Survivor: Jeff Probst Almost Lost His Life Filming A Stunt For The Show
The contestants on "Survivor" perform in potentially dangerous challenges on a nearly constant basis, but you might not know that host Jeff Probst has risked his own life while filming the long-running game show.
During his podcast, "On Fire with Jeff Probst," the iconic "Survivor" host revealed that he almost died during a skydiving incident. This all happened during one of Probst's infamous "vote-delivery" sequences, where the host pretended that, as he left the final Tribal Council, he'd take several modes of transport to get to the New York studio where the finale and reveal is actually filmed. Jet skis, taxis, subways, helicopters... nothing was off limits.
Those vote-delivery scenes haven't been a part of "Survivor" for a while, and perhaps this is why; as Probst revealed, he was filming a sequence for "Survivor: Vanuatu" that involved him skydiving onto a motorcycle. "When you skydive, they tell you two things," Probst told Entertainment Weekly. "Check your altimeter, which tells you how high you are, and check your horizon line to make sure your body is oriented right. And you're supposed to pull your chute at 5,500 feet."
At his sixth jump, Probst noticed something unsettling: "I check my altimeter, and then I look at the horizon, and I decide to take in beautiful California. So I'm just looking at the horizon and thinking, this is amazing. And I look down at my altimeter and it says 4,500 feet."
Jeff Probst almost died during a skydiving stunt
In that moment, Probst tried to remember instructions and had to think very fast: "So suddenly I go, 'Oh my God!' And what they teach you to do is wave your arms together like an X. That lets everybody know, I'm pulling my chute. And they tell you very specifically, when you reach back to pull you chute, when you grab it, punch out to make sure none of your clothing gets tangled up. So I reach back and I punch out and my chute goes up. I'm like. 'Oh, thank God.'"
He wasn't quite out of the woods yet, though; while he thought his chute had opened, he looked up to try and spot it above his head only to see it was nowhere to be found. So he made a last-ditch effort which, miraculously, worked. "In that case they said to scissor kick. So I'm at 4,400 feet. I'm quickly getting close to the ground, and I scissor kick, and the chute opens."
To make everything even worse, a safety instructor was on his way to help the legendary reality TV host open his chute, flying from above to rescue him. For his effort, he got a great reward; Probst accidentally punched the poor guy in the nose after successfully opening his chute. "He said he had a brown out," Probst recalled. "He said, 'For a second, I passed out and then I came back.'"
They obviously got the shot in the end, and you can see it at the end of "Survivor: Vanuatu," which is streaming on Paramount+.