If you've ever watched an episode of Survivor, you should realize that the weather is bad, there are bugs, shelter is haphazard at best, and there is often very little food during the days you are asked to compete. Often there are physical challenges on top of all of the other stuff to deal with while filming CBS' competition series. Basically, the whole thing can be an ordeal. Recently, contestant Andrea Boehlke, who is making her third appearance on Surviver during Game Changers, recently revealed the hardest part of appearing on any given season of the long-running series.
Food. You miss food the entire time. You dream about it. I thought about pancakes and peanut butter the whole time.
While the revelation that food, or the lack thereof, is on the contestants' minds at any given moment, is not a massive surprise, the rest is. Survivor makes it pretty easy to see all of the strife and discomfort the cast is going through, but I've never realized they were dreaming about comfort foods like pancake and peanut butter. It makes sense, though. Most of the cast goes through at least a little weight loss during any given season, and some competitors have been known to drop a lot of weight during the month+ stay on the set. While weight loss might be a nice side effect of not having enough access to food, it's also not particularly fun for some contestants.
Survivor is a weird game. There are physical and mental challenges each contestant has to compete in, narrated by host Jeff Probst. There's also a ton of networking that goes down behind-the-scenes, and contestants are forced to spend their non-competitive hours getting to know people they may have to backstab at a moment's notice down the line. It takes a lot of courage to perform on CBS' series, and not just from a lack of food standpoint. Andrea Boehlke also told People that it is "cutthroat."
It really is such a cutthroat game. It's very hard for emotional people, which I am, because I keep going in thinking these are my real life friends. You're hanging out 24/7, so you become fast friends and start to really trust them. I have to remind myself to be cutthroat, because I'm not like that at all in real life.
Survivor: Game Changers just hit CBS this week. We'll have to wait and see how long Andrea Boehlke lasts during this latest iteration. She's formerly finished fifth and seventh on the series, which indicates she's at least a pretty good player. We'll have to wait and see if she can stop envisioning peanut butter and go all the way. New episodes of Survivor air on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET, only on CBS. You can take a look at what else is heading to TV with our midseason premiere calendar.
