Jeff Probst Previews Survivor Kaoh Rong: Brains vs Beauty vs Brawn
http://parade.com/457620/joshwigler/jeff-probst-previews-survivor-kaoh-rong-brains-vs-beauty-vs-brawn/

Pulling out the direct Jeff Probst quotes...

“It’s very different,” says Survivor host and head honcho Jeff Probst. “It’s a completely different feel. You almost can’t believe it’s the same location, it’s so different.”

“This will go down as the toughest 39 days any group has ever faced,” says Probst, “and you see that within the 90-minute premiere—there are already three people who have fairly big issues to deal with.”

Maybe Mark Burnett meant there were "three people who have fairly big issues to deal with" not 3 medical evacuations?

“Here’s what’s deceiving about a game like Survivor,” he says. “When I say, ‘We had some really bad infections this season,’ people hear that and they go, ‘I’ve had a bad infection. I went to a doctor, got a little shot, and it was fine.’ And that’s true, but when you’re on an island with unclean water, extreme heat, bugs, and you get a cut in the ocean, and you can’t go to the local doctor to get a shot, and the infection grows… it can grow so fast and spread so fast that it can truly become life-threatening. Not life-threatening in the sense of you’re not going to feel good; life-threatening in the sense of, you might lose your leg.”

“The conditions impact your critical thinking,” says Probst. “You’re already worried about having enough energy to get through the day, but you can’t really do that five-levels-ahead strategy. You have to conserve your energy to stay alive, you have to conserve your energy for the challenges, and you need to sleep so you can think—but you can’t sleep because other people are making moves. It’s a fascinating thing to watch.”

“You now have a game in which people are exhausted,” he continues. “People are getting injured, advantages are hard to come by, trust is rare, you can’t think straight, and you have to make big moves.”

“Almost all of our themes, anything that revolves around the way we divide the players, typically comes from the casting process,” he says. “We put a lot of faith in our ability to figure it out as it’s unfolding in front of us, and that was the case with this group.”

Prost says it began with the Brains tribe: Chan Loh, wearing blue buffs. “We had this group of huge IQs, and we immediately started thinking, ‘Man, we could have another Brains vs Brawn vs Beauty season on our hands.'”

...and Peter Baggenstos, an emergency room doctor who often gets mistaken for Barack Obama. “He doesn’t just look presidential,” says Probst. “He’s a very bright guy whose career puts him in crisis situations.”

(Joseph Del Campo) “He was a hostage negotiator, and his No. 1 attribute is patience,” says Probst. “He had to be able to sit and listen and wait for the moment to make his move.”

“She’s had somewhere between 15 and 100 careers,” says Probst, likening Debbie to someone like unforgettable Survivor personality Coach Ben Wade. “Debbie’s on the Brains tribe, so clearly she’s a bright woman, but socially, is her need to constantly list her resume going to resonate with the rest of the tribe?”

Likewise, standing at a towering 6’11”, Pollard was a natural fit for the Brawn tribe—but “Survivor takes a lot more than being big,” says Probst.

“Jason will get in there and mix it up,” says Probst. “He has no problem telling you everything that’s wrong with you, refusing to call you by your name, and only calling you by a nickname he’s assigned to you.”

18-year-old Julia Sokolowski, one of the youngest Survivor contestants ever. “She just finished high school, was just starting college, and now she’s up against a group that includes people in their 40s going as high as their 70s,” says Probst. “What’s really fun about watching Julia is that she can hang. I think she’s going to inspire a bunch of young women to realize that in life, you’re more capable than you think.”

(When asked who has the best hair of the season, Probst readily identifies Nick: “It’s long on top, and he kind of has to whip it over so it falls across his face. I’m always amazing, impressed, and ENVIOUS, in capital letters, of guys who know how to work their hair even when there’s no mirror around.”)

“CBS was really high on Caleb, and I have to be honest, I wasn’t as excited to have him on the show,” admits Probst. “But I was 100% wrong. Caleb is awesome. I think he has things that will resonate with a lot of people: He’s an army vet, he’s religious, he’s a complete team player—but at the same time, he’s telling people, ‘You will never outlast me.’ He will not step down.”

“Tai is the one who came in and he, at least for me, solidified that this was the way we were going to go,” says Probst. “He represented beauty in a way we hadn’t seen before. It’s authentic. I firmly believe the audience is going to fall in love with Tai, and they will understand immediately why he’s on the Beauty tribe.”

Probst looks at the cast of Kaôh Rōng and sees a group unlike many he’s seen before. “I think this is a cast we haven’t seen in a while. There are some very quote-unquote ‘unique’ players,” he says. “There are some interesting people this season that I think the audience is going to root for—or even against, which is often the case.”

Pulling the lens back even further, Probst sees Kaôh Rōng as markedly different from Second Chance, but also two parts of the same whole. If Second Chance is one of the most strategically complicated versions of the game (and a “top five” season, according to Probst), then Kaôh Rōng is the ambassador of the other keynote aspect of Survivor: The intensely harsh, all-too-real brutality of survival.

“I think that’s a great way to explain it. It’s a contrast of two different elements of the game,” says Probst. “If you’ve ever had any doubt that Survivor is real, this season will prove that it is very real.”