Survivor 45 just aired its best episode of the season, ending with the stunning elimination of Kellie Nalbandian. How shocking was it? Host Jeff Probst tells EW, “This was one of the most surprising and brutal blindsides in Survivor history. It echoed so hard it almost knocked me out of my seat at Tribal.”
Kellie’s blind side – which left the player dazed and confused, stumbling through the Tribal Council set like a zombie – was an exclamation point to an installment that was engaging at every turn. Not only was there an epic blindside and not only did Probst try to murder a sack of rice once, but the episode also saw the return of the Survivor Auction, which returned after an eight-year absence and was better than ever.
Jeff Probst at the “Survivor 45” auction.
Robert Voets/CBS
That’s not even an exaggeration. The last time he appeared on 2015’s Survivor: Worlds Apart, the auction was canceled, something Probst Open admits in the latest episode of his On Fire podcast. “We felt we had broken it and we broke it by introducing advantages, which worked for a while and gave us some great moments, but then players wisely started holding on to their money until an advantage developed resulted. And that was kind of the end of the auction.”
But the host and showrunner also goes into great detail in his podcast about how they brought the podcast back with the new wrinkles. The first big twist wasn’t just giving each of the players a wad of cash, but instead having them work to earn the money they would spend by hiding bamboo tubes filled with cash all over the tribal camp and letting participants walk around to get as much money as possible.
“You used to always come in and get $500,” Probst explains. “It was passive. In the new era of Survivor you get nothing, not even money for the auction. So we hid money everywhere in the jungle… And then it immediately becomes clear how each player approached the fight for money and what character they have. And you saw it play out quite dramatically.”
This would be a reference to the normally hard-working Bruce Perreault, who for some strange reason chose to barely work in order to accumulate money – a decision that would ultimately cost him later as it caused him to lose his voice.
The next catch in the new plan was that the person who had the most money at the end of the auction would lose their vote on Tribal Council – except the players didn’t know when the auction ended. This created a brilliant strategic dilemma as towards the end you needed a lot of money to outbid others and empty your wallet. However, the more you had, the greater the risk of being penalized if the game suddenly ended with you having the high number. The auction would end with anywhere between six and 15 items, depending on what number the host pulled from a bag, with the catch being that only Probst would know the number. Although this scene was shot in such a way that another group of people were almost let in on the secret as well – the audience.
The tribe at the “Survivor 45” auction.
CBS
“I would say we had a camera for this shot,” Probst says. “When I pulled it up, I knew where to hold it so we could get a shot of it.” The host explains: “Maybe we would have wanted to incorporate it into the show to share with the audience. And we could do that in future seasons too, because the dilemma might be, “Oh, they don’t realize that this is the last part and that it’s more fun to watch.” Because in this case it was the first auction , we just decided to make the audience a player, and they don’t know it either.”
So how and where did they prepare the dishes — including Dee’s $900 milkshake — that the players bid on? It turned out that some of them were prepared right in the jungle. “We have built a makeshift kitchen in the jungle and, depending on the situation, we bring either the item that has already been made or the ingredients for its preparation into the jungle. And what’s interesting about that? [kitchen] The team also doesn’t know if it will be just six articles or all 15, so they are ready for 15 articles. Sometimes I can tuck an item under the front of my counter, my large table where I work. Sometimes if it’s like a milkshake, it’s chilled. Sometimes things are heated in ovens, so it’s really like a kitchen and it’s a lot of fun because when I go back I have the money in my hand, there’s someone I give the money to. In fact, that’s how they found out how many items there were. After I drew the number, I came back and said, by the way, the number is…”
Speaking of dishes, where did they get those two fish eyes that cost Katurah $480? “Hennie, who heads our marine department, was out fishing two days before the auction,” reveals Probst. “And they were a thousand feet away and caught one of these ruby snappers. And he told me that the reason their eyes are so big is because they’re at a depth of 300 meters and they need big eyes to see… That’s why Hennie had put the snapper on ice because we cook everything we catch. And then he heard we were looking for some gross food and said, ‘I don’t know if you’re interested in fish eyes, but I’ve got some beauties.’ And that’s how those fish eyes ended up in the show and in the auction.” And in those fish eyes, Katurah may have found something in the game that she actually hates even more than Bruce.
Now that the auction is back, the natural question is: Will we see it again? “Absolutely,” promises Probst. “I have to say it’s a lot of work for us and takes 90 minutes as it’s really a big auction so it probably won’t happen every season but I think the format works. I think it’s repeatable. That’s one of the things you look for in a twist: Could we do this again? And in this case everyone knows the rules now, but it doesn’t change anything. There are still the variables of money and number of items and the loss of a vote.”
For more insider information from Probst on the latest episode – including the rice sting and that dramatic blindside – check out On Fire: The Official Survivor Podcast.
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