For Survivor: Vanuatu — Island of Fire, the producers wanted to do something special.
The idea was to have host Jeff Probst film an intense transition scene after the jury had voted.
One of the production tricks the show used early on was for Jeff to depart from the jungle and travel straight to the studio with the votes in hand.
The intent was to make things appear seamless, even though time had passed between filming the season and the live Reunion Show.
On Survivor 6 (The Amazon), Jeff was shown riding a jet ski from the jungle to the Hudson River in New York.
It didn’t go off without a hitch, as Jeff said he developed hypothermia due to the extended filming hours.
Jeff Probst jumps out of a plane multiple times for Survivor 9
To up the ante for Survivor 9, the plan was for Jeff to parachute out of a plane to deliver the vote back to the States.
“The bit was, I was gonna skydive with the votes. So I go out to a place in California, and I start training to skydive,” Jeff stated on an episode of his podcast, One Fire.
This was in preparation to do a solo dive. He then explained that one person would jump in front of him, and a second person would jump after him to provide extra safety.
And Jeff says everything went well until the sixth jump.
Problems with Jeff’s parachute; Jeff knocks someone out
As Jeff tells the story, on his sixth jump, he got distracted admiring the horizon in California and did not pull his chute at the right height.
After falling more than 1,000 extra feet, Jeff pulled the chute. Only it didn’t open correctly.
“The next thing they teach you is to ask yourself two questions: Is it there, meaning, is your parachute above your head? And is it square? Is it there, and is it square? I look up. Is it there? Yes. Is it square? No. Meaning it doesn’t have four points. It has not opened. This is no lie,” Jeff told his podcast co-hosts.
By following the instruction he had been taught about scissor kicking, Jeff got the chute to open. But it wasn’t without incident.
One of the instructors that jumped out with him had seen Jeff was having trouble, and he went down to help. This was right as Jeff was trying to punch out his chute.
When Jeff got to the ground, he found out he had punched the instructor in the nose, causing him to lose consciousness for almost a full second.
Everyone landed safely, but it was certainly a dramatic story that Jeff revealed.
Below is a video from the episode featuring his skydive.
Survivor 45 arrives in Fall 2023
A new season of Survivor begins airing on CBS this fall.
An intriguing cast leak reveals the 18 players on Survivor 45, with one former castaway returning from Survivor 44.
New episodes will be 90 minutes each, and fans will watch more footage than in the past.
Survivor 45 airs in the fall of 2023 on CBS.