Six hours in line for sixty seconds.

An open casting call is a local CBS station, a camera, and a very long line in an unglamorous place. Survivor has held them in a Value City Furniture outside Detroit, a casino in Northern California, and a convention centre in Minneapolis during an auto show. You wait for hours. You get about a minute. Here’s what the minute is like.

The format

You show photo ID and sign a release. You’re handed a number to hold up. The camera operator asks for your name, age, hometown and job, and then some version of: why do you want to be on the show. You have roughly 60 seconds — Big Brother’s executive producer describes it as your best two minutes or less, and adds that really it’s the first 30 seconds.

At a Survivor call in Minneapolis in 2024, applicants were given a handout listing what to cover: name, age, job, life story, hometown, why you’re applying, and something surprising, all in a minute. The handout also said, in capitals, that it was VITAL to be AUTHENTIC — ideally no scripts or gimmicks.

At Big Brother’s Cache Creek call in March 2026, casting also asked for relationship status and a backstory, and told people to be unfiltered. For The Amazing Race, both teammates have to be present, and the call asks for 21 and over.

You don’t have to attend one. The online application is equivalent, and casting says so. But Spillman said something worth hearing: when someone does both — a tape and an open call — they know they’ve got somebody good. She called it the double.

What the line is like

Alyssa Savino wrote up her Survivor open call in Minneapolis. The two camera stations had local-news backdrops and were set up between a Back to the Future DeLorean and a cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox, because the call was inside the Twin Cities Auto Show. She arrived around 3pm. People ahead of her had been there since 6:30am. She waited nearly six hours; at 9pm the organisers announced they couldn’t get to everyone.

When her turn came, the camera operator asked why she wanted to be on Survivor in a put-on accent, and she — unprepared — blurted out that there’s always a dusty Midwestern mom on the show and it should be her, plugged her newsletter, and trailed off with “so… yeah, thanks.” Her own verdict: no callback coming. In the line she’d met a woman in a peacoat who touched her hair uninvited and later mentioned her mother had just died, and a man whose friend with cancer had convinced him he’d win.

That’s the open call. Six hours of strangers being unexpectedly human, then a minute you can’t get back.

What people say in their minute

From the Detroit-area calls, as reported by the local station: “Fit. Smart. And I’ve got a really nice smile.” “I’m a full-time dairy farmer. I’m third generation and proud.” A woman who’d done the Kona Ironman world championship three years running. A man who drove 5,500 miles round trip from Tennessee. A world-ranked World of Warcraft player. A woman who got her first passport specifically for the audition.

At Cache Creek in 2025, more than 300 people came, some arriving at 1am for 9am doors. Mary Hill, from Spring, Texas, in her 20th year of auditioning, sang a song in Probst-themed clothing and said she’d play it for free. Another applicant said it wouldn’t be about the million dollars; it would be about being on Survivor.

At Big Brother calls: a woman who grew up with eight siblings, so chaos is her comfort. A man who flew back from Rio and skipped Lady Gaga to be there. At a Dallas call years earlier, a man who planned to be the guy in the green pants — and did have a bow tie — and a mother of six: “I can be your friend. I can be your worst enemy.” Reporters at that call were barred from printing last names, hometowns or jobs, because those are things an opponent could use in the house.

Does it work?

Sometimes. Open-call attendees go into the same pool as online applicants — Spillman noted they technically have a submission tape even if they never made one. CBS Detroit presents Kyle Jason of season 32 as a casting-call success story. Brandon Donlon nearly made Big Brother 21 through an open call before landing on Survivor 45.

What doesn’t work is rehearsing. Kass, on open calls: they can tell if someone has answers rehearsed. What does: her preparation advice is to have a cup of coffee, wear an outfit you feel good in, get a good night’s sleep, and come with an open mind. Spillman’s is to think of three reasons you’d be good for the show and have an example for each — and to fill out the online application before you go, not at the venue.

If you’re going

• Fill out the online form first.
• Bring ID.
• Know your first sentence. Not a script — one sentence.
• Have three reasons, each with a story.
• Expect to wait all day. Bring water, a charger, and patience for the peacoat woman.
• For the Race, bring the other half of the team.