Pulau Tiga is an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of Malaysia. It was formed by a volcanic eruption in the late 19th century, and most of it is a national park. But you may be familiar with this island, because it was the setting for the very first season of the reality TV game show Survivor. The show began in 2000, when the cast and crew traveled for hours to Pulau Tiga, not really knowing what they were getting into.
Sure, a lot of the drama in Survivor was planned, like the weekly challenges and the tribal council when contestants were voted off the island. But since the show was the first of its kind, the producers were unprepared for the reality of making a TV show on an isolated island. They didn't even take tents for the crew or the equipment! They encountered tourist garbage, parasites, unexpected wildlife, and Australian special forces with guns. And not only did the cast begin to starve, the crew did, too. Emily Nussbaum, the author of the book Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV, gives us the story of the first season of Survivor at Atlas Obscura. The interview is in both text and podcast form.
(Image credit: Bfyhdch)
I don't see how they could possibly have been so incompetent that they starved the crew. There's no explanation of these claims in the transcript. It's easy to calculate how much food is needed. They couldn't have been planning on the crew (not the cast) foraging. There wasn't harsh weather that could have prevented planned resupply runs. TV production crews always have to plan the food on any remote shoot, so this should have been pretty standard fare.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)