But who conceptualizes and designs these games? And who decided on those three candidates in the first place? The challenge department is primarily run by senior challenge producer John Kirhoffer (who has been on board since the beginning of the series) and supervising producer Chris “Milhouse” Marchand (who joined for season 23), who take about a month to map out an upcoming slate of challenges in Los Angeles ahead of filming. Along with “third musketeer” Anthony “AB” Britton and production designer Simon “Simmo” Ross, they canvass friends and consultants for new ideas and creative new tweaks on familiar challenges. Achievability is always a priority, but so is fun.
TIME spoke with Kirhoffer, Marchand, and Probst about choosing the challenges for this momentous season—and why recreating certain classic challenges of the past is no longer feasible.
Chris Marchand: Sometimes, it’s the simplest thing in the world. How can we make the simple thing a little more complicated, or how can we make this super complicated thing a lot simpler so we can do it?
What type of international competitions do you look to for inspiration?
Marchand: Exatlón from Mexico and Colombia.
Marchand: Last week’s challenge is the perfect example of what we do in consulting. We got that big teeter tunnel from Choro. The next thing you do is this weird thing that AB found at an old folks’ home in the Philippines, where they’d cut holes out of a plate and move it up through a spoked pole. We’re like, “Well, we can do that. It can be a lot harder and cooler-looking, but the concept is there.” It just takes time, and it’s better than untying knots. They get the stick to carry their puzzle pieces up and over a teeter-totter, then they do an archway puzzle. The whole point of those challenges is big, fast, fun front end, then a back end that anyone can win as long as you figure out the puzzle or word or parlor game.
L to R: Rizo Velovic, Cirie Fields, Tiffany Ervin, Joe Hunter, Aubry Bracco —Courtesy of CBSDo you ever weigh in on the final cut of the episode or how the challenge is presented?
Marchand: We never weigh in. The challenge is like a live sporting event, so the way it’s edited is for entertainment and awesomeness. We don’t stop during shooting.
Kirhoffer: We are so blessed to have the biggest reality show happening. It has been decades since anybody has ever said to me, “Hey, we gotta watch the budget.” We know the scope of things we do. We can get it done, and if something is a little bigger and better, another challenge will be scaled down.
What was your initial approach when you first sat down to decide what challenges to use in season 50?
Jonathan Young, Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick, Tiffany Ervin, Kamilla Karthigesu, Chrissy Hofbeck in Episode 6 —Courtesy of CBS
Probst: We have joked about me running a challenge for at least a decade, but it was never a real consideration until Survivor 50. Once we started writing down ideas, that one shot right to the top of the list. And it wasn’t about proving I could do it. I wanted the players to see that I’m willing to have some skin in the game—to be vulnerable, and to fail right alongside them. It was so much more difficult than I thought it would be. The highlight by far was the players finally getting their chance to mock and taunt me as I’ve been doing to them for 25 years. I went into Survivor 50 ready, willing, and able to be the butt of any joke if we thought it would make for a fun moment. I think some fans get it, and other fans might still think I take these kinds of moments seriously. To them I can only ask: Did you hear me rap?
Fans decided whether the final immunity challenge will be Simmotion, Pinball Wizard, or the Obstacle Course. How did you decide on those candidates?
Probst: We actually worked our way down from a much bigger list, looking for different categories so fans could really make a meaningful choice. Did they want something small and intimate, where it’s all about focus and composure? Or something big and theatrical, where it feels like a full-scale showdown? Each one represents a different style of final immunity challenge, and we genuinely had no idea which way the fans would go.
Are there any other challenges you wanted to do that didn’t work out, either logistically or timing-wise? Any you’d want to see come back in the future?
Marchand: We always want to do a maze. Mazes are always fun. But they’re big, and we didn’t really have the open fields or time to make them. The maze is the biggest one we always want to do. One day, we’ll get it again.
Kirhoffer: You know the challenge Hot Pursuit? We’ve wanted to do that forever, and people are always asking about it. But we are very topography-dependent, and we don’t have an area that we’ve had in the past with knee-deep, level water. We have a beautiful ocean, but there are things we can’t do just because of the logistics. This time of year, we’re in the surf capital of the world, and we can’t build the things we’d like to build that we could in Philippines or Panama, because we have these massive swells coming through. If we have something too big, it could just get broken up by the swell. But we pretty much have everything we were hoping for that we could logistically do.
This year especially, we do pay attention to what the fans say. We love hearing “we love this challenge” and hate hearing “Those guys don’t know what they’re doing. They’re doing the same crap over and over.” You don’t want to listen to your critics, but we do pay attention to what the fans like so we can keep delivering. One of the things we’ve said about Survivor every new year is that we want to keep it fresh but familiar. You don’t want to tune into The Price Is Right and see an obstacle course. You don’t want to tune into Jeopardy and have it become a big prop show. Sometimes we come up with super bizarre stuff, and it’s like, that’s not Survivor. It has to feel like Survivor.
I was wondering about this, because Chris, you worked on Big Brother: Reindeer Games, and Big Brother leans more into goofiness with some of its challenges.
Kirhoffer: What we can’t do is have big aluminum truss systems and mechanisms. We can’t have an engine that keeps something spinning, because we’re still trying to be Robinson Crusoe. It’s as if Jeff is a super carpenter who comes out there and builds these things. We don’t want to leave our world, so we’re not going to have video monitors. Survivor is wood and canvas and sand and sandbags and dirt and mud. Big Brother is CBS Radford, sound stage, polished, clean and shiny. We’re gritty: they got dropped off on an island, they’re marooned, and now they’re coming to shore, where Jeff comes out of his hut.
Marchand: It’s also, like, great, you printed the fire puzzles. You know what, we can change the shapes of the pieces just as easily as you print the ones you’ve seen. It’s not out of our control to make that puzzle different in a later season.
What was your favorite challenge moment in season 50?
Marchand: One of the coolest things we’ve done collectively is go from the auction and move directly into a challenge. I haven’t seen us do that ever. It was seamless and fast and really, really impressive, from the grips to the camera guys to the ACs to the ADs to the challenge department to art. We moved in concert so quickly.
Probst: That’s an impossible question to answer, because I loved every moment of every day of Survivor 50. But if I have to pick one challenge moment, it would be the auction. Having Mr. Beast as our special guest really heightened the entire experience.
Jonathan Young, Jeff Probst, Rizo Velovic, Joe Hunter and Tiffany Ervin in Episode 12 —Courtesy of CBSAre there any lessons you’ll take away from 50 in tackling upcoming seasons? You’ve already been filming 51.
Kirhoffer: It’s all about the fans. Sometimes there might be something I want to see that isn’t as popular. I used to love the torch walk [Rites of Passage] in the old days. Most people didn’t like it. This season has been emblematic of our franchise; “In the Hands of the Fans” is because we have such an amazingly loyal fan base. We want to do more fun stuff for the new fans, and the younger kids. Jeff has really been supportive of and promoting the giant gecko and snakes. They’re like new characters in the show. New, fun elements for kids: the next generation of Survivor fans.
Probst: The goal of our challenges really hasn’t changed. From the beginning, we’ve wanted a wide range of skill sets in play: balance, strength, endurance, focus under pressure, dexterity, and puzzles. On a given day, any player has a legitimate shot to win. That’s still the foundation. As for what’s next, we’re always looking for new territory, but it has to serve that same goal. If a challenge doesn’t test something meaningful or reveal something about the players, it doesn’t belong.
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