The latest premiere episode of reality TV stalwart Survivor—still going strong in its forty-seventh season—was surely not the mic drop moment Jon Lovett was hoping for: The “Pod Save America” co-host was the first player eliminated.
While far from the first public figure to play Survivor, Lovett now has the dubious honor of being the casting stunt who crashed and burned the hardest/fastest. (In confessionals and promotional interviews, Lovett described himself as a long-time fan of the show, but still.)
Survivor host, Jeff Probst, had teased Lovett, a former Obama speechwriter, as “one of the greatest storytellers that we will ever have” in a pre-show interview with Entertainment Weekly, but he barely had time to turn the first page. It was less “Lovett or Leave It” and more “Lovett and Leave.” Despite a messy meltdown (technically, multiple meltdowns) from one of his tribemates, Lovett was voted out unanimously at the first tribal council of the season.
“Nobody imagines that they’ll be the first to go,” Lovett said in an interview after the premiere—and his elimination—aired. “When you take a risk sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want, but that’s why they call it a risk.”
