Survivor host Jeff Probst has provided the nitty-gritty details on what happened to Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X's castaways once Cyclone Zena hit Fiji and they were all evacuated from the game on Day 2 of filming.
ADVERTISEMENT
"We took them to two separate rooms at base camp. It was literally just a white, empty room. No furniture. Nothing," Probst told Us Weekly.
"There was no food being served or mattresses being pulled out. It was literally like, 'Sorry, guys, you're on lockdown.'"
As previously reported, in a Survivor first, both the Millennials and Gen X tribes were forced to leave their respective beaches and be temporarily pulled from the game as a safety precaution for tropical Cyclone Zena which hit Fiji, where the season was filming, on April 6.
But the break in action, which lasted nine hours, was apparently no treat for the 20 castaways since they couldn't communicate as they weren't being filmed for the show.
ADVERTISEMENT
Probst said producers warned the castaways, "'You can't talk because we're not filming. Go to sleep and hopefully we'll be okay. Even though the person sitting across from you is somebody you desperately want to try to make an alliance with, please don't do it in the room.'"
The Gen Xers and Millennials supposedly stuck to the rules, and once the storm passed, they were allowed to resume playing the game.
While Probst suggested viewers won't see footage of the castaways being sequestered, Survivor's camera team did manage to get some awesome shots of the storm and its effects on the campsites.
"We couldn't put a cameraman out to film when we were walking out to evacuate. But I asked our point-of-view guy -- he puts the cameras in between the wooden planks on a challenge to get these really epic shots of a foot splashing in the mud -- if there was any way to put a camera on the beach and see if we get lucky," Probst revealed.
"He said yes, but the battery would die in three hours unless somebody had a cellphone WORD adapter. And our location guy walked by and he went, 'I've got one in my office, let me grab it!' So many little things had to line up for that to work, but we have the shot. You can't get a shot of a cyclone. You're in safety. But we got it!"
ADVERTISEMENT
When the game began on Day 1, Probst said he "warned the contestants" about the storm because his team had been "monitoring the weather."
"I said, 'You need to get your shelter built.' Of course, Gen X immediately starts and the Millennials go, 'Nah, we'll get to it,'" Probst told Us.
The two tribes apparently reacted to the crisis differently, validating some of the generational stereotypes.
"Gen X was petrified and the Millennials were exuberant over the fact that they were making Survivor history," Probst admitted.
Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X premieres Wednesday, September 21 at 8PM ET/PT on CBS.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski