Who’s The Most Famous Person They Would Let Play Survivor?
Imagine Tom Cruise’s social game
In retrospect, it’s a miracle we’ve never been cursed with Celebrity Survivor. Much as I must admit I would love to see, say, Alec Baldwin have a meltdown on a beach because he hasn’t eaten in two weeks, it’s to Mark Burnett’s credit that he never sullied his masterpiece with increasingly marginal has-beens like so many other shows have. And this from the guy who made Celebrity Apprentice!
That being said, the show has admitted a number of contestants with some level of existing public image, including quite a few former pro athletes, Facts of Life actress Lisa Whelchel, and screenwriter Mike White. The producers walk a fine line with these players, balancing on one hand that a person of even marginal fame will generate disproportionate interest in viewers against the knowledge that someone recognizably famous to other players warps the tenor of the game, either putting the celebrity in the power position or the hot seat, depending on the rest of the tribe’s reaction.
I imagine this has gotten exponentially more difficult since the show debuted in 2000 as the media landscape has fractured. It’s funny to think what a barrier to entry it was back then that the show required a video audition tape. Now I’m sure the producers routinely have to weigh the relative fame of someone who has 50,000 Youtube subscribers against someone who was a supporting player on a one-season sitcom.
You can roughly divide celebrities into those who are face-famous and those who are merely name-famous. David Sedaris is a good example of the latter—he’s been successful for a very long time but I certainly couldn’t pick him out of a line-up. As long as he lied about his last name he could easily make it through a season of Survivor unrecognized.
The athletes who have played the game show the complexity of this binary. Although MLB players’ faces are obviously on TV, there are a lot of baseball faces to learn. Jeff Kent, who competed in Season 25 and spent 17 seasons in the majors, is recognized by a tribemate on the first day, but only because she dated a guy who was really into baseball, she says.
John Rocker, by contrast, was widely recognized in his season, both because he looks like a caveman and because his history of bigoted comments and tedious conservative grievance made him notorious during his career. He’s a case of name-fame crossing into face-fame through sustained controversy. It was purely detrimental to his attempt to win the million—he was third eliminated—but it now feels like a dreary preview of today, where performative awfulness has become the most reliable path to fame and fortune.
Six former NFL players also have competed and mostly managed to stay anonymous, which I attribute to the helmets.
Anyway, here are some representative celebrities, ranked from way too famous to be allowed to play Survivor.
TOO FAMOUS
Tom Cruise
Scarlet Johanssen
Chris Hemsworth
Taylor Swift
Alec Baldwin
Tom Brady
Adam Driver
Frances McDormand
Tilda Swinton
Timothee Chalamet
Zendaya
Jason Momoa
Paul Rudd
Gibi ASMR
Aaron Rogers
Kelsey Grammer
Bryan Cranston
David Hyde Pierce
Mark Zuckerberg
Patrick Stewart
Kit Harrington
Any musician I can think of
Johnathan Franzen
Lance Reddick
Timothy Oliphant
Dexter from Dexter
Some fucking TikTok teen
BORDERLINE
Shailene Woodley
Alicia Vikander
Adam Baldwin
Peri Gilpin
Adam Neumann
Peter Thiel
Liam Hemsworth
Pedro Pascal
Sydney Sweeney
Dexter’s Sister from Dexter
Jonathan Frakes
Hailey Steinfeld
Amy Sedaris
Michael Chabon
Miles Teller
Brad Dourif
Jeremey Renner
George RR Martin
LET THEM PLAY
Luke Hemsworth
Billy Baldwin
Brent Spiner
Guy who played Robb Stark
Bulldog from Frasier
Brandon Flowers
Dave Eggers
I don’t know a third actor from Euphoria
Robert Eggers
Ari Aster
Anyone else from Dexter
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Cormac McCarthy