What casting says not to do.

Casting directors give the same advice every year, and every year they get skits. Here is the complete list of things the people who read these applications have asked people to stop doing.

1. Don’t script it

Tannenbaum: do not make a script, no scripts whatsoever — memorise it and you’ll sound like a robot. Kass: they can tell when things are planned out. Doganieri: they can tell when you’re anticipating what producers want. Three casting directors, three shows, one complaint, twenty years.

2. Don’t do a skit, and don’t wear a costume

Tannenbaum: they want to learn who you are, so no costumes and no skits. Spillman, a generation earlier: no costumes, no hand puppets, no special effects. The official Big Brother tips say the video isn’t about the best skit or the wackiest costume. If four casting directors across 25 years have all had to say “no puppets,” people are still sending puppets.

3. Don’t send a TikTok

Backstage reports the biggest current failure is people submitting TikToks or 15-second clips. Tannenbaum’s response is the closest he gets to exasperation: if you’re going to take the effort to fill out this application, do it right. You have three minutes. A clip made for a feed isn’t an audition.

4. Don’t film it vertically

The Big Brother tips explain why in six words: your video will be shown on a TV.

5. Don’t spend the whole thing on strategy

The most common structural mistake, according to Backstage: a tape that’s entirely about what you’d do in the game. Casting finishes it knowing your plan and nothing about you. Spillman’s version of the same rule — don’t tell them what you’d do with the money.

6. Don’t do an impression of a past player

Kass: not the cliché Big Brother things you think she wants to hear. Glenn Garcia from season 18: don’t try to be a character or act like a past houseguest. Loving someone’s game is fine; the pitch is how yours is different.

7. Don’t put on a front

Probst says the process is designed to sniff out anyone who isn’t being authentic, and that putting on a front doesn’t work anyway. Grodner: they’ll notice right off the bat if you’re putting on an act. Spillman, the harshest: don’t try to be the villain if your life hasn’t been that way, because they will call you out and they will break you.

8. Don’t interview your friends

Kass: it’s you they want to see, not your friends. And the flip side — they don’t like applicants who can’t talk about themselves. (Dean Kowalski asked strangers on the street why he’d win and got on Survivor the same day, so this one has an exception. Note that his strangers were talking about him.)

9. Don’t lie, and don’t leave things out

Kass: don’t lie, surprises are the worst, tell them everything up front. The background check rarely disqualifies anyone on its own. An undisclosed item does, because casting then assumes there’s more.

10. Don’t send more than one video

A Survivor casting producer asked publicly in 2018 that people stop sending multiple tapes per cycle. If they want a reshoot, they’ll ask — and being asked is a good sign. Sending three unprompted tells them you weren’t sure which one was you.

11. Don’t rush the written form

Kass: no one-word answers, no “yes” and “no”. Spillman: the application is 50% of the process, and a poor one can chop a strong video’s score in half. Don’t overthink it, and don’t fill it out too quickly.

12. Don’t send a glamour shot

Kass’s photo rules: two recent, clear photos — a headshot and a full-body — no sunglasses, no hats, no old pictures, and no glamorous headshot that doesn’t look like you.

13. Don’t pay someone to tell you what to say

Tannenbaum, after a season-45 player hired a casting coach: don’t hire anybody to help you through the process. Probst: if someone needs coaching to apply, they won’t get in.

14. Don’t break the rules once you’re in

A Big Brother finalist was cut during finals week because her boyfriend sent flowers to the hotel. Two Survivor 49 players were pulled 12 hours before filming for talking to each other. Probst: there are rules, they have to be respected, and if they’re not, action will be taken.

15. Don’t eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Kass, in writing: no more eating PB&J sandwiches on tape — they get tons of those. Nobody has ever explained why this was a genre. It apparently was.

The one thing they say to do

Be yourself. Probst admits it’s a frustrating answer, and everyone above has spent their career trying to explain it. The closest anyone gets is Grodner: whatever you put on tape should be what your friends and family see in you. Not the version you’d like them to see. The one they do.