Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. Celebrity Jeopardy. Celebrity Family Feud. Celebrity Big Brother. There’s plenty of unscripted TV programming that challenges famous people to compete against each other. CBS‘ Survivor has never made a celebrity-centric spinoff (there is one in Australia), but it has cast celebrities in the past. When it does, they’re made to compete alongside everyday people. This will be the case in Survivor Season 47, when Jon Lovett appears as one of the 18 castaways competing for the $1 million prize.
Lovett is a host of the popular podcasts Lovett or Leave It and Pod Save America and is a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama. Others may also know him for his former marriage to investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, son of Mia Farrow. While Lovett might not be instantly recognizable to some, the chances of someone from the Survivor 47 cast recognizing him are not zero.
TV Insider asked host Jeff Probst for a glimpse into Survivor‘s casting process and why they find casting people who may not be able to protect their anonymity appealing. After all, this is a game where many players often choose to strategically conceal facts about their lives.
“I wouldn’t say we look at it that way,” Probst says in regards to casting famous people. “Jon Lovett is very much aware that it could be a liability that people know him. He may also decide to tell everybody like [The White Lotus creator] Mike White did [in Season 37] and just use it to his advantage to try to formulate an argument about why my skillset and my notoriety can help you and your alliance.”
White and Lovett aren’t the only public figures who have competed on Survivor. Former NFL, MLB, and NBA players, WWE wrestlers, actors, Olympians, singers, and more have appeared across the show’s 46 seasons, and Probst loves to see how they use their public profiles.
“I think what makes Survivor interesting in the new era is that it truly is a diverse group of people, not just ethnicity. It’s also just upbringing, or it could be wealth, or it could be education, it could be age, it could be life experiences. All of those things complicate the game in a beautiful way because [as a player] I have to figure out what your currency is,” Probst explains. “What is it you value in a relationship? We’re forming a community, and at the beginning, I have a tribe of six. This is my community. Where do I fit in? I have to figure out where you need me to fit in. So whether you’re anonymous and you can lie about what you do or whether you tell the truth about what you do or whether you’re so famous, everybody already knows what you do, it’s still the same problem.”
Probst says Lovett’s political experience makes him a “gift” for the show.
“Having somebody like Jon on, from a storytelling standpoint, is a gift because he’s just such a good orator,” Probst tells TV Insider. “Here’s a guy that in his previous life wrote speeches for the President of the United States, Obama. So you know that he can handle himself in a crisis where there might be a shifting power dynamic happening, and he has to quickly read that and then just as fast he has to fashion an answer or a statement or an argument that will compel people in his tribe to do what he wants them to do. That’s a great skill to have in a game like this.”
There is a downside to lack of anonymity here, though. Probst warns, “The [inverse] is, if somebody knows that’s Jon Lovett, then they might know we got to watch out. That guy’s super bright. He can talk his way out of anything.”
“He’s like Mike White in that sense,” Probst adds. “He’s just so entertaining and compelling that if I were playing with him, I’d be looking to take him out first. He’s just too good.”
We’ll see if his competitors feel the same way.
Survivor, Season 47 Premiere, Wednesday, September 18, 8/7c, CBS