Stories from the casting files.

Casting is the part of these shows nobody films, which is why the stories that leak out are so good. Here are the ones that have been told on the record.

The bench

Lynne Spillman, Survivor’s first casting director, on how one of the show’s great villains got cast: “I personally found Jonny Fairplay on a bus-stop bench smoking a cigarette.” He never applied. Hayden Moss, who won Big Brother and later played Survivor, was found by a casting producer on an aeroplane. Robyn Kass recruited at bars. For twenty years, a good fraction of every cast came from somewhere other than the pile.

The worst tapes

Spillman, describing the third season’s submissions to TIME: applicants ate worms, crickets and goldfish on camera. One man, filming in a hospital, claimed to be a gynaecologist and was eating what he said was placenta. She also noted, with what one imagines was some satisfaction, that the rejected applicants had all signed away the rights to their tapes. Kass’s least favourite genre, decades later, was people eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — they got tons of those.

The host’s own tape

Probst showed his own audition tape — for the job of hosting Survivor — at a PaleyLive event. It featured him being extremely goofy with a look-alike doll. His point was that personality beats polish, and that he’d rather see that than another applicant saying “I think it’s really fascinating…” and never explaining what.

Rob’s back door

Rob Cesternino auditioned for Big Brother 3 in 2002 and made the finals in Los Angeles. He was cut. That September, a Survivor casting agent who remembered him from those finals called. He finished second on The Amazon, Probst called him the smartest player never to win, and he started the podcast that now covers all three shows.

The tagging mob

Dee Valladares applied late — December — and instead of waiting, posted her audition tape on Instagram and had her friends mass-tag the casting director. Tannenbaum’s account of his first reaction: “I hate her.” Probst’s note on the tape: “LOVE HER! So engaging and bright.” Tannenbaum’s account of the end: “I loved working with Dee… eventually.” She won season 45, played season 50, and then walked into the Big Brother house.

The flowers

Kass, on why you don’t break the rules during finals week: a Big Brother finalist’s boyfriend sent flowers to her hotel. She was cut.

The tarantula

Scott Stoll has been sending Survivor tapes since 2008. The first was a VHS with a twenty-page paper application. Later ones featured a Survivor-logo cake, a giant slide puzzle he built, and — for a Survivor-themed birthday in 2021 — a live tarantula, eaten on camera. His review: it was so dry he couldn’t just swallow it. CBS named him an official Survivor Superfan and used his videos in promos. He has never been cast.

The twelve hours

On Survivor 49, two finalists made it through the tape, the calls, the psych test, the finals, and the flight to Fiji — and were removed less than twelve hours before the game started, for talking to each other. Probst got one call from the Ponderosa team saying they kept talking, then a second saying the disrespect had reached a more blatant level. It was the first time it had happened. The two alternates went in: MC Chukwujekwu (“Get ready, we start in 12 hours”) and Jason Treul, who was walked out into a field at Ponderosa and thought, this is Old Yeller — then was asked how it felt to be on 49.

The ones who missed by hours

Lindsay Carmine, cast for Survivor in 2021, tested positive for COVID twelve hours before departure and was sent home. She got on the next year. Big Brother 28’s Levi Banks completed casting and two weeks of sequester and withdrew the day before the premiere — the hardest decision of his life, he said; the alternate, a 24-year-old finance analyst, took his place. One Amazing Race team reportedly got the call that they’d made the cast in LA traffic, two hours before filming.

The velociraptor

Big Brother 28’s premiere brought back Rachel Reilly, the season-13 winner, as an “icon.” She was chased into a volcano by a velociraptor and eliminated minutes into the episode. It was a joke. It also means Rachel Reilly has now been evicted from Big Brother three times.

The list of 200

Survivor 50 was all returning players, and the cuts were the story. Probst: “200 on a list to 100, to 80, to 50. And then those last 26, they were brutal cuts.” Jerri Manthey, who played three times, called her omission “utter disrespect” and said she was done with the franchise. Rob Cesternino said he was contacted in August 2024 and strung along until March 2025. Probst, in January 2026: “It hurts my heart. People think I probably don’t care — that somehow I’m immune from it. No.”

The strangers

The Amazing Race 29 put 22 people who had never met at the start line, ran a first-impressions challenge to set a pick order, and had them choose partners on the spot. Two strangers won. Nobody has suggested doing it again, which is the clearest evidence there is that the show is about the relationship.

The eleven-year-old

Brandon Donlon watched the Gabon premiere in 2008, at 11, and started sending Survivor audition tapes. He kept sending them for years before he was old enough to be eligible. When he finally got cast on season 45, he told the press he’d apologised to a couple of the casting team for the early ones.

The doll, the DeLorean, the dusty mom

At a 2024 open call inside an auto show in Minneapolis, the camera stations were set up between a Back to the Future DeLorean and a cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox. One applicant, after six hours in line, told the camera that there’s always a dusty Midwestern mom on the show and it should be her, plugged her newsletter, and said “so… yeah, thanks.” She wrote the whole thing up. She did not get a call. She is, in every way that matters, the hero of this page.