Jeff Probst explains how they remade the Survivor auction

Survivor 45 just aired its best episode of the season, concluding with the jaw-dropping elimination of Kellie Nalbandian. Just how shocking was it? Host Jeff Probst tells EW: “That was one of the most surprising and brutal blindsides in the history of Survivor. It reverberated so hard that it nearly knocked me off my seat at Tribal.”

The Kellie blindside — which left the player dazed, confused, and stumbling around the Tribal Council set like a zombie — was an exclamation point to an installment that thrilled at every opportunity. Not only did it feature an epic blindside, and not only did Probst at one point attempt to murder a bag of rice, but the episode also featured the return of the Survivor auction, which was back after an eight-year absence and better than ever.

That’s not even hyperbole. When last seen back on 2015’s Survivor: Worlds Apart, the auction was broken, something Probst open acknowledges on the latest episode of his On Fire podcast. “We did feel we had broken it, and we broke it by introducing advantages, which did work for a while and gave us some great moments, but then the players wisely started to hold onto their money until an advantage came up. And that was kind of the end of the auction.”

But the host and showrunner also goes into great detail on his podcast as to how they brought the podcast back with the new wrinkles. The first big twist was not just handing each of the players a wad of cash, but instead making them work to earn the money they would spend by hiding bamboo tubes of cash all over the tribe camp and having the contestants scurry around to procure as much money as possible.

“In the past you used to show up and you would get $500,” explains Probst. “That was passive. You don't get anything in the new era of Survivor, not even money for the auction. So we stashed money all over the jungle…. And then immediately what you get is character is revealed in how each player approached that scramble for money. And you saw it play out pretty dramatically.”

That would be a reference to the usually hard-working Bruce Perreault, who for some odd reason decided to hardly work to accumulate any cash — a decision that would ultimately cost him later when he lost his vote because of it.

The next wrinkle in the new plan was that the person left with the most money at the end of the auction would lose their vote at Tribal Council — only the players would not know when it was ending. This created a brilliant strategic dilemma in that you needed a lot of money near the end to outbid others and empty your wallet, but the more you had, the more danger you were in to get hit with the penalty if it ended suddenly with you as the high number. The auction would finish somewhere between six and 15 items, depending on what number the host pulled from a bag, with the catch being that only Probst would know the number. Although that scene was shot in a way that another group of people was almost also let in on the secret — the audience.

“I will say we had a camera get that shot,” says Probst. “As I pulled it up, I knew where to hold it so that we had a shot of it.” As the host explains, “We might have wanted to have put it into the show to let the audience in on it. And we might in future seasons because the dilemma might become, 'Oh, they don't realize this is the last item and it's more fun to watch it play out.' In this case, since it was the first auction, we just decided let's let the audience be the player and they don't know either.”

So how and where did they concoct those dishes — including Dee’s $900 milkshake — that were being bid on by players? It turns out some of them were prepared right there in the jungle. “We built a makeshift kitchen in the jungle and we bring either the item that's already made or the ingredients to make it depending on the situation into the jungle. And what's interesting for that [kitchen] team is they too don't know if there will be just six items or all 15, so they're ready for 15 items. Sometimes I can stash an item under my counter upfront, my big table that I have where I'm working from. Sometimes if it's like a milkshake, then it's going to be refrigerated. Sometimes things are in ovens being heated, so it is really like a kitchen and it's very fun because I walk back, I've got the money in my hand, there's somebody there that I give the money to. In fact, that's how they found out how many items there were. I came back after drawing the number and said, by the way, the number is…”

Speaking of dishes, where did they procure those two fish eyes that cost Katurah $480? “Hennie, who runs our marine department, he was out fishing like two days before the auction,” reveals Probst. “And they were at a thousand feet and they caught one of these ruby snappers. And he told me the reason their eyes are so big is because they're a thousand feet down and they need big eyes in order to see…. So Hennie had put the snapper on ice because we cook everything that we catch. And then he heard that we were looking for a gross food item and he said, ‘I don't know if you're interested in fish eyes, but I got some beauties.’ And that's how those fish eyes ended up on the show and in the auction.” And in those fish eyes, Katurah may have found something in the game that she actually hates even more than Bruce.

Of course, now that the auction is back, the question becomes: Will we see it again? “Absolutely,” promises Probst. “I will say it's a lot of work for us and it requires 90 minutes because it really is a big auction, so it's probably not going to be every season, but I do think the format works. I think it's repeatable. That's one of the things you look for in a twist is: Could we do this again? And in this case, yeah, now everybody knows the rules, but it doesn't change anything. There's still the variables of money and the number of items and the loss of a vote.”

For much more inside intel from Probst on the latest episode — including the rice stabbing and that dramatic blindside — check out On Fire: The Official Survivor Podcast.

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