International Survivor: Worlds Collide ft Shannon Guss

0:00 Welcome back to the nullify tech but we've got the tnt takes for you on survivor and i've got a very special guest probably the biggest guest i would say i've ever had on the podcast so far but in case you've lived under a rock for the last couple of years i've got with me shannon gus who is someone that is well known within the international survivor community she is now a consultant to the production team of survivor south africa she does some podcasting work for rhab for survival global and also she actually works on the talking tribal show which is the official show after show for australian survivor over in australia shannon welcome to the podcast it's so great to have you oh my god thank you so much for that introduction i feel like i you know i that all sounds not right that i'm your biggest guest or that i'm that important or anything i don't feel that way but it was still lovely words to hear so thank you so much that was so beautiful to hear oh well i'm a big fan i listened to yourself and mike bloom for years before i even had the courage to pick up the mic myself and even you know talk about the show and for the longest period of time i was like the ultimate closet survivor fan like nobody knew i was a survivor fan i didn't have family or friends who watched it so when i started doing the podcast it was like kind of like ripping the band-aid off and just telling everybody hey i'm a survivor fan and now i've

1:20 Got so many great friends that i can talk to about this game that we both love yeah it's like yeah i've got this really embarrassing secret i am a survivor fan but no i'm really glad that you are you know doing this because i think that it really is amazing to do your own thing to get all the stuff that you're doing i was saying to you a little bit before the podcast but to really go out on your own and create a community like you didn't have friends who watched it so you created your own community of you know fans who want to watch you and i think that's an incredible thing so yeah thank you so much for having me i'm excited to talk about international survival with you yeah so i guess to start it off we're talking for those that are listening to the order version or even watching this on my channel on youtube for the nullified take we're going to be talking about survivor i guess worldwide or like i like to call it survivor worlds collide because we are going to be talking about a potential crossover season and for the longest period of time i feel like super fans have been wanting this type of season you know people that watch all of the versions of the show how likely do you think shannon we are to actually get something like this in the future do you think that this is just the pipe dream for many of us do you think that this is legitimately something that may happen in our lifetime yeah i mean i think it could happen i really do i feel like firstly larue who produces south africa is such a super fan all super fans want the season so you know larue wants this season whether you can make it happen

2:40 That's his own thing but like that's definitely something i think he would want to do that survivor south africa would be like basically fangirling over i also asked jlp when i did an interview with him i think for before brains versus braun i was like hey why aren't you doing this you know they brought in russell at the time they subsequently also brought on sandra and nina so they had that international flavor there he was very much like as i was like what about like south africa versus australia versus us he was like yeah us versus australia i'm like in south africa he's like us versus australia so i think that basically the us will never do it they don't like to acknowledge that internationals exist maybe it's because they can sometimes be a little better it's probably just because they don't see it can kind of be an american viewpoint and the us is obviously the og and the biggest so they see us i think it's just like a little bit on the side so they're never gonna do it australia i think could do it but it wouldn't include south africa you basically have each franchise has to build up like they'd never invite franchises as they see as smaller or like below them so australia could invite us and actually think maybe one will want to do that one day because i think as well australia is the most international place for survivor right now the only place you can watch all the franchises it's all one ten play they have that world of survivor that they're happening it's something they try to incorporate into talking tribal they encourage me to talk about survivor south africa or u.s survivors it's on their platform it's on paramount plus so they want people to be watching it so i think australia

4:00 Would be keen for it i just don't know if south africa would be included maybe because it's on tenplay now it's something that they would want to do but i think they'd be looking more at the us and then i think south africa would love to do with all three of the franchises and really do like a war of the worlds thing and i think they do it amazingly well so i honestly have hope and maybe it's because i'm an optimistic person but i really have hope that this will happen in my lifetime no in the next like few years i have hoped that one of australia or south africa will do an international season in some capacity well i was going to say there's a few things that happened in our lifetime that nobody thought would happen tony bluchels won the title i was oh my god i'm like yeah like tony winning that's the first one that i could you vote tony winning i thought you were going to say like something like world views but i was like yeah that's pretty like listen this is why i'm glad we're doing this me and you are like both the biggest tony black or stans i know you're a big fan of his as well but you know tony blackwell's won twice we had a winners at war season that people thought would never gonna happen and now we've got a post merch versus pre-merged season happening in south africa that a lot of people thought would never happen as well so i feel like with the work like i've always thought you know larue would obviously be someone that would want to do something like this it's just the question do they have the budget can they attract international players and also provide them with price money at the end of it that is going to be appetizing for us

5:21 Players to come and participate in i've always had my hopes on australia to do that and i feel like with all the marketing material now they had chappies recently for survival worldwide as the face of survivors of africa i feel like they're putting in a lot of like marketing to like subconsciously get fans ready for it and i feel like one of the biggest struggles that you have with getting like an international season off the ground is that if you go to the us 80 or 90 of the people there will not know who the international survivor players are but if you go to australia there's a higher likelihood that they'll know all of the us players or most of them and also now the later seasons of survivors of africa like you said is on team play so i agree with you i feel like you know australia might be our hope but i'm also having my fingers crossed because if i had to decide which one of the production teams would i like to actually handle this i think survivor south africa and i'm biased from the south african originally i've lived in new zealand for a long time but still have my south african roots i do think that the production team in south africa is top notch i know you're going to be biased because you're now part of that team yeah i'm biased because i work on savage south africa i'm originally south african like i feel like i have my i should have these like shifted biases i am australian now have been for 20 years i'm from south africa but i work on survivor south africa but i am employed by channel 10 and then us is the og like i should probably not show extreme biases but i feel like i do in every direction

6:42 I would love to survive south africa to do this like a i think they're the most likely to do it across the countries although again australia us i think it's something they could definitely do although they should really do south africa they're investing in it they have it on template but i think they'll try and keep it on channel 10 as like us you know people that they think that the casual australian audience not necessarily some people that are logging on to template and watching even talking tribal where we talk about it or the survivor of south africa seasons they feel like okay but you know this play from the us so that's something that's possible but i would love for south africa not just being the most likely to do it across the franchises but i think that they would be the best and again like isn't that biased but we'd be back to 39 days that would feel right across like this kind of like classic war of the worlds thing the twist i think would be the most comfortable for me you know kind of watching them all play against you know extreme non-limbs and stuff it wouldn't really feel right against this like kind of global universal season and they just would do it the best i think they cast really well we'd get like really great thought out picks from across the countries rather than just like not saying that russell and sandra were bad it was incredible to have sandra in particular but i think like if australia's doing it like they're picking the boston robs of the world and i think if south africa is doing it might be more the picture we're going to talk about also because

8:02 I would give them that advice but lure doesn't need the advice you know they'd be going with like we'll talk about it when we get to the cast but people that are really involved in the international community when they when they're thinking of stuff like the us and even for australia so i think they do it really well and i hope that they get to do it one day yeah i think it's interesting with australian survivor having had sandra having had russell and then also nina obviously being an american that have played the game in australia as well i feel like they're dipping their toes into that wall just to see how does the australian public feel about americans playing the game over in australia so i do think that's a very big likelihood now we're kind of tiptoeing around but one of the questions i have for you and something that i'm very interested in is if we did have this crossover season like we're just today we're just going to ignore everything like anything is possible everything is possible yeah i didn't even put one twice yeah exactly i mean i didn't even put limits on like hey you should pick a cast based on x y or z because i wanted us to both come in here with our own picks and then hopefully we've got even different it would be great for us not to have exactly the same players because then we give love to more players and i found it hard to be honest to pick the players to begin with but you know one of the things i think that would be interesting is thinking about who would be the perfect host and how would you sort of look at that because we've got three very different hosts i actually don't look at jeff as a host anymore so in my

9:22 Opinion i wouldn't want to miss the host because i feel like he's kind of moved beyond being a host myself so for me it will be more like between jlp and nico probably for an international season to have that true international vibe yeah just to touch on something you just said a couple minutes ago i also wanted to say like you said that they're dipping their toe into it and seeing how the audience reacted i don't feel like the audience was super into like the casual audience was into the americans like obviously the super fans were obsessed with having sandra and it was like truly an honor for us all but the casuals were like very anti-sandra when she's like the queen they didn't understand that she was the queen and they felt that she was arrogant and there might have been some demographic stuff there where you know maybe the australian audience has a little bit to answer for but there was like a weird nationalism i mean russell brought that on himself i feel like after that season everyone was like and stay out you know like he kind of like went to war with australia maybe that was more of a him thing but i feel like they weren't very into it very much like why are these americans here more you know everyday aussies should get a shot which was strange i feel like south africa from the little land i understand about the audience watching it they're into the international franchises so they like love australian survivor then it gets played over there and when i did my interviews for last season before immunity island everyone loved david and had watched him and was very into it so i feel like they and they as well like have watched the

10:42 Us so they're maybe a little bit more open to it than australia strangely has been but in terms of host i mean jeff is the og like if you're going all the way up to the us you think jeff but then i feel like it will it should be like a south african production so nico but then jlp is like my favorite host again i just show my extreme biases is it sitting on a fence to be in this like again dream 21 twice world that we get all three because that's if we and i don't think with something we could do but if like in a world we can do anything if they're all standing there and then one does one challenge and one does a tribal and some they all do together that to me would feel right because it's like worlds colliding and it would be colliding for them too yeah i like that idea and in fact i wrote it down i think before we came onto the podcast that for me jlp is the best host at challengers i really enjoy him at the challenges he really gets into it and the way that he sort of you know banter with players that are there he kind of gets involved in a really good way i actually and i don't know if this is a bit of a hot take i really like nico for tribal council i like how he handles tribal council i like how he lets things play out he doesn't get too involved at times where jlp can sometimes be guilty i feel like out of maybe getting too involved or he's been better recently he's definitely people have criticized that yeah and i mean the thing obviously

12:02 With jeff is like i grew up watching jeff i think it was like 12 or something when survivor first started and i've been a fan to answer your question about south africans obviously i lived in south africa until i was 18 before i left and i grew up watching survivor then it was a massive part of my life it was big in south africa especially in those early years and now you get i guess castaways that are playing the game this year and they're getting like messages from international survivor players just to give you an idea as to how much players already know about these international players so i like that idea like the idea of getting different people involved now last thing here before we start thinking or maybe two things still that i want to sort of explore before we start getting into the cast firstly location wise do you have like a preference in regards to location i've been very anti-staying in fiji for as long as the main shows stayed because i just feel like it's getting stale and the backdrop is still the same it was beautiful to see it in season 41 because we had two seasons away when we for us have watched australia and survivors of africa and then it went back to fiji it was actually quite refreshing but do you have other locations in mind that you think would be awesome like past locations that they maybe filmed them before i really love them doing it in australia because i feel that location just seems really hardcore i think some of the internationals might straight up die so that would be the issue but it obviously goes back to the roots

13:22 Of australian outback like the most washed us season so there's that little bit there my concern is that if we have like a very cultural location i mean that kind of starts to define the season a little bit and really you know be a feature of it then is it getting a little tricky with the fact that it's like worlds collide and there's all these different nationalities and then there's a location on top of it whereas maybe if it's australia i mean maybe the home soil thing's kind of unfair maybe if it's produced by australia that would make a little bit more sense but i think it's a really cool location and if you're not going to do that i do think you kind of have to be in something like fiji which feels like at this point to the location of survivor more generic more maybe streamlined and you can focus more on the theme and like these battling nationalities rather than going to like some cool location like they've done before with china was amazing tokenities etc but then that becomes its own feature when we were already like kind of getting distracted by so much else because you kind of want these features of each like the best features hopefully of each franchise like you talk about how jlp is the best in the challenge as well people complain sometimes that the match hack goes too far but it's very much a feature of australian survivor have these like extensive map chats so that's something that he could do is the location something that's key to australia but then we have other facets that are key to like these other franchises so it wouldn't just be cars that i would want to collide i would want it that's why i like the idea of sharing host

14:42 I would want to collide other components of the franchises in host in location in features in twists as well so yeah maybe something like australia or otherwise maybe just stay really boring and stay in fiji well funny enough if we're going back to australia i feel like you know i didn't cast this person but then we should have like a colby or like katina so that they go back to the outback it would have been a pretty cool throwback to that not a lot of australian outback people who can come back for various reasons so yeah someone like moby who knows i mean the kobe wouldn't want to you can't get elizabeth hassell back wow that's of all the seasons we would really want to pull from they've done so many of them and it would it would be very tricky i feel like you would have to like get one of those og outback players back forces and such as that but one of the things you mentioned and we didn't get into that and i'll tell you my location that i would like for it to play out in but one of the things that we didn't talk about was you mentioned different aspects from different franchises that we want to use and i think one of the things i want to give like i've been critical of australian survivor in the last two seasons for me the quality of the show isn't weird where it has been and a lot of that has got to do with the fact that the edit has become too predictable both seasons i predicted who the winner was going to be in the second episode and i knew straight throughout it was very obvious i wouldn't want the australian editing department to touch this season because i feel like it would just be too

16:02 Obvious but one of the things i do like about australia survivor and it's so far ahead of any of the other franchises would be the challenges like i would want them to create the challenges i would want them there needs to be a little bit more balance i feel like with puzzles and things like that they don't focus too much on that but i do yeah and i mean like you said some of the us players might die based on the physicality of some of the challenges that australia does but like in broad brush i'd love for them to look at the challenges the editing department for the us these last two seasons and specifically this last season 10 out of 10 like this last season they gave everybody an opportunity if you're going to bring back so many legendary players you want them to be able to you know voice themselves and we want to have fun with them in the show and actually have to go on that journey i always look back at ethan's on when he got voted out which was such an emotional vote i know it was one for you as well because i still listened to your recaps back then no one saw it coming because the edit was so bad but they really fixed it from there onwards i feel like they're getting better and then for survivors of africa like you said you know just the whole theme of the season what kind of game mechanics is going to be in it i would trust them most with that so those type of different things is there anything else that i kind of miss out on that you think like would be great for one of the three franchises to sort of take care of in the season such as that i mean in terms of an edit perspective i do think australian survivor can stay far away but i

17:23 Do think that the epicness and that kind of grandeur i would bring that production format south africa and then like i also would trust south africa with the edit but we have to give us something so up there i just want to work on it more in the vein of like 41. like i'm not 41 because erica said it was wasn't amazing 42 the edit was beautiful perfect edit invested in the characters and the thing with the us in terms of their editing being so impressive is obviously that they have the least time and they when they do it right and they can tell those stories that's incredibly impressively done so if they want to do that and even maybe get a little bit more time i'd also do the old school like what is going to be old-school compared to sa-9 but 55-minute episodes as south africa has been doing maybe 16 to 18 episodes have really enjoyed them kind of sitting in that time and maybe give the us a little bit of extra time and seeing what the editors can do so yeah i kind of feel like we can pull from all of those things and get the best of the best but more puzzles if australian survivor is going to do the challenges but they are epic for sure yeah i feel like or whoever's in charge of the editing they just sit there and really enjoy making us podcast this looks like fools when we're trying to get like the winner edit because i mean we've had two seasons in recent times where i was completely blown out of the water i could in hindsight understand why they won but watching it the first time around i think

18:43 It was it was a shock but it's also a pleasant shock where a lot of people sometimes find it refreshing not to know immediately who that person is going to be i kind of feel felt like an element of that happened in survivor 42 as well where there was a great misdirect with omar and how while he was playing and then suddenly marianne had this rise which i saw two or three weeks before she did her move that she was starting to become a little bit more involved but i thought they handled that really well as well so i do like what you're saying there yeah i mean south africa like they edit without an agenda they edit as it's happening so if the winner is being crazy or more low-key they will show it if there's another person who really feels like a threat they're gonna really hype that up to the amount that it is if rob bentley is dominating to that extent you're gonna see it and then he's gonna win it's basically i mean there's always like a little bit obviously of context that has to be given when you're editing down a show but it's basically a window into what is happening right there and if it's shocking for the players it'll be shocking for you rather than needing to kind of smooth out those edges which the us can do i mean we love 42 we love the editing but we haven't loved a lot of the editing of modern us survivor and the way the winner edits have been shoved down our throat so maybe we're just a little bit enabled with the recently buyers of 42 maybe we should give editing to south africa as well us can sit there and look pretty like i'm not really sure what you guys can contribute to this other than their amazing

20:03 Cast members if jeff can they budget like yeah their budget yeah that's it okay we'll get the us budget south african production and editing and then the grandeur of australia and the challenges okay that's amazing yeah that's great and is jeff going to come do this maybe not but maybe he can send some like selfie videos talking to the camera and that's where he can come in be like hey we're back it's an international season and then jlp can take the challenges and nico can take the tribal councils and then all three of them can be there for the reunion and the finale vote read brilliant yeah well i feel like i feel like jeff in recent seasons have tried to like get more and more involved and like you know to try and like influence the game in certain ways because he's been doing it for so long he wants to be entertained out there on the island himself as well what if we made jeff the twist what if we put him on an island and they get to go talk to the og host and he gives them advice in regards to how to handle tribal council this is how you answer nico's questions if you want to be able to keep your game a secret term or things like that we make him a part of the twist i think that's the perfect balance i feel like he would love that but the fans would not the fans are trying to like get a little bit less of jeff rather than him inserting himself into everything now he's like a part of the game also the issue of the jeff would not know these players is he gonna binge like a ton of international seasons to understand who these people are probably not like when would he have the time

21:23 And i don't believe he's watched it to this point whereas i feel like nico's probably seen it all right have these hosts even watch like has jlp watch south africa i'm not actually i don't know if gel p does no but nico's something that's gonna happen i think nico's a big fan as well isn't he like he's watched from memory he said he's always been a fan of survivor before he even became the host so i'm pretty sure if he is a fan he would have still been watching and keeping up with what's happening and i just find like the whole south african team are fans in general and that's why the show just has such a different feeling to it and you know the excitement is really there for this coming season as well but coming back to i guess my original thing that i wanted to talk about the location and i think that this location probably won't be used unless they ever do a legend season it will probably be even more appropriate for that but you know we can dream i'd love for them to go back to borneo where it all started you know i just think that it would be such a great throwback go back to where this craziness happened like 20 plus years now and it's had so many different franchises that's come from it and you know but if you did go back to that season again do you include the original winner what do you do i feel like that's where they will go with legend season but maybe not because these days it is all about money and where can they get away the most cost effective i feel like is the biggest decision maker for the us going back to 26 days staying in fiji

22:44 All these changes that they're making currently but i don't want to be just banging on the show at the moment yeah there's a few things i don't like but yeah no i mean the second that you said they'll only do it for legend season i was like oh borneo and i do kind of love that i don't think you would necessarily need someone from borneo i think the theme would be ingrained to be like this is where it all began like 20 however 26 years ago maybe if they do it in a few years yeah you know this is where survivor started i know that there was other franchises before but survivor as a franchise began there and look what it has evolved to not just the us show and this would have to be jeff saying it but like if you're going back to borneo then you actually need jeff involved in some capacity even if it's just a speech for him to say and you know even to say to go back to what they're not doing but say 39 days 24 people one survivor but it would basically be the storyline of like and then flashing back to international versions that have kind of come off the us and how impactful that has been globally i think that actually would be pretty amazing i mean australia would do it to a degree because it has like obviously the connection to the us franchise and the australian franchise but i feel like nothing really compares to borneo so i think that could be cool i could i could see it now going through like the history of the show spawning off into australia and south africa and then now a group of 24 legends would be amazing yeah so one thing and

24:04 I feel like i don't know how you stand on the season a lot of people are like 50 on it but i personally loved it ghost island i love the whole theme of bringing back relics from the past obviously they missed an opportunity by bringing new cast members into that season i feel like a season like this with people that potentially know the history of the show and also including some of the things that happened internationally into that could be quite interesting as a potential mechanic how do you sit in regards to that and an oh march to what came before do you think that is better to just keep that with the us or to never see that type of twist do you like the idea of having such a i guess like an island theme i know laureu likes bringing in himself things like immunity island of secrets and things like that because it just gives the contestants something else to go and do and to go and make a decision at a place that's separate from their tribe how do you feel about i guess something like that on a season such as this yeah i don't know that i like an island theme for a season like this because i think it would take over a little bit too much when the cast are the theme you know of itself like they're the twist i love the homages of past seasons obviously like i'm a huge nerd about that stuff like but for me it can be done in like little details like one of the things i loved about cambodia was that all the attorneys were wearing like a version of the clothes they'd been and they were all one-time players so it worked really well to just kind of have them kind of being taken

25:24 Out from their first season into the second i think there are ways that you can do that and even have twists and definitely have like external islands at points and have decisions and have twists without it being like a feature of the show like an immunity island or an island of secrets which can work really well with newbies but i just think it doesn't need to be like a staple of the season when that like the highlight is the cast and the theme if that makes sense rather than it needing to kind of have this dual focus 100 okay so let's talk about twists you'd like to see in this like an advantage and one that you definitely don't want to see i think we both will probably agree we don't want to see edge of extinction but outside of that is there something else that you think this is what i would like to see and this is what i definitely wouldn't like to see in a season such as this i wouldn't want any way for the players to be brought back obviously whether it's through the australian non-limbs which if it's run by australia definitely will happen or redemption island or age of extinction none of that like you know we're here to play and if not you are out one thing i would really like to see and i know this is like really controversial and probably i mean the minority of enjoying this as a twist but i think it would particularly work for the season is an early swap and i you know that's a feature of some seasons that i love like the last south africa season cambodia i think with returning seasons it can work really

26:44 Well because if there's been any pre-gaming or anything connection like that i mean sometimes that could work out worse like ending winners at all like there was one whole pre-game card like a whole tribe of them but i just think that it can kind of keep them on their toes be like who's the most flexible in a returning class and importantly for this season i think it would be crucial because i think that if you are already divided in a really stark way by like country and nationality and there's a little bit of like this like sportsman thing of like we're playing like an international sport you can kind of cling to those groups a little bit i feel and i would hate to see like a post-merge pagonging because it's like what we need an american to win i kind of feel like they'd really feel their way somehow or you know we need like our country to be victorious so i think like muddying up those connections early starting kind of those cross-continental relationships from episode three or four like really early in for me and then and multiple swaps like i know that this is something that people really don't enjoy they get confused but you'll be less confused because you'll know the players it's a returning season and i think that i'm trying to break national instincts and pre-game alliances and just kind of yeah can i add to that i like that i like the way you're thinking here i had russell muscle tv also got a youtube channel does survivor content as well he was a guest of mine in the previous podcast we did we spoke about survivor

28:04 Themes and one of the themes we spoke about that you know potentially we'd love to see come back is one world now we know one world isn't very popular but a lot of people don't like it we kind of said well let's twist it a little bit when we bring one more back why don't you have these people drop on the same beach they all live they're kind of like one big merch tribe but every challenge there's a rock draw and that determines who the teams are so that when a team wins immunity it could still be three teams but it's not necessarily only south african players or only australian players in a team those teams that won the immunity they will be safe and one team will then go to potentially be in danger and go to tribal council is that something that you think would be able to kind of muddy up the water a little bit sooner as well or would that just be a little bit too much overkill with having that many players so close to each other on the same beach i guess yeah i mean i feel like the rock draw is a lot like to me like that's been its own theme i talk about one world as a theme the rock draw thing is like ten times that as really being like the feature of something so the rockstar thing i think i think is too much i think that if you're gonna drop on the beach drop them in tribes of their countries but maybe in a one world theme and it's not confusing like the same way they did one world but separated by gender so you know who's on each tribute you know who's on his track because they're attorneys in countries they're on their tribe for like two to three votes but they're getting to know each other then we send them to separate beaches and we swap them because

29:24 You can't start them in tribes of non-national tribes like it's what are you calling it worlds collide i would call it maybe something like war of the worlds maybe that's a bit much when literally countries can war but i think that they have to be in their tribes like it has to have this basis to start there has to be some sense of national pride that americans or australians or south africans could be like that's my team but then it also needs to be muddied enough for that not to like dictate the entire trajectory of the game so maybe it's an early swap maybe they're starting on one world in their tribes but they're all getting to know each other maybe it's both and then by the time they swap they go to their different beaches and now we have like these international relationships i think these things are necessary but i don't think that you can start them all in random tribes you know and not have it by nationality and i also don't think that you can do a rock draw anything like that because i think there needs to be we need at least a few challenges of like it's south africa versus australia versus america and we're going like head-to-head with like tribe flags that are legitimately flags like that needs to be a sense of like the world's colliding this is why you're the consultant to survive the productions even i'm not because you've got the better ideas here immediately no you're not actually right though because that is what i bring as a production consultant as i shut things down like mike's the ideas man and i'm just like nope less of that more you know like i don't like things but that's what i bring so yeah so that actually

30:45 Is my superpower as a production consultant i feel like we would balance each other out i would be like the mic in this role i would just throw everything at the wall and i love craziness that's what i really appreciate that's why tony vloggers is my favorite player i like craziness in the game but then again i do think sometimes that's what's happening at a lot of these bigger franchises like the us where they and even australia is guilty of it i feel like in recent seasons where they're just throwing so much at the wall and sometimes until it actually plays out on our screens and people are actually going through the twist you don't actually realize listen this does not make that much sense and it's something that probably shouldn't have made it past the you know i guess the vision board when they were thinking about it prior to the season so we spoke about a twist or i guess something that you'd like to see on this season is there anything that you would think like i mean you've mentioned a few things there already that you wouldn't like to see but is there anything else that you would you would say this is probably something we should stay away from in a season such as this means so many things so many women even this is my whole podcasting career yeah you're like you're like things that you like and don't like and this is the issue it's like when you are consulting or creating the show like there are lots of fun ideas that are exciting but for me like the thing that satisfies me the most is like looking at the whole chat and being like oh that's a clean kind of bare few episodes you know like let's let the players play especially with hopefully a great cast as we would get for this season so what do i not want i'm like how long do

32:05 You have i mean i don't want again like yeah anything i don't want the external islands i definitely want anyone to ever be able to come back i don't want the nullifier i don't want knowledge of power end of my podcast yeah i yeah no the nullified take is fine but we're not that's the only thing we're not lying i want what i believe south africa wants to be and that to me is like the sweet spot of us which was like late 20s no like without the tyler perry idol but like late 20s to early 30s i thought there were ideas in that worked like even blood versus water worked i thought was good and it was like idols a fair amount of idols without needing to like around like millennials versus genetics they started hiding more and more and hiding them later so like kind of before that definitely before fire would if we met not doing fire at the final war because i would just no we're not doing that 39 days and twists like idols and maybe like some other cool little gadgets thrown in without it being extremely overdone that's kind of where my like ideal survivor said so that's where i would want the season to be okay i just scratched off ben drebergen from my castle this year because yeah he's not doing that we're taking away a superpower for this season okay well i guess let's get into a little bit of the cast and who you've got this is the exciting part of the podcast

33:25 And i didn't really give you any like in a direction like let's try and choose this type of cast or based on a specific thing so i did it on purpose because i didn't want to influence your thinking and i think that we both would have said different rules for ourselves and how we put together our cast so to give you a bit of an idea when i first started looking at it i was like i don't want any winners in my cast offer attorneys because i don't like i know and it's fine and i knew you probably would because i was like i don't want winners because winners have already played this game once and i feel like unless they come back in a full-on winner's season they're cannon fodder in most games but then i did have a winner kind of sneak into my cast when i was doing it i was just kind of like struggling not to put this person into the cast but outside of that same person as mine well i have like a million winners but i know who you're talking can i guess adam klein well adam kleiner did have all my cast but i removed them because i didn't want to have winners so he was like at one point i had a few different i had a few different drafts on my on it's not i have not narrowed this down like i'm in a very annoying guess where like i even we meant to do six per try i'm like no let's take it at eight per drive do an australian survivor format another thing we can take from australian survivor i guess then we definitely need more than 16 episodes maybe like 20 episodes 24 people and even with that i'm like i've got maybes i'm like i'm happy for you to convince me of my own like scrambled thoughts based on the

34:45 Options that i have yeah listen i think it's going to be a lot of fun i think we could talk about you know if there's people that you sort of like we're thinking between two people and then you bounce them you can sort of talk through that i know that it's difficult especially for both me and you and probably more so for you because you actually get to know a lot of these people like i've interviewed a few survivor players now and most of them like i think all of them i don't think i've met any survivor player yet that hasn't been the nicest person when you actually interview them and they're sometimes so different from the edit which is quite surreal as well because i think fans would get very stuck on oh this is i'm boxing this person into the edit this is who they are and then you get to know them and they're a little bit different but it makes it harder when you're talking about this so for me it's exactly the same so i guess we can go either way on this i kind of want to do different i guess franchises let's do like our first south african then maybe first australia and then maybe first u.s one so we can like cycle through who we would want in there and if you can give us like a little bit of i guess what thought went into it i'm very interested because i don't know how much you were involved in the casting but you mentioned on your podcast recently which is one of the podcasts i did listen to because obviously some of the preseason content is always really good before we get into the recaps you know you mentioned that you saw this class come together so did any of what you saw and how the cast came together did you take any learnings from that and did you apply this

36:05 To doing this cast yeah i guess yeah i mean my major learning was like a lot of people say no well you know like not everyone can do it's like a big thing to ask of people or like even like if you're not even necessarily like offering them a spot but you might reach out to someone they're just like not available there's also usually you know network constrictions there's things that practicalities that could be really tough for casting a season but that is not true of this season because we're in that anything can happen tony won twice world so this is just a dream where every person i want to play survivor tomorrow can fly out so yeah that's a big thing for me i mean this car for me like i think would be a spectacular class for my own personal one of you i want to see you know and maybe it's not like enough like play diversity in terms of like play style because it's definitely like a lot of notes let's do my cards in my podcast as well so i guess but i think for me like a big thing is i wanted people who were not just like legendary in their own franchises but who maybe had some connection to other franchises so knew about them like for us players there's a lot of people you can choose and sometimes i might just go with a legend but i wanted people who have an interest in international survivor who know what it is you might know who the players are for australia that's

37:25 Probably true as well and that ends up being like kind of the nerdy superfans because they care enough about the global franchises but like south africa as well like who will kind of geek out about this who has connections across the aisle so that was a big thing for me it definitely made like my dream cast with people i love networks might want more kind of out there pics or more maybe casual favorites and i did try as well to kind of put parts of that in i tried to balance it out but it definitely was like here are my three nerdy superfan love international survival options and like one person that maybe it gives a little bit of difference there so i think maybe that's like my cast for me in my dream world would it be completely changed by any network i think highly yeah like this class would never happen it's just like it's like a super fan dream it's my dream tony won twice twenty one twice that's the world it's all unicorns and sunshine right now we had all windows and tony water like the dream is real who knows what could happen in life you know like listen the i know this is half of the survivor community's not gonna know what i'm talking about imagine this tony won in that year that he won south africa won the rugby world cup and i'm the biggest rugby fan and we were such underdogs that world cup going into it so i was just like nothing can get better than that year for me because two of the things that i didn't think was going to happen that year happened so it was the best time so i'm going back to that happy

38:45 Place i'm back at my happy place and that's what i wanted to do with this cast so to give you a bit of an idea with me like i love characters i love the big characters i love the sloppy players yeah we're gonna balance each other because i'm gonna i'm gonna be doing some sloppy characters i'm gonna be doing people that i just want to be entertained by but also i do appreciate that a cast needs balance so i do also have some of those players that probably will be more strategic and also try to think a little bit about do some of these players have like past relationships harder to do with the us i don't think i did as well with the us because it's so many seasons but i did try and kind of think like how would these people sort of interact within the same tribe and would they be like an interesting storyline there to have them in the same tribe it's kind of how i thought about it but that's kind of the limitations and then obviously the winner limitation when i swapped adam out i did replace him with someone that i think will fit extremely well in that slot and i might still remove the winner that i have just to make it fair because i kind of feel like i now have to not choose a winner well who is it i'm now so curious to know who the winner is okay so i guess i'll start then so the winner that i have and i feel like there's a bit of personal bias coming in here and maybe if i should drop this winner i should at least drop an equivalent level winner in the australian franchise but i've got rob bentelli from island of secrets in here

40:05 And the reason for that is because he was such a dominant player i speak to rob quite a bit and i know that he's interested in an international crossover season like he would do it like if they asked him from the conversations that i've had and for me because rob won in the way that he did against people who weren't the biggest fans of the show at the time obviously there were some big fans as well but i feel like he manipulated people close to him in that circle that weren't as big fans and he kind of ride it that out till the end and no one saw him coming i would love to see how he would do against very capable players and for my own because rob is one of those people where a lot of people see him as a top three winner of all the franchises because of how dominantly he won now i'm not necessarily saying that's my opinion he's definitely one of the better winners but i would like to see if he's really that good and i think he would be up for the challenge in such a season and i also think that with south africa rob would be a great representative in a franchise such as that so it's kind of the things i was thinking about when i casted him but he's the only winner that i casted at this point i may still replace him or i probably don't even need to because you're going to bring up some people that i don't have in my car but i'm going to be like yeah i'd love for that person even to be in the cast as well what do you think about that first pick no i do think it's a good pick i hadn't had rob because again i was thinking more people who seem to like really love us and australian survivor but i also think that with robin and a really good point that

41:25 You're making is like who is representing these franchises so it's like oh we have what is considered easily the most dominant winner of survivor south africa so that definitely represents the franchise well i do think you probably need to match it or try to across the franchises and there's some people that probably can do that i can talk about from my list but i definitely do think yeah let's represent how great some of these franchises be how great the players can be and if it's going to really be world colliding or war of the worlds let's kind of send our best soldiers into battle and see who comes out on top yeah okay well and that with that in mind i'm gonna make sure that i've got a great representative across all seasons because i do have a great one for the us they're not a winner but i feel like people will look at them as a winner in any case so who's your first pick for south africa i'm really curious i don't have it in like an order of picks i did like guys and girls can i just i'll give you can i give you some options can i give you some options because i've got a lot of i've got i could not narrow things down well i want to do i think verna for me would probably be a first okay so let's stop at werner because i've got him as well so let's say he's definitely on the cast because we both have him because i think that he hits a lot of good points which is like so he's a nerdy super fan but he's not so much in that

42:45 Archetype because he's a little bit older he's a dad he was much more a leader rather than just like a kind of often flame out younger nerdy super fan who would just be just fangirling i mean verna would be too but i think in a different way he's also one of the best players in franchise history from south africa so in terms of like representing the franchise i think that yeah for me he would be an essential pick and he's such a huge fan of international versions and just ticks a lot of the boxes yeah so i'm going to put werner as a definite because we both have them i think if we both have them they're just to be honest and yeah i'm going to pronounce his name the way it's actually pronounced and that's not taking a dig at you but it's vanna you know obviously i think that he's got that perfect mix between being a great strategist but also being entertaining to watch like i'll never forget him trying to eat the clue in the episode that he did that and also you know he's like you mentioned a big fan i think at the end of the day that season was his season and everybody thought he was gonna win it so for him never to come back would be such a shame and be like you said he is a fan of all of the international versions he quite openly said he listened to rob before he went out to go and play and that he's been following him for a long time very sad not to see him on this season but i know he's got some things going on

44:06 In his personal life but i'm thinking vanda is a definite lock for both of us so do you want to lead us into i guess the australian franchise like let's see if we can go two for two on people we've chosen we'll go oh well we're really like flipping around here yeah i'm struggling with australia can i do a woman from australia do a woman yep i would say hayley and i know that you don't have winners but if you're gonna have rob haley is such a dominant winner she's a big fan again of the international stuff she needs to come back as well again it would be like let's put some of the most dominant winners against each other and that would definitely be true for her so it would kind of start turning into a bit of an international legend season not just an international season and she has the fandom and she's so fun to watch so she for me would be a lock yeah so hayley is an interesting one so you know number one george fan on the side here and i understand why he didn't win the end of the game but i was i felt so bad for george because i felt like he played a better game not getting voted out and getting voted out having to fight your way back there was always one of the things where i looked at but i've had to look at like haley as a player because i always like to look at players and how they're won as separate i think she's one of the best players to ever play i don't rate her winners hire some fans because of the fact that she was voted out and she had to come back and win but in saying that hayley was on my

45:26 List and then i removed her and i do respect her a lot as a player so it's by no means a bad pick and i know that she's a massive fan of the show i was so happy for her as this big fan that actually you know i mean i was her when i was 12. i was like i want to go play survivor one day i want to win it so me the 12 year old fan and me was so happy for her when she managed to win it and it doesn't matter how you win at the end of the day she's got the half million dollars i don't and i don't want to come across as me saying you know haley's horrible because i actually do love hayley but when you say most dominant winner she's none of my top two winners for australia but it's just being honest about my opinion and how i rank winners because i think everybody ranks winners differently but would she be a great representative of the season in which you do extremely well i mean she's got the smarts she's got the physicality i mean she beat mma fighter in a challenge which was crazy to see and there is no bigger fan she would actually know who the us players are and i'm sure she's keeping an eye on the south african players as well so she'll probably have a really good idea and would appreciate such a season yeah i mean getting fans from australia is hard like you're gonna have players who probably don't even know the other australian players let alone yeah let alone the us and survive south african place but i think with haley like her win for me is the second best australian win and i still think she's a much

46:46 Better player than her win like that's how highly i rank her as a player i've told her before that she if i could pick one player from any of the international franchises to play any version of the show against any cast i would pick her she is built for the game like she is literally an a robot sent to play survivor like she so i think that she would be perfect for it just on like a super fan and legendary level and you say you're a george fan like honestly like i would i would go george as well because i think in terms of like character legendary super fandom play style and also i think george would be really mad if i didn't put him in this car so yeah and jordan would definitely do it as well like george would be keen so yeah he's on my list yeah we've gotta we've both got a lock there obviously as a big george fan i understand why he didn't win i fully understand like and i'm hoping he also knows now why he doesn't he didn't win that season because of the social aspect and how he made people feel when they went there and then obviously you had a bunch of people on the jury also that didn't care about somebody getting voted out and coming back in the game because they weren't fans like we are with the old school fan side of things but then again it's a difficult i don't want to even say like if i was on the jury you have to be you know it must be so hard to choose a winner you know like and to go in there with preconceived ideas like i will only do this and the circumstance i think is taking away from the

48:06 Experience of being out there and actually voting for the player who you believe played the best game and also like i always say the best person always wins the best player doesn't necessarily all always win the game you know and there is definitely a case to be made for that i definitely think hayley is a solid choice so we'll keep him on the board similar to robin telly i think if you put rob bentilli in you kind of have to put haley and so i think we'll keep his option there to potentially put it in so let's dip over to the us and i haven't actually given a name in a while so maybe i'll do the next one so for me this person and in the u.s there's a higher likelihood we're going to have like two completely different teams so i'll start with someone that i think probably is going to come back for a second chance season or a so close season maybe a runner-up season or something like this we're actually going to see them playing the challenge usa very recently and it's going to be dominic abate like you know i kind of alluded to the fact that i loved ghost island i know a lot of fans weren't as high on it i think he's one of the best players to ever play to never win the game i mean losing on a draw there's no bigger storyline that he can come out come in to a season such as this but as the one that he has so for me having bomb there as someone that's like one of the true last mafiosos that have played the game in the us i would really like to see how he actually rubs shoulders with some of the international players i do know he does watch international

49:26 Survivor as well so i know that via wendell and wendell having a connection with tom i know that dom is like a casual fan he's not like massive but he keeps an eye on it so i think he'd be open to it yeah i mean well i had wendell as like a maybe because i know that he's been involved and once we're getting winners in wendell's obviously a great character but he has played again where dom hasn't and now that i know that he watches international i can shift that maybe over to dom i do think it's interesting i wonder if it's the right format for him to come back i think he's someone who needs to come back i'd love them to do i'd love the us to do in a few seasons like survive a new era and get some of the best players since 34 where there really hasn't been an opportunity for non-winners to come back i guess like 38 but you know it's been it's been few and far between basically so i'd love them to do that i kind of wonder if that would be a benefit for him just because he's kind of like a modern icon and to have it be like a modern us returning season but i'm always happy to have to see dom back like i really enjoy him so i'm not going to veto it wasn't on my list but i think it's a very interesting pick i think that it's an absolute shame that we're going to see him like i'm a big challenge fan as well like you'll know i talked to chantel francis and drew angel cake all the time about that also on my podcast i still just think it's such a shame that he's going to go play the challenge before he gets back to play survivor you know he's one of us he should be playing another survivor yeah

50:47 Exactly so it's such a shame you know but okay so we don't both have dom let's try our luck at an another us play i think we may have very different us cast so let's yeah there's a lot of options with the us like this was this was a tough one yeah okay kind of in the like connected to wendell space i would really like bryce isaiah because i feel like the us aren't going to cast him because they should be doing the theme that south africa is currently doing where they have pre-mergers versus post mergers they give like he would be so perfect for that theme where someone who went at their first tribal gets a new opportunity because they have like massive potential but the us i don't think is really going to ever focus on that and i think that especially being like a while out now from kaguyan like he is in a tricky spot with that so air just want bryce because he's also gone to south africa to play in like live games live survivor games that he definitely has connections with south african players and possibly australian players like he's just like us in the community a very social person we've done like it's a look before like i know that he has relationships across the board and i think he'd bring like a lot of entertainment so yeah i would really like bryce now you know me i like the characters kageyan is my favorite season of all time so you know yeah i think bryce is someone that for me probably i didn't have on but i'm not i'm not going to veto him i think we keep him on the board

52:07 And we come back to that at a later stage we'll have a us cast of like 20 people it would be fine 20 people like pretty much we're just gonna have like the next second chance season or something sorted out by the end of this yeah great i knew it was gonna be difficult coming into the us cast all right so let's go back to the south african franchise and i'm gonna go for someone else here that i think you may have on here but i'm not sure it's someone that you know i was a big fan of them i'm going to stay with ireland of secrets i know i just mentioned robin telly i'm going to put jack burger on here as someone that i think would really appreciate an international crossover season he's been a fan for a very long time one of the reasons i love jack burger and i always put him up as someone that i'd like to see in an international season is the scrappiness in him as a player like he went there he's a fan he made the cardinal mistake off over playing too soon playing his idol incorrectly and then the rest of the season he had to scramble and he had to fight from the bottom for every inch that he got that season and he proved that he could do that and that he was able to work back from a position of you know being an outcast really and get himself to the merge and then you know almost sort of wiggle his way through it and then also do the idle plays a good showman so i think that international audiences would like a player such as jack i know it's very similar to like an adam klein in some ways but adam klein that hasn't really won the show

53:27 But you know i think jacques would be a great addition to a cast such as this yeah so my issue is that i have again like all these like young nerdy super fans and they're all my friends and i don't want to choose between them so i had jacques i had dino i mean we're gonna see how is dino's to play so maybe we should kind of take that off the board until we know like where he's at in survivor although i will say i had a lot of sa 9 is on this cast because a lot of the fans are on sa-9 kieran is someone i really want to see play again and he's not on sa-9 and then like rainier i also put in there he's on this a9 so like i don't really want to choose between them if you didn't have anyone else on your list i'm happy to then like default to jacques i think they'd all be good picks because they're all kind of built from what makes survival south africa so great buy the fans for the fans with the fans all of that and they get these super fan players on not that the us don't do that but i feel like especially the modern era really does have a lot of super fans but i feel like there are so many people who get cast on survivor south africa who are just like into the niche community and all of these like all these players are examples of that where they just love the show so much they've been watching the us since the beginning they're watching australia too like there's just a lot of passion for the show and they're great strategists and good characters i think as well but i don't think we can have all of them because it won't fit and i think actually we can probably only fit one of them so i'm like happy to john jacques if that's all you had but i think they're all good options

54:47 I think that they will they're all on my list so you kind of mentioned with dino the reason i didn't put dino on and you know i would love to put dina on here i can't put him on here based on past performance i'm so happy that he gets an opportunity to play this season and that you know he might be able to right the wrongs of that season and i think he's going to do a lot better not to get into return of the outcasts too much but i just have a feeling he's coming in a lot more relaxed this season than what he did in his first season but based on past performance i felt like jacques was the option for me and ani kind of played a very similar game to jacques the only thing is i don't like the scrappy players so that's why i kind of yeah renee did awesome dominance exactly and jacques scrapped the whole time from the beginning but i need another great name it's just do you need both vernier and jack on the same season i feel like the reason i went to jacques was because i like the scrappiness a little bit more so i'm happy to make the call on that if renee or anybody listens to this dino it's you know it's my fault i made the call and karen all that's all on you because i feel like you know all of these players fit into again like the shannon gus dreamcast of any theme you know because those are the players i love to see i understand that we need a little bit more scope i do understand that from a tv perspective but like in my dream it's just you know i love millennials versus gen x i love cambodia all of the criticisms people i love essay eight every single season that people criticize as two game

56:07 Body i'm like you know you have all the game bodiness in the world i'm just like eating more donuts that's how i feel about as well like yeah i mean it was my favorite south african season absolutely loved it was very difficult to choose a cast with not too many of them in it and i think maybe like three out of my eight is from that cast so you know i heavily lean towards that cast in any case because i just love them so much yeah i mean i think look with two people sitting here podcasting about survivor international survivor like of course we love the game body stuff it makes a lot of sense but yeah we need to need to maybe branch out a little bit so jacques can represent and he's not on sa-9 and i know a lot of people wanted to see him there so he can he can represent on this season all right do you want to do another south african australian one for this next one we've actually got two locks for south africa so far just to keep italy chuck burger and vanity bed you want to maybe do like a female i'll do raw ventilate because you just cut out most of my male picks so we can put rock band today that's good let's just look at it so we've got three okay cool yeah okay well yeah i mean i've got three women i would kind of want to lock and i'll say this one first because if we're not doing anyone else from s8 there's a couple people i want from sa-9 and i feel like they're necessary and this person is true of that and it's lesser because my cast and we're gonna go to the us

57:28 My cast is kind of really like predicated on like this palestine adam thing because how cool will that be in the first episode when it's like you see the moments and you see pelessa do it and then you see adam try to do it and we flash back to that and getting them into to interact like that was such a massive moment for international survivor fans that adam that adam did that and he caught her the palesti idol not on the show because they wouldn't let him but we know that he did palestine as well such a good pick because she's an amazing character she's a great player she's indicative of survival south africa as a franchise she's a great representative of it as you know an icon of the franchise let alone an international survivor because of the atom thing so i kind of feel like we don't know how it's going to go for s9 but no matter how it goes even if she's first boot i feel like put her on this season yeah i mean pelessa's on my list as well love her i'm not going to argue with that i'm going to move on to another while we're just here of africa we're getting a few of the ladies out of the way i want to do another lady and specifically also who's going to be coming back for this season and i know people are going to be like why are you putting her on i loved both jack and steffy from that season and i've got steffi on my list to come back again for another season i would love to see them back in the same tribe and to see how that would play out there is obviously a little bit of rivalry from back in the day i know that they have spoken since the game but it would be interesting to play out to give you an idea again i like the characters

58:48 I love people that are stubborn she reminds me of like the typical south african mentality which is to tell it to you as it is like to be straightforward sometimes people that are international can look at that as being a bit abrasive but i like i like the fact that she's a warrior if i had to get someone in there that physically could stand up to like a hayley if you're putting it in like i would want steffi on there to compete against there she's gonna get beat up she'd look she it'd be cool to see her in the australian challenges i think that would be a big thing again like some people might straight up die like we're so we're going to put the oh we're going to put you in australia with the australian challenges against steffy like welcome to the season i feel like for steffy i mean i don't think that there'd be a sense of fandom where she kind of understand the grandeur of what she's doing and know who she's playing against and that for me is kind of a big deal especially when you're looking at south africa cast where they're like the franchise that is most likely to have that global knowledge and to really like understand what we're doing here like the us it was hard to pick people who may be of like again watch it down to international because u.s is the biggest australia does not have a lot of superfans so that was tough too but south africa there's a lot of people who are like very into it and even maybe have had relationships across the board that i don't feel stephanie has had so it's something i kind of lean away from but maybe for now put it maybe i kind of feel like for the sa niners i'm like i really feel like i don't

1:00:08 Even know what like who you are as a survivor player yet like it hasn't played out but i really have to feel like you are worth it now to look past the fact that i shouldn't really be casting you on something before i've seen your second season and i feel like it is that for me and the other player i have is that for me that i want to do that for but i didn't have steffi on that list okay well let's move for a second let's move away from south africa because we've spoken quite a bit about this i want to keep it moving towards some of the other franchises as well so far we've got george and i am willing to put hayley on it as well you've convinced me because we've got i think if you've got a winner from south africa you need a winner from australia and hayley will represent well in a season such as that but i want to go and add someone else into here and i don't know if you're going to have this person but i'm going to put it up in any case my favorite tribe from australia of all time is saga and i have got a very soft spot for that tribe and i'm i've got a feeling we may have a few people from that tribe this season but i'm going to put in sarah tiliki as someone that is forgotten she hasn't played the game in a long time but had so much promise when she played the first time i felt like strategically she was great and the way that she maneuvered in that game and she was great confessionals i feel like now she was about i think 21 when she played the first time it's a bit older now as well a little bit wiser

1:01:28 Not that she wasn't wise back then but i'd like to see her come back this kind of like you know when mike finter played the first time in south africa i thought he was a bit young but if he was to play back like when he's like close to his 30s i would be interested to see what a mike feinter a bit of more mature mike venter could do in the game so sarah is definitely someone that i thought deserved some love on the podcast or someone that i'd love to see come back and if not for this season a second chance season at least yeah so sarah i have on my list if you could tell me any returning seat any returnees coming back on australian survivor you can have pretty much like one person come back or one woman come back i think sarah will be number one for me like i've spoken a lot about how it was a travesty that she wasn't on all stars although i understand now that there are limitations to casting an all-star season but it was painful my issue is that i have five women here for australia and she's the one who has the least international connection so i don't know if maybe she's better off on like an australian returning season particularly but like i'd never say no to sarah but now i'm like i'm not fitting in because i didn't make hard decisions before the podcast so now i'm like finding that i'm struggling a little bit but i mean i'm never gonna veto sarah i did have her on my list and i think that she is someone who needs to return to survivor in any capacity so for sure i feel like that's a lock i mean just the fact that you said you would put it back in any season i'm going to take

1:02:48 That and i'd pretty much put back in anything yeah i feel like i feel like i need to be like decisive here and say let's lock we're going to put sarah on the season and yeah i'd love to see it even if she even if she's not connected i feel like sarah's one of those players that adapts really well to the situation that she's in and i think she would find a way maybe if there was like pregame alliances it would be something that she could struggle to adapt with if people have already you know cross-pollinated a little bit and these alliances that's going on but i also think that i've got two other players and i'm gonna put both of them in here because i mentioned the saga and you can tell me what you think of both of these because they're from her original tribe i want to see sam gashbach and i want to see luke toki back like i mean you cannot do an international crossover season without luke toki he is my favorite survivor player from australia of all time and that will probably never change i don't think and he's the king of the jungle and i feel like people would miss out not seeing that and then another bigger than life character now i feel like almost the same level as luke but not maybe for different reasons and the australian public didn't take well to it last season i wasn't a big fan of how she was being perceived as sam gash because of the move that she made becoming you know the thief or whatever you know the ice queen they had different nicknames for her at different times on the show but you know that move alone i feel like gave her enough of a reputation to be someone like a

1:04:09 Villain you know a lovable villain that you would love to see in a season such as this and i think that you know like i said a saga such a strong tribe so i've got three of them in my cast that i would like to see what do you think about both of those players and where they're on your list yeah luka i had on my list i mean i think that you need to have luke i know that he's had a lot of connection with the survivor south africa players i know he's a u.s casual like he's definitely caught up in the last few years but he'd know what's going on and he's known that's the thing if we're talking about representing a franchise you have george and also it's probably a bit unfair for me to say sarah back first because that's probably how i felt around all stars and it continues to be true but now there are people who can kind of tie that sam has definitely come up since then george haley but like really of all those players like i feel like there's a lot more to see of sarah so sarah's in luke is you know he represents the franchise he is with david probably and now george like the biggest characters that we have that the all the south africans i think would be really excited to have him and even a lot of americans like people know what luke's about and he is an incredible character and he's a fun strategist so i definitely had luke i hadn't thought of sam but now i'm intrigued and i'm just adding to a list where i have too many people so i'm a little bit concerned about it but yeah i mean i wouldn't say no to seeing sam again i wonder if we need a little bit of time but who knows when this fantasy

1:05:29 Season is happening definitely for her benefit of how she was perceived i think sam's an amazing player an amazing character i love what she brought to the latest season i'd love to see her kind of play without mark and have her own game for that reason i kind of wonder if maybe i wouldn't even want to constrict it to this theme maybe just like a general more general returning season survivor attorney season but even in saying that i can't veto it but what about all my picks like i love all your picks and i'm very into it well i'm just going to make it a maybe for now and then we can yeah we could we could talk about a lot of your pixel because i'm going to leave that as a maybe but i just want to add that you know i heard all of that noise that was happening when sam played the game and i feel like if she played an international version the fandom would be very different and would be a lot more recent yeah it'll be a lot more receptive to the way that she played the game but sam would definitely be somewhere in my top five so i'm willing to let go of that but i feel like her reputation is big enough now to be like you know the johnny fairplay grandma lie type of thing off the us survivor she could carry this and i don't think sadly enough i know she would want to forget about that people are going to remember this for many years to come she's going to be and again i hope she embraces her down the line and people embrace the fact as the game evolves that it was purely a game move at the end of the day yeah i mean haley gets it the other way i've seen comments where it's like hayley didn't do anything until the

1:06:49 End i'm like a lot of her great moves were pre-emerge both of these women might benefit from a more universal audience that can catch up a little bit to the moves that they're making on television so that'll be a good thing for both of them it's really hard to cast this i don't know that sam has a lot of international crossover i think the thing i'm most intrigued about is seeing her play by herself and to come back from her biggest performance like again i wouldn't have necessarily cast her onto all stars unlike sarah i wasn't like well where's sam then she was perfect casting for blood versus water and now she's like cemented herself as like a legend of the franchise so it's hard to say no to that as well there's a lot of people just from even like the last couple of seasons which is what makes it really hard as well let's do another australian one before we go over to the us again i don't know you're not gonna have this person on your list because they're a winner i had pia because pia was such a big fan and that was a big part of her story she's a winner she's a great character and player i know that she's gotten into south africa since so i think that's a really fun part of it she's a huge fan of the us i've had her recapping the us on the podcast and again it's like that super fan international connection without needing to like fit into necessarily like the haley or even the george like super fan mould so she brings a little bit of a difference as a character while also having that connection and that super fandom and being a winner so here's the person i chose instead of pierre

1:08:09 Because pr was on my initial list and then i was like i don't want too many winners in here there's no winners like why did you give yourself i don't know why i put that on my mind yeah i don't know i think the whole thing with me is i've just been burnt seeing winners come back before and then get voted out because they're winners and like you know it's just like nothing they're not in this beautiful world that we've created where everything's perfect they've had the men and black little flashlight and they've had their memories wiped and nobody knows that they've won their respective seasons before but the person that i had and i think that i'm willing since we're loosening up the rules around winners a little bit i'm willing to compromise because pierre's my number one winner of all time for australia i think she's not wow yeah i love her i absolutely adore and it's so strange because she doesn't play the game the way that i normally love seeing people play the game but i absolutely love it maybe this is a podcast separately one day for me to tell you why i rank players in a in a certain way but i think pia for me number one she beat david gernard who is number two for me and a lot of people see him as number one but she outplayed him in that season so i give her all the respect for doing so and i know that she's better in her second season though yeah he played so much better but also she gave him a lot of advice in between and he and he did yeah he did he did talk to her and janine before he went out there i know that from conversations i've had with different people but

1:09:29 You know i'm not taking anything away you can get coached you get go out there it doesn't mean you still got to implement it and you've got to play to the situation you can have the best plan everybody's got to plan until they get punched in the mouth right that's how the saying goes so i mean i don't take any credit away from him and i understand that it could be either all of them for me as my number one or two players in australia as winners but i love pia i had janine alice in place of pia because i would love to see janine ellis come back i know she probably will never come back i feel like she's kind of moved on from this part of her life so due to that i'm willing to make the swap because i feel like they're kind of interchangeable they played a very similar game i think janine was a little bit more aggressive more in the forefront and pi used as a shield obviously but still you know it hurts me to remove janine i don't know if you had her but if you didn't have a i'm willing to i'm willing to do that i'm willing to replace her on the on the team yeah i mean i didn't have janine i will say this would be a real fantasy season like we're getting janine back on survivor i was talking about this with my husband the other day because we're watching celebrity apprentice where she's an advisor and i'm like it's kind of insane that janine gave 50 days of her life to this show but you understand what an hour with janine will cost someone like we were looking up just like success of international survivor contestants like not just australia like it's actually crazy that she wasn't just like oh now that i'm on the jury i'm going to bounce like you can zoom me in you can zoom

1:10:49 Me into the jury like she's out there at ponderosa that's insane that's insane that we got there so yeah i think we would need to cast her because i feel that's the only way we'll ever get her back on survivor but i do think that this season while i love them both pia fits the bill better because she is a winner so if we're like representing things although to have the godmother back she would represent a lot well too but she's also more of a super fan it's a bigger part of her story she'd also know people more so i just think she fits into this theme better but yeah you know i feel wrong ever rejected because any time we have with her as a gift i'm biased because you know i've had a few chats with pierre in the past and i just love her as a person so you know yes i think this is one right this is where my bias comes in i've never spoken to janine but i'd love to have a chat with her sometime in the future and i mean let's not forget she did some great training before she went out there to play the game she looked like 15 years younger than what she was playing that game and she kept up on the challenges so i was so impressed by that season you know the godmother i kind of feel like you need the godmother but i understand i agree with you let's go also if we're trying to have the winners not be voted out the more we can give of them so they can like either be a bigger threat or form something of their own coalition or be a little bit more shielded will be maybe better for them i kind of lean towards the ladder so we can start protecting some of these like icons yeah i wonder between pia and like hayley i feel like haley would come in with a bigger threat and pierre

1:12:09 Would find a way to like yeah like pierre's the kind of player that could in my opinion i don't want to put targets on her but i feel like she could win again she reminds me of sarah sorry sandra in so many ways and i've actually told her this as well but anyways different podcast let's go back into the us because this is the one where we're really struggling and we might just have to have like two different teams and that's okay with me you're not agreeing yeah because yeah i mean i don't think we came into this thinking that there would be any chance but one of the people that i do want to throw out there and you would have seen i posted on twitter earlier today hey who would you like to see based on a couple of players have a vote out there the person who won and weren't originally in my list but because the tnt audience wanted it i'm gonna definitely put this person on the list now as omar from this last season so a lot of people wanted to see him and gum and play this season is that someone that you're opposed to because he's the only one from my cast from the last two seasons that would actually represent in this oma's on my list there we go yeah so log it in oma's perfect i feel like he is a huge super fan i know he's watched all of international so he's really excited about the show he's such a great character such a great strategist he represents the modern era so well as such a good kind of yeah representative for just kind of what the us is currently doing as such a huge fan like again he is in the mold of all the nerdy super fans that i had to veto earlier

1:13:29 But for the us yeah i'm definitely going to sneak another one in and i'd love to see him go head-to-head with i know icons that he's watched and respected yeah knock it in i think that's a great thing so cool yeah so awesome good to know that omar i didn't know it was that big of a fan but i've had like one or two dears yeah nice this guy well now i can talk to him about survivors of africa so that'd be cool i said as well i'm like oh what have you watched a bit expecting like because i know that he was like listening to the podcast but i didn't know that he had how much he'd watched and he's like oh all of modern international i was like oh okay you qualify then for my i like you yeah oh that's awesome well okay the next person i don't know if you've got this person but because originally i wasn't gonna put a winner on here and like i said i mean we can workshop this thing i don't want to be too difficult there's a lot of great options but this person i feel like if you want to bring back a legend this person would fit in really well i don't know if she watches international survivor at all but i know that the fans would love it they'd love to see it on a show such as this and more so for the south african fans of the show and maybe even some of the australian people that have watched the show from the start i would love to see siri fields come back and she's the only person from that top bracket that i sort of like did to dream we can get one of the greats to come and play the game again yeah no same like agreed on all of that she's my first pick she's like the only well i've we've got i've

1:14:49 Got winners like i have again like adam and stuff but like mount rushmore level us i only put three i have a maybe we'll talk about it but saree for me is a definite for a few reasons i've been saying oh i want someone who watches international i want someone who's connected to international i don't care if cerie's ever seen a nep i don't even care if she knows where australia is on a map i want to re-back on survivor and if i'm doing a dream cast you'll always be in it i have to hope that some of my brethren from south africa and australia won't do her as dirty as like the us or maybe just like we'll get some new juju into the mix where she's not cursed on the u.s franchise maybe she'll not be cursed on this one and like how could anyone ever say no to series she's my favorite player of all time globally yeah so i didn't know that so that's your favorite player of all times that's awesome okay well yeah so well me for me it's tony it always has to be i had to fight the urge not to pick him for this and i didn't pick him for this i don't know if you if you if you dare to dream to put him on because if you get tony and like a luke token and champions and we just and the world ceases to exist we don't i don't know how they did it but the world has ended i mean that's an attractive option he wasn't on my list because again for the us other than surrey i went more with you know people who were connected to the international franchises i've also never even considered i'm just thinking about this now i've never actually thought

1:16:09 About like a post tony one twice was like will tony ever play again do i want him to ever play again is the story perfect i've literally never considered this because he won and i just sat with that in my happiness for two years but i don't know i've never thought about tony the two-time winner returnee because i never thought about how tony could be a two-time winner and then it happened and i've just been like a state of zen pretty much ever since but i haven't thought about it i feel like if you're tony you've won three million dollars you are widely recognized as the best to ever play most people will say grow goat you know as tony and for very good reasons he beat such a high level cast in winners at war that you have to give him all the credit for being able to do it against proven people and also for how he changed this game i just don't think that there's like any upside for tony to come back and play the game again unless jeff like emotionally blackmails him to say you have to give back to the show and then he feels like some sort of guilt to come back and do like a legend season or something like that but it's just like there's no point for him to come back i'm honestly it hurts me to say this i kind of hope he doesn't come back because i love the perfect i miss him off yeah i do miss him as well like let's get him i know you don't watch this but let's get him on the challenge oh you become a child no they don't have to watch the challenge and i don't i don't have time no i mean it's really interesting because like the two biggest tony stands in the world were both kind of saying no to this i do think there's intrigue there i do think like a loop chap is tony

1:17:30 Cross thing is insane and he's always fun like you know that you're gonna have a good time with it i just don't think this is the place for him he's not internationally connected he's not on the grid yeah this isn't this isn't for tony i don't feel like how fit would the cameraman would have to be that season to like run around behind like chappies and like luke spy shacks that like yeah they just is this my special sorry i got confused my one's just one tree over like they're all different yeah i mean we would have like the first cameraman medivac from dehydration just running behind the yeah these guys as they're doing their thing but okay so tony definitely not on i'm gonna do that though definitely okay are you do you want to have tony no he's not on my list he's it's not right for him it just it just doesn't we have we have a dream season we're not putting tony omar like what are we doing but no i agree that he's it's not right for this but omar's on saree we've agreed on like yeah where do you want to go because i have a sneaky pick i want to i want to find something i want to try and i want to do one more pick that i think both of us may have i'm taking a star stab at this because i feel like if we can get like two in a row or three in a row where we're like we're actually making progress here because yeah so the next one that i've got is also in that vein of more nerdy players probably a big fan someone that watches the global seasons they're friends with lu larue butter in fact they

1:18:50 Got an awesome delay buff last year i believe it was mostly buffer might have just been one of those community island ones but rick devins like i want to see rick devons back on our screens and i feel like he would be one of those people that would appreciate a season such as this and he was actually my replacement for adam klein but we can talk about adam klein at a later stage as well do you have rick devins on your list i do what is happening this is this is so good devon's is such an advocate for international franchises he even tweeted today that he's not gonna be watching me brother and he'll be watching survivor south africa like that's just good marketing for the show like have like a big voice in the u.s survivor community just really championing it which adam does as well but i think for devon's like he is like emotionally connected survivor of south africa i think laurel would definitely want to cast him like you know there's that connection there he hasn't been able to come back and he also really represents a different kind of modern era to omar who's like the new era 42 versus like the late 30s again they haven't had their time because we went straight to an all winter season and then we went to the new era in the 40s so he's someone that i think the us would bring back immediately if they were doing a returning season maybe we can just like beat them to that and put him on the season instead i love it i love it i mean i'm all here for a rick davis return so tell me who's your sneaky pick let's see if we can if we both had a sneaky pick because i've got a couple of sneaky picks as well but i

1:20:10 Don't know if it's going to be the same well this isn't this is a sneaky pick in that i'm trying to like manipulate the format because now we've got so many great australian women i'm still trying to cut people out and we've already got sam so we might actually have filled that if we agree on it so then where does nina go because we need nina back so you see i didn't i didn't have nina on my list and i don't have any pre-mergers on this list even though i know it's not nina's fault and she could have played a very good game i kind of feel like i've always said tongue-in-cheek how funny would it be to have nina represent australia against the us because the u.s franchise was the one that turned their back on her when she applied i believe back in david this is live she was an alternate back then and she didn't get on the show so i kind of feel like i wouldn't put her on the us i would normally put her on australia because that's the season she's represented so i would kind of want it to be an australian pic if that is the case and you mentioned sam is the one that we picked so i would kind of say it would be between sam and nina for me at this stage i kind of feel like sam is the bigger get out of the two of them at this stage i would kind of lean towards them and it hurts me because i'd love to see nina on the on my screen again i just don't know if she's at that level yet so i'd love to put nina in for the us because i have sandra as the question mark because obviously she's a legend and she has that connection she played on australian survivor but i don't think sandra

1:21:30 Wants to do that and i don't know that it's the right fit for her i'd love to have nina there have what has been a cross-continental blood versus water story play out on this international season where it's like okay we watch sandra for many seasons and we saw her and nina together and now nina is evolving in the u.s where she should be she's a u.s citizen but she's doing it to evolve what is an international storyline and i think that would work well having her there instead of sandra not putting her on australian the australian tribe because i can't fit her and because i think it makes sense it's like she's back home now where she belongs and she has that extreme international connection she's also such a great character and i know it's pre-emerge but there's so much more to see and i feel like she's a returnee that we really need so she brings something really different to the class like such a unique such a unique facet of international survivor that no one else has so i really feel strongly about nina and then the other woman i had like while we're just like kind of crossing them off for australia i had tessa because tessa is such a big fan such a great character great strategist someone i really want to back for all stars but she had her own stuff going on i know that she maybe sits in like a similar spot to hayley i've actually compared haley to her quite a few times she's also like played with sarah so maybe she's a little bit too much in the crosses of the rest of this tribe so i'm happy to part with tessa

1:22:50 And again like sadly let go of another like nerdy superfan who i'm friends with i'll get sam like i'll agree with sam but then i want to put nina in the us women like that's the deal i'm willing to make okay i'm with you on that i love how you're bargaining with me because there's next person that i'm going to go with for the u.s okay there's going to be someone that loves that loves bargaining so i'm going to go for angelina yeah i definitely want to see her back i had so much fun with her the first time when she played out there who could ever forget the whole you know plan to vote out larissa for her jacket and then ultimately her trying to get the jacket off natalie in the end her building a ladder or getting the ladder to go and get the idol so many funny moments with her you know i think that she would be absolutely hilarious to watch on a stage like this and i do like the characters so she's someone that i have as more of a character casting and someone that's gonna be fun to watch i had debbie at one point and i was like no this is just going too far i'm gonna take debbie out of it i can't like completely set the us team up for failure they need someone that's actually gonna do well and that's nothing bad to debbie but she let's be honest her gymnastic skills wasn't top-notch so for me i feel like she could be a really good fit on it as well do you have angelina on there i've got

1:24:10 A feeling like so wide you probably don't i don't but i struggled with the u.s women because again i wanted people that i felt were really connected to international or surrey that was my category so that was yeah the criteria that i was looking at but i do think that she again represents a lot of modern u.s we're really choosing a lot of people who haven't had their chance to come back for as being attorneys but should be returnees but there just hasn't been that window for them in the u.s so i think that angelina is a good pick i think especially as we start to represent these like modern eras and i think as we look for more characters i would be happy to put her in great okay so i'm not like super tied to my u.s women like i had like a couple of interesting options but they might also be a little bit covered by what we've already said okay so now i've got i want to talk while we're talking about you as woman here let's talk about my two remaining females and we've got one spot left so i'll tell you my last two and you tell me and then i'll tell you how exactly how you feel about them and if you've you know if we have to choose between them or if you've got someone else i had both lauren beck because of how much she does even still now outside of the game and she's very connected to the survivor community obviously a great player as well very unlucky that she was play i think outplayed by someone that is a much better winner than what people realize and how he won that season but

1:25:30 Anyway so lauren beck and then her namesake lauren o'connell and lauren o'connell i kind of feel like i'm on my own island with this one sometimes in the fandom because i really appreciated her on that season for the fact that she was such a physical specimen i mean she was she was better than most of the men in her tribe and she was like actually carrying them through a lot of the challenges in the early stages of it and i thought you know she was 21 the first time she played she's a bit older now she's a big kelly wentworth fan who i don't have on this season because you know i love kelly wentworth as well but i would like for lauren and again i kind of i kind of have leaned into that newer school players that haven't played again you're 100 right i kind of feel like she could be a great addition in the season such as this in the sense that you would need someone physical when i was thinking about like haley i was thinking about something like a stephanie potentially my own mind who would be these physical women that could go up against each other and do really well i thought she could do really well so you've got the strategist or you've got you know someone that's a little bit more i guess physical plus i also want to say she was done dirty by age of extinction and chris are playing it coming back with information that he had from the edge that just put him at such an advantage to manipulate her and giving her idol to him so you know i kind of feel like it's just this for her because of the edge yeah i mean we were all done dirty with that and like a lot of those players like victoria as well like it was a tough

1:26:51 One we were coming back from the edge i mean i guess i'm surprised that i would lean lauren beck like more of the strategic element the players that i have here as well like our newest school just great characters i think like evie would be great they did recap australian survive with me a new a new event international but definitely dipping a toe and then the other person i have over looking at like new school legends marianne i mean i want marianne back already and it's barely been a couple of weeks since she played and won but i think if we're looking at like different winner types we get her on as a winner we see how she how not just like the new school era of us is going to kind of stack up in a global landscape but how a new school winner would stack up also amazing character i feel like she'd just be a lot of fun and i'm worried that her returning potential for the u.s is now a little worse because there are less opportunities for winners to come back sometimes like you know throughout south africa season 9 is a perfect example so if we're bringing back winners here it's like let's bring back mary yeah now is that like too close to omar do we kind of already cover some of that new school stuff with some of the other players that we've chosen maybe but i feel like marianne would kind of be my top pick from the four that we have spoken about but i mean look i think lauren beck is interesting as well i do think that like i love lauren beck i've podcasted with her like she's super fun she's also someone who has had

1:28:11 A very different career trajectory since she played so in terms of both of both lauren's coming back for a returning season of the us which i'm sure you know might be in the in the pipeline for either of them she's become like tick-tock famous since then and she's had like a massive career explosion so that journey would be really interesting for her as a returnee just generally so be interested in lauren beck or i think marianne it was my pick yeah i'm leaning obviously no surprise towards lauren beck rather than marianne i love marion as a character this last season obviously i love the characters larger than life personality yeah i think she's such a nice person from what i can tell just in general i was so happy for her to win i still wanted omar to win and you know the thing with survivors your favorites rarely ever won but that's okay you know marianne did a really good job i just think it's too soon for her to come back especially since she's just won the show plus if i'm looking at the makeup yeah and also when i'm looking at the makeup of the tribe right now i feel like we need someone that is gonna continue to add a little bit to the physicality of this tribe if we're gonna be playing like an australian version i do not think about these things i'm like yeah i'm like let's send in the people i like and if they're gonna lose challenges then they're all gonna go home but i like i did not think about the physical match-ups of this tribe at all just off the topic and i know you know we're dragging it out on mary anne a little bit but like i don't think she's right for this one but

1:29:31 What season like i'm thinking you'd probably just want to throw her into any season what season do you think yeah what season like i kind of feel like the season that would better fit her and one that we're more likely to get in the future is like winners versus runner-ups or winners versus finalists is potentially a theme they might dip into in the future because africa will do and the us will never do we'll never do a beautiful fan reddit theme that the u.s just aren't thinking of but yeah why do you think that would be such a good fit for her i feel like she would be underestimated with especially more winners there and i think that would give her the opportunity to get further where if she's the only winner coming back like again like i said i'm very anti having like that's why i kind of leaned away from winners all together but you've changed my mind and we've started adding a few to this list i kind of lean away from winners because i feel like my heart just gets broken seeing players come back as winners and then they get voted out they've got nowhere to go they're such a big target you know like iris is another one for me i really enjoy or iris if you pronounce it that way i really enjoy him as well and obviously coming back in blood versus water he was always going to be a massive threat and someone like tyson was always going to try and take him out as soon as he could in a season such as that and also tina you know coming back that season i just feel like this you know i kind of like having this perfect view of a winner and not seeing them come back and like you know stay in

1:30:51 Their record and maybe that's a me problem not a them problem if that makes sense i feel like for me it's the opposite where i feel like once a winner wins that cemented for me forever like jt barely even ruined his record because i'm like well you still did tokens like that still existed is valid even though he like torpedoed that over the next two seasons like for me like that it doesn't make me i don't know i guess like kanye and tony into game changes 20 it really did make me sad so i guess it does make me sad but in this perfect world those things aren't going to happen you know for me it's not necessarily about seeing winners go because they have 1 million dollars but like seeing any legend go whether they've won or lost and when i love them like yeah that'll always hurt badly so maybe we should change this whole class into just a bunch of people we don't like and then the season can't hurt us emotionally but i see it i think for marianne the biggest thing for me is that she has just won so i don't know when the season is but let's say it's imminent i want some time for her because she's also really young and she still did so much well and was really aware but like i think even like marianne a few years down the track for me it's like a fascinating concept so as much as i want her on everything i'm willing to give it a little bit more time so i think let's throw in lauren beck kind of like the end of the last year of the us of u.s survivor before we got to all winners and right yeah we've got it we've got all our women so we've got lauren fields yeah angelina keeley and nina as

1:32:11 The wild card in this one got rick and omar as locks on the men but let's move to one of the franchises we haven't spoken about in a while i think we did really well in south africa in the beginning here you mentioned chappies earlier on is there any doubt both of us will probably have them i would assume like chappies are survivors of africa at this stage would you disagree with that yeah i think chappies defines what south africa currently is he was the fan favorite lassies and he's coming back who knows how it will go but i do think that he again also has that international connection i know that he's been like chatting with luke and stuff i think that will be crazy to see them on the same season together he's also really entertaining and definitely interested in what will be you know the second and then maybe with this one third round for chappies but just in terms of like representing the franchise and bringing that wild card element he's extremely fun so yeah he was my other pick so i think we've done really well we've done what we have so we have jacques chappies rob bentley and verna we did it yeah so we did it for the mean it's done so now yeah melissa is the only woman so i'll give you the two women that i had here that i think we haven't spoken about yet anesu was my winner pick last season and i would like to see her come back now for me with a nesu i just think even when i looked at last season's cast in my mind i had it if you had to replay

1:33:31 That season like 100 times who would have one of the highest strike rates in winning and i think anessa would be one of those people that do would do extremely well she's very sociable she's someone that i think connected with a lot of people very well was probably like you know sometimes in survivor your streams become your weaknesses and it was probably one of her weaknesses that she was so good connecting with different people that someone like a koran saw that as a threat and he needed to take her out in that season but i love her vibe i think she's again someone that would be representative of south africa as a country and i think that's really important on a season such as this as well and you know any time i get the opportunity to put an issue in the cast i probably will because i was really sad not to see her in this season and then who was the second one the second person is santoni and again you know santini is just such a big character how can you not have her in the season like santoni and chappie's for me and anissu surprise yeah that's a lot of them yeah they were just the alliance that i wanted to win that didn't win yeah i mean having all three of them i feel like is a lot like that whole alliance because i also have something so i feel like lock that in she also has connections to australian survive i know that she's watching like she again like this is the thing i'll have like the nerdy clear obvious super fan and then i'll have like more of a secret super fan who's more of the character pick but is still like a great player and like this like hardcore strategist

1:34:51 Like pia werner suntony huge fans huge international crossover without being like the clear like young nerd which is the archetype that i love so i think for suntony i know a lot of people were upset not to see her on sa-9 she's a clear attorney pick she's an icon she represents the franchise lock her in from entertainment perspective from game perspective from crossover perspective 100 my issue with the nestle has been that you have like the whole operation destiny alliance like all three of them on the same tribe i'll give you my other pick so i had jean john michelle i know she couldn't be on sa-9 so this gives her that opportunity she's a huge fan of international she's a huge super fan as well and i feel that like even i remember verna and her talking their deep dives from essay 6 about how she would kind of like impersonate jlp so like don't you really want like john there impersonating jlp like that's just incredible tv she's a great character she's great entertainment i'd love to see her again after essay 6 and just think like what can she do like she learned some lessons into kind of how she was playing the game i think she played better i think she's so fun i really want jean and i want something so those from the other two picks and then we can kind of talk about the other one is going to be a nesu i'm going to do

1:36:11 What you did to me earlier when we were negotiating here i'm willing to give you john but then you have to give me steffi because we need physicality in this tribe so that they can compete with the other tribes because if you're going to have both suntania and john in the same tribe you're going to have to balance that out somehow we have raw bentley and chappies i know but still they like you need stronger like millions are going to carry this drive on their back like imagine like some of the cars going up against like hayley going up against these women like i feel like we need to have at least one so far like who do we have for women okay well yeah i mean yeah i don't know so we've got palesta which other physical woman can we put in like that you think would be a great representative i don't want to do nicole for rob season because the reason is that i don't want robin nicole to have that's too strong of an alliance and i know that they're very good friends even outside of the game right now where i feel like they would just take off where they left off okay well my other pick was marion but that's obviously not a physical picture she's a huge fan i mean i kind of wanted to represent the pre-reboot seasons that was that was something that i wanted to give a little bit of voice to but i guess like she's an expert marisha could you would you want marisha i mean steffi i would rather do nicole like

1:37:32 For me if we can't do marriage because we're looking at physicality if we need that physical element i'd rather do nicole because i feel like she's a better character i feel like she's close to rob but like you're getting santani champions and in your mind and nestle like all three of them we've got like getting initiatives is that what you're saying you're giving me a nesu for well no i'm just saying that if nicole's problem is that she's gonna be with rob like you were willing to do something chappies and anesu we have haley and george like i was willing to do marianne and omar like i don't know like i'm like it'll be fine we'll have these connections i mean having connections can be thrilling having you know now you kind of convinced me because like that was that was painful but it was compelling you know you kind of convinced me in a way and this is what happens when you like yeah i guess come up with the cast and there's like a brainstorming session live on the podcast at the same time but where you kind of convinced me is that if rob was to come back he would have that big of a target on his back that he probably wouldn't need an ally in the game so based on that i don't think it's too much of an advantage but then again in saying that there is the hood in the lines of chappies and rob as well like chappies would be yeah set up pretty well in a game such as this but robin will in this imaginary season but i think nicole i think nicole brings the physicality that you want while also being an incredible character while also not being a three-time player which steffy would be at that point she wasn't able

1:38:52 To be on this class i know a lot of people really wanted her to be but she was a finalist like i mean i guess pleasure like it's not a great situation for jacques walking into it but i would way rather have nicole as a character than steffi on this cast and i think that it makes a lot more sense in terms of also like representing south africa like rob and nicole together do so okay yeah okay i'm happy with that did we do it i think we yeah we've got it we've got the full cast i think let's have a look so we've got chappies we've got vanner rob and jack for the men and then for the females we've got nicole john santoni and palesa we've done it cool look at us yeah all right i'm happy with that we needed a little bit of physicality so i'm happy to give you nicole on that spot there and maybe help rob out a little bit i've got a feeling that rob would do well in a season such as this again but we're gonna go over to the australian team where we still have to make a few decisions so far to recap we've got george we've got luke and then for the woman we've got sam sarah and pierre so we need one more woman and haley we need and i'm sorry you're right yeah you've done the woman sorry you're right so we need on this what do we need we need george and luke so we've still got two men that we need to choose from here yeah and i'll go in first and this is someone that again my bias is showing

1:40:12 A little bit but i would hope that there is people that watched australian survivor that enjoyed him as much as i did on his seasons you could probably argue that maybe having pr on the season have changed things a little bit around now so i could concede this if we needed to but i'd love to see dirty harry back on the show again i really enjoyed him again similar to jacques he's a player that plays well from the bottom he's a scrappy player i mean he had the nickname the cockroach for a reason in his season and managed to survive a lot longer than what he had the right to do so in that season and then again when he came back in all-stars i felt like he was you know dealt a little bit of a bad hand as one of the more dominant players from the season just before not much of a break in between seasons he wasn't mentally really in it but he still did pretty well you know there's classic moments of him wanting to play an advantage aka on the spot telling him don't play it and him having to make a decision not to play it on the spot and having some good read so he's someone that i enjoy on the show so i've got him and i'll also give you another person here so we can talk about two people at the same time i've got benji from champs versus contenders one now the thing with benji rumor has it that he's not that involved in the survivor community anymore and that he didn't he probably wanted this fantasy season but this is a fantasy season exactly and he's just somebody that i think was one of the biggest players we haven't seen come back yet in the show so i think those two are kind of similar in a lot of ways

1:41:32 Benji may be at this point you could argue maybe as someone that fans would want to see more because he hasn't been back where harry has yeah i mean benji was definitely a really unfortunate loss from all stars and blood versus water like both of those seasons would have been brilliant for benji for a few different reasons and i think it's been pretty tricky i did have harry on my list but my list was also too long because i couldn't decide these are the other names that i had i had harry and nick and i know that you wouldn't probably have both because they kind of occupy the same space in like a very limited capacity this is why i asked us to do eight and not six by the way because i was strongly divided to eight per try but i had harry and nick obviously nick being a good friend and harry i'm biased in that way they absolutely feel the archetype that i love and would really do well with that international crossover they know everyone they have their relationships nick and devins and all these players like larue gets them to send videos before the season and you know pump them up which is really cool i also had david i just think like yeah like in terms of like representing australian survivor as a player as a character as an icon like he's up there with luke and george in being yeah just basically representing the season i think that he the whole franchise i think that he has had relationships with like i think he's also spoken to chappies i think chappies was already pre-gaming for this non-existent season obviously yeah and i think that he

1:42:52 Is american so that would be an interesting note where he's obviously playing for australian survivor but he's american a lot of people have wanted him on u.s survivor because i think that there's like a dual citizenship thing there and it'd be really interesting to see how that would go as someone who has lived in america for a long time but is both american and australian so i feel like david and then i was choosing between nick and harry and i couldn't make the decision because it was personal and hard and they both deserve to be there but if you already had harry on your list i'm happy to go with harry and david benji is an interesting option like if you want to kind of reduce the legendary a bit and take out david benji's obviously someone i'd love to see return and i'd love to see a little bit more representation from season one and season three because we're kind of sticking around season two season four season six and now the last season where like all our picks are from so i kind of love to extend that out a little bit but i just feel like if i'm comparing david to benji it's an unfair and a difficult comparison between like one of the biggest icons that the global show has ever seen and benji who's an amazing character and a really great player and someone i'd love to see again but i just don't know that i can now fit him into what is like basically like the mount rushmore of male australian survivor players as we're trying to kind of work out our cast yeah and i think what makes this very difficult for anybody that's listening to this at this point is that we've

1:44:12 Already got two winners for australia at the moment and pr and both hayley so david would make it a third winner and we haven't really like we could have gone i think if you if you wanted to make it more like equal and you had some more winners or that level of player in there you could have even easily said okay well let's put graham and from survivor south africa let's put someone like a nicole vollmanson for instance instead of the other nicole and you could look at the u.s and put maybe like your atoms in there and maybe even feel like yeah i don't know i feel like and i kind of feel like it's leaning that way at the moment and i'm like trying to i'm like the one person here that's preventing shannon from just throwing winners at this thing at this point yeah we're like the opposite of the production stuff where you're like all these twists and i'm like no and i'm like but every legendary player ever let's get sandra and sorry and tony let's just do it and you're like no we like we're trying to have a little bit of nuance to this class it's not just like basically ranking our favorite players from every franchise and i love david i'm the biggest like i mean lucas the is like my favorite australian player i love david i love dirty harry there's some king george for instance and we already have him on this cast i do feel like it maybe would be a little bit heavy-handed but in saying that i think if the actual season ever happens david gennad's a lock like he's like he's a definite lock he would definitely be in that cast but doesn't mean that we have to do it in this cast based on how it's shaken up so far i'm kind

1:45:32 Of leaning towards let's give benji a shot here because he hasn't been back on and i kind of feel like you gave me an out by saying hey if you want to replace him with benji because we haven't had some of the earlier seasons represented as of yet maybe do that but in saying that i know some fans are going to probably tweet at us or message us angry that we didn't put david cannot in this list i'm the biggest david gagnot fan and i could easily see david ganat replacing like someone on this cast it is so tough when you've only got four men that you can put on though it's not easy yeah i mean look at what like where david would be he'd be with harry who he's played with luke we'd have david and luke reunited with pia and sarah who he's friends with like there's so many parts to this that he would be like very connected i don't know if it'll be good or bad i feel like having the season without david is crazy but we have other legends from other franchises that are not on this like this isn't a legend season it is international it's like you know where of the worlds it's a crossover we want to we want to represent the franchise as well and not having david feels like maybe we're not but at the same time we're also not looking to just basically be like here's our four best men and women from every franchise go at it and may the best country win like that's not really what we're looking at so i mean i'm happy to go with benji and kind of represent season three a little bit more if we're gonna get added like don't at

1:46:52 Me about david like he's definitely on my list and i do think like i also but i also kind of think like is david a little bit past the franchise like is he moving on a little bit because he has won he's played twice you know he'd have me like as a as a two-time player and a winner as compared to like haley and pierre who've played once and like how they're going to go after winning that first time so okay let's put benji in and in a world where david wanted to do this somehow in this dream season like we'd never say no to him so someone would get bumped like that's just how it would be like he'd be on his own try because we'd never say no to david we're not publicly going to say who's that person that's going to get bumped because we don't want to make anybody upset at us here on this podcast but i'm sure someone will probably get bummed if they'll be 25 players yeah i feel like david i feel like david's one of those players that we'll see on the challenge soon the challenge australia or something like that you know i know they're casting at the moment but he would kind of potentially fit in really well in that and what they're trying to do with the battle of the reality tv stars and i think that you know if they didn't reach out to them to him bad on them for not reaching out i think at this point because they're losing out on a top tier character but i kind of also feel like luke and david like you i don't know if you can have both of them on the season even though i know everybody would love to see that i just think that they would have and it was so much fun like but they were so dominant they were so like they got into a minority position but let's put

1:48:12 That against bentley and see how it goes you know what i'm saying like let's yeah but it would be it would be a lot it would be a lot for everyone like i just saved them from getting beaten up in a challenge by steffie but then i'm putting them against luke and david like you know it's gonna be it's gonna be difficult for the players so all right happy we both got harry it was on my list yeah so i think it makes a lot of sense yeah all right so i think we're done with australia then as well let me have a look yep we're done so we have luke george harry benji yes haley pia sarah sam yes well that's right i bet you didn't come into this podcast thinking sam was going to get casted though that's probably like the one that's like the biggest surprise for you in the in the cast and now well i just hadn't thought of it like i love sam like she won the tv i love her as a person and a player i don't know if there's a little bit of time needed but yeah i'd be interested for her to play an international season and have an international audience kind of understand what they're dealing with because i think that she's incredible i just hadn't thought a lot about her return since that like kind of emotionally draining of blood versus water i think it needs to happen and i love her playing individually so i think it's a great pick all right so we're back to the usa we've got two more male picks that we need to make here and i know you're going to put up adam as one of the people that you'd like to see back i'm going to put up another person to consider here as a calendar

1:49:32 Because we leave adam on the table for now and i guess dom is another person that we've kind of got as a maybe embrace yeah so there's a few people here i want to give you the one person from my list that we haven't spoken about yet and i don't know how you feel about them but i would like to see malcolm come back again and i know that some people are over the whole aussie malcolm joey that type of archetype out there i've always looked at malcolm as very different to those two even though he gets compared to both aussie and joey a lot of the times i feel like he's the most strategic one out of the three of them and i also like the fact that he is a big move player so for instance the whole thing he did with the amigos when he played the idols and maybe you know played it a little bit too early needed to keep things a little bit closer to his vest but he's not afraid of taking risks and so forth and i always felt really bad about the way that he went out in game changes where i just thought that you know jt took him down with the ship there and it was you know not really much he could have done in any other circumstance he probably would have been okay leading into the merge there that season so again he's a player that i would like to see back and you know again he would be a fourth time returnee so i could understand if these other players we would want to see more than him but i would kind of argue that you know we've seen adam twice now as well i know adam's got the whole international thing and i love adam so much you've got to understand adam

1:50:53 Winners of war was probably outside of tony my favorite player like i just loved him on that season and how hard he played he was such a different player compared to his first season and the fact that he had the courage which a lot of people would not have had to go up to boston rob and to try and tell boston rob what to do i absolutely stand the fact that he had the courage to do that yeah i mean i think at this point we kind of need a us winner like yes because we've got winners yeah and now like to the point you didn't want any winners and it's now got to the point where we need more winners because there's like now they're represented kind of in the other franchises i think for adam like this is just a perfect theme for him like the other people we're talking about could all come back on other seasons and be incredible like and maybe it's not the right place for bryce like maybe bryce needs the return of the outcast us equivalent and in my dream version of that he's the number one pick i think for dom as well like we very much have represented new school us very well in some of the other players so kind of that space has taken up and i don't know that this is like really the space for him adam like if you were to tell me like who do i want back the most like who i need to see the most from those four players like adam might be last because i just saw him and he's played twice in a small amount of time i just think that like he and pelessa they define the season like just from a marketing perspective of the fact that he did that like he put international

1:52:13 Survivor on the map if you knew what he was doing like that through line through from the palestine idol to him trying to do that in winners at war the biggest u.s season it's just too perfect for me to ignore so like while i'd want dom back definitely i want bryce back desperately you know i and i'll talk about malcolm because i'd love to see malcolm back i kind of feel like adam for me still remains number one for this particular season where we can't have every legendary us player every modern us player who hasn't had a chance or every us player we want to see because it's just like way too big a field to narrow down to this i'm really looking at like how is it relevant to the theme and like adam defines the theme and he's a winner so i feel really strongly about adam i'm willing to give you a pic i think malcolm is an interesting one for me i hadn't thought about it i love malcolm he's the reason i'm a super fan that philippines caramel and double i was so obsessed with malcolm that's why i went down the rabbit hole of going from a basically a hardcore casual to a super fan and i'm always keen to see him back so like i think that would be good because he would represent if we have surrey as in terms of like not that he's at the level of sorry but like in terms of like an icon that everyone should know i think malcolm does bring that so i think that he would be a good pick definitely like we need a little bit of justice after game changes for a few people that's its own season it's just who are we getting justice for post game changes and how are they coming back to redeem what if that is the

1:53:33 It's a situation what if it's like the whole thing with tony coming back after game changes and getting justice and there's just like this roll-on effect of players from game changers coming back and getting justice it would be such a cool thing to see malcolm come back and actually win or go deep and just once again prove how good of a player he is and you know saree coming back potentially in this season doing extremely well i think that would be so cool but one of the things i do want to point out because i kind of took that as a yes malcolm's a potential option yeah adam if you're willing to do it yeah yeah well i've already i've already on my side i've put adam on the season because i do agree with you we need a winner the one thing i do want to point out we've got adam rick devins and omar all on the same tribe to represent the men going into some of the challenges if it's australian challenges so physical it's going to be one thing i hope that adam is hitting the gym you know when he's listening to this podcast get ready adam yeah you need to be eating a lot of protein you know go for your morning runs get in shape because you're gonna have to carry the weight of this team on your back as the only winner in this tribe when you go back but listen i'm a big adam fan so it doesn't take too much to convince me i want to keep omar in it i want to keep rec demons in it will the actual season look like this i very much doubt if like one of the channels got a hold of this tribe they'd be like yes we're happy to have adam rick and omar all in one tribe i love all of them individually but i kind

1:54:53 Of feel like they're the same almost archetype you know so i feel like they would want a little bit more diversity but lauren and nina are strong yes oh well we somehow managed to do this so at some point what i'll do is i'll put a little thing together where we can have this is the team that we think would represent what does fans think about it i'm sure there will be people that will absolutely hate our selections because we didn't put their favorite in here but i think the whole point of this podcast and the reason i wanted to talk to you about it is just to generate a little bit of excitement around international survivor and also just to sort of put it out there that legitimately we could have three or four different casts especially from the usa side i think the australian side as well and even south africa they're so good at casting like i feel like there's so many different variations of casts that you could put together that would make for a very entertaining show of international survivor and i know both me and you as big international fans we want to see this season happen yeah sorry now i'm just like thinking through the physicality of these guys like who's going to get crash everybody's south african team most people nicole kappa there actually are gonna completely destroy everyone else like they've got chappies and rob bentley and like now i'm playing it out in my mind but then you've got like aliens i don't know maybe we'll have to see how it goes in this non-existent season but thank you so much for having me i love generating some fun and excitement around international survivor like the casting

1:56:13 Especially for like south africa and through a lot of australian survivor then obviously you have a lot of scope in u.s survivor but has been so phenomenal and there's so much opportunity to have these great players come back so i would love to see it i don't think our cast will be where a network would necessarily go with it but there's so many good options and there's like a lot of international players who are interested in these other franchises connecting with them watching it which is so fun so hopefully it happens hopefully we've come up with something that is something of a middle ground that people would enjoy but i really enjoy the conversation myself so thank you so much for having me yeah well guys if you're listening to this on any audio platform or if you're on youtube please in the comments let us know who you would affect who did we yeah who did we miss out on understand that listen we love most of the players probably that you're gonna put out there but if you're on the side trying to put a cast together yeah we agree with all of them it's not the easiest thing to try and put a tribe together and to put our knicks out there and say listen this is the tribe we'd like to see go out there and play the game but you know shannon thank you so much for coming on now for those people who don't know who you are maybe they're new school fans to survivor i've got a lot of people who listen to my channel who are challenge fans as well so they might be getting into survivor now with so many survivor players coming over to the challenge usa for the first time ever and they might decide to get into it where can they find you and listen

1:57:33 To more content and can you sort of let them know what you're working on this will probably drop either this weekend or mid next week so sort of with that in mind what can people look out for yeah you can follow me at shannon gates on all platforms that's g a i t z you can subscribe to the international survivor hop ups feed which is where i podcast about all international survivor us australia and south africa so at the moment we're doing this via south africa preseason we have exclusive preseason interviews with the players one day out before they play the game so myself and mike bloom are doing that at the moment we at this time have done one interview podcast and a kickoff special before that and then i think tomorrow we'll be recording our second one so that will have dropped by the time that you're listening to this and those are a lot of fun the first interview podcast was three hours and 45 minutes getting through five of the interviews and we give our commentary as well we're having a lot of fun with that so please do follow along we'll be recapping the season every week when it's on from july 19th july 18th in south africa and we will be having exit interviews hopefully as well so a lot of content happening obviously for australian survivor and the us i'm doing that too also on talking tribal but we're not currently in season for that so that's why we get to do fun things like this when there's a little bit of a break but thank you so much again for having me hope everyone enjoyed it and yeah follow along and always reach out if you're more interested in international survivor dm me where can i watch all those questions

1:58:53 Always happy to answer and i hope everyone gets more involved if you've seen only a couple of the franchises and want to jump onto the third so that you will eventually fully understand this international crossover season that's definitely going to happen then yeah just let me know yeah thank you so much shannon i really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today about this i know you're really busy and hopefully we get to do this sometime again in the future thanks so much chris