One Of Survivor’s Most Toxic Seasons Made Jeff Probst Quit The Show

Survivor has millions of fans because Jeff Probst’s beloved reality show has featured some amazing winners and several fantastic players. However, fans who are figuring out which seasons to watch first need to realize that Survivor has had some low moments too. On top of things like heartbreaking medical evacuations, Survivor has also featured some awful seasons and fans think that some Sole Survivors didn’t deserve to win.

Even though Jeff Probst has always been Survivor’s biggest cheerleader, even he has been beaten down by the show before. Even though most fans don’t know about it, Jeff even once quit Survivor after filming one of the show’s worst seasons ever.

Why Jeff Probst Once Quit Survivor

Throughout the history of Survivor, the show has gone through many dramatic changes.

Most notably, the show that initially featured a completely straight-forward game has now become much more complicated thanks to the introduction of a slew of different twists. Survivor also notably looks dramatically different today, now that it is filmed in HD.

One of the most fascinating things about Survivor has been that while the show has changed around him, Jeff Probst has remained a staple. With that in mind, it is amazing that very few fans realize that Jeff Probst once quit Survivor.

In September 2015, The New York Times published an article about how Survivor had managed to be successful for 15 years.

Best Reality TV Hosts, According to Collider
Reality Show	Host	Rank
Big Brother	Julie Chen Moonves	#10
America’s Got Talent & The Masked Singer	Nick Cannon	#9
America’s Got Talent	Terry Crews	#8
Temptation Island	Mark L. Walberg	#7
Nailed It!	Nicole Byer	#6
The Amazing Race & Tough as Nails	Phil Keoghan	#5
American Idol	Ryan Seacrest	#4
RuPaul’s Drag Race	RuPaul	#3
The Traitors	Alan Cumming	#2
Survivor	Jeff Probst	#1

Buried in that article was the stunning revelation that Jeff Probst quit the show after Survivor: Gabon was filmed.

Survivor 47’s Sue Smey Found What Happened To Her Face ‘So Embarrassing’

Survivor’s Sue Smey revealed that she found what was going on with her face on the show “so embarrassing.”

According to The New York Times’ article, Jeff felt burned out after the filming of Survivor: Gabon.

Survivor: Gabon, which was the hit show’s 17th season, was filmed starting in June 2008. Since the show’s first season, Survivor: Borneo, began filming in March 2000, that meant that Jeff had spent more than eight years filming the show off and on when he quit.

On top of feeling like he’d had enough of the show, there was another major reason why Jeff wanted to move past Survivor in 2008.

Even though Jeff now seems to have endless passion for the show, he was feeling upset about being known as the Survivor guy when he quit.

In May 2024, Vulture published an article about why they felt Jeff Probst should have been fired from Survivor at that time. That article revealed that Jeff became Survivor’s executive producer in the year 2010. With that in mind, it is amazing to know that Jeff quit Survivor only two years before he took control of the show.

In 2015, Jeff told The New York Times why he previously felt upset about being defined by Survivor.

“My Achilles’ heel for a lot of my life was that nobody saw me as a storyteller, that they saw me as a white guy with dark hair who was just a game show host. And that, in terms of my own self-image, was the thing that could gut me. It was like a kidney punch.”

Of course, Survivor fans will already know that Jeff has hosted every season as of January 2025. With that in mind, it is only reasonable to wonder how Jeff remained Survivor‘s host after he quit the show.

Exclusive: Richard Hatch Claims Jeff Probst Screwed Him During Survivor: All-Stars

Richard Hatch exclusively told TheThings how Jeff Probst screw him during Survivor: All-Stars and he is completely right.

The New York Times revealed that when Jeff quit, CBS’ boss at that time, Les Moonves, didn’t accept his resignation. However, Les also didn’t reject Jeff’s attempt to resign either.

In response to him quitting, Les told Jeff to take a few months off to decompress and re-energize. After taking some time away and some changes being made to Survivor’s production team, Jeff agreed to stay on the job, according to The New York Times’ article.

Why It Seems Like Survivor: Gabon Being So Toxic May Have Contributed To Jeff Probst Quitting

At no point in The New York Times’ aforementioned article, the outlet didn’t link the events of Survivor: Gabon to Jeff Probst’s decision to quit Survivor. That said, looking back at how toxic Survivor: Gabon was in many ways, it is hard not to assume that the season played a significant role in Jeff’s decision.

When the show’s most passionate fans talk about Survivor: Gabon, they tend to focus on how poor the gameplay was. Many of the season’s players made poor strategic decisions before they were voted out.

However, one of the things that really makes Survivor: Gabon stand out is how unnecessarily nasty the season could be. For example, Randy Bailey told Reality TV World in November 2008 that Randy was openly mocked during a tribal council. According to Randy, after Bob Crowley tricked him into taking a fake idol, some of his tribemates openly laughed at him before he was voted out of the game.

“Jeff asked “If anybody’s gonna play it, now’s the time,” and I looked down at the end of where we were sitting, and [Crystal Cox] and [Jessica “Sugar” Kiper] are laughing. Crystal even falls out of her chair and she is laying in the dirt pointing and laughing at me.”

That wasn’t the only nasty moment during that season that involved Randy.

Survivor 47’s Andy Rueda Revealed When He Regretted Going On The Show

Survivor 47’s Andy Rueda revealed the exact moment he wished that he’d never gone on Jeff Probst’s reality show.

Randy and Jessica “Sugar” Kiper seem to hate each other so much that a long YouTube video chronicled how nasty their rivalry was.

The most memorable moment of their rivalry came during Survivor: Gabon’s auction, as can be seen in a separate YouTube video. Throughout the auction, Sugar tried to convince people to outbid Randy anytime he showed interest in an item. Despite that, Randy wound up buying a plate of cookies that he was told to share with the tribe.

When Randy was passing out the cookies, Sugar initially refused to take a cookie from him. As a result, Randy split that cookie up and gave the pieces away. Randy then offered Sugar the last cookie, even though that meant he wouldn’t get one, and she accepted. However, Sugar again refused to eat the cookie and gave it to a tribemate who already had a cookie and a half. Sugar’s move, that obviously seemed spiteful, ensured that Randy didn’t get a cookie while her tribemate got two and a half. While that may seem silly, people who are starving are going to take cookies very seriously.

Sugar spiting Randy and his tribemate accepting the cookie from her, knowing what she’d done, was a perfect example of what Survivor: Gabon was like. However, one moment from the season was much more toxic than that even.

Survivor: Gabon arguably features the cruelest final tribal council moment in the show’s history. After Sugar made it to the final tribal council, Corinne Kaplan stood up and ripped into Sugar in an extremely personal and nasty way, as another YouTube video shows. Corinne even went so far as to bring up Sugar’s father, who’d died, in her spree of insults.

“Sugar, you are an unemployed, uneducated leech on society, and the only thing I would vote to give you is a handful of antidepressants so that no one else has to be subjected to your constant crying anymore. And maybe if you got some, then it would seem a little more sincere when you are crying about your dead father. You don’t deserve the million.”

That moment was so mean that Corinne told Entertainment Weekly in March 2021 that her father pleaded with her to apologize to Sugar, but she refused. “At the live reunion, they cut to commercial break. My father stood up and frantically mouthed to me, ‘Just say you’re sorry!’ At that point, I had already been booed and my parents were kind of panicking. I crossed my arms and yelled back, ‘Absolutely not!'”