it as it happened. Colton is very honest — you may not like what he says — but he’s showing you his truth and that’s compelling television. We would never not show it.
BONUS QUESTION! I’m guessing filming on your next movie, Kiss Me, must be wrapping up right about now. Give us the update, and be honest — were you ever tempted before calling all the actors onto the set for a scene to yell out “Come on in, guys!”?
The movie wrapped Sunday night. I’m very happy, it was a great adventure and an inspiring experience for all of us. I hope the movie captures what we intended, but either way the lesson I was reminded of every day was live your adventure as often as possible because you only go around once! I’m definitely living mine!
The women have finally broken through. Tease us up for next week, sir.
One of the most UNEXPECTED tribals ever. In fact, I dare say… a first.
For more from the host, check out Jeff’s Tout page. To read Dalton’s recap click right here. To watch an exclusive deleted scene from last night’s episode, simply watch the video player below. And for more Survivor scoop, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.
