Netflix released a first look image from Season 3 of the Jenna Ortega-led series on Monday. In a photo posted on social media, Wednesday is shown standing next to a motorcycle under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Thing, the sentient but disembodied hand who serves as a key member of the Addams family, sits atop the motorcycle, and Wednesday holds a piece of paper in her hands and looks off into the distance with her signature deadpan glare. “From Paris, with dread,” reads the photo caption.
Searchlight Pictures has released the first trailer for “Super Troopers 3,” the latest installment of the cult classic “Super Troopers” franchise. The film is set to hit theaters on August 7.
The entirety of the Broken Lizard comedy troupe — Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske — return for the film, which, like past “Super Troopers” films, will follow a team of mischievous Vermont state troopers and their prank-loving antics. Brian Cox will also return as Police Captain O’Hagan.
Nat Faxon (“The Way Way Back”) as Captain Todd Markowski, Chace Crawford (“The Boys”) as Baker Buchanan and Andrew Dismukes (“Saturday Night Live”) as Coy Burns round out the cast.
The original “Super Troopers” was released in 2001 by Fox Searchlight, quickly becoming a cult-classic. The comedy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival that year and won the Audience Award at the SXSW Film Festival.
“Broken Lizard has been part of the Searchlight family for over two decades, and we couldn’t be more thrilled for another entry in the ‘Super Troopers’ saga,” said Searchlight President Matthew Greenfield in 2025 when filming commenced. “’Super Troopers’ has a way of making the absurd feel inevitable, and we can’t wait to bring audiences along on another adventure with these characters who leave a trail of joy and laughter, wherever their patrols may take them.”
“Super Troopers 3” was penned by Broken Lizard, produced by Richard Perello and directed by Chandrasekhar, who previously directed both the original and the 2018 sequel “Super Troopers 2.”
The conclusion of The Pitt‘s second season brought in the show’s biggest audience so far.
The April 16 finale of the medical drama drew 9.7 million viewers on HBO Max through the weekend, more than any of the show’s 29 previous episodes over two seasons. The finale was way up from The Pitt’s season two premiere in January, which hit 5.4 million viewers in three days and 7.2 million after a week of viewing.
Measured since the premiere, season two is averaging 15.4 million viewers per episode, HBO says. That’s an improvement of more than 50 percent on 2025’s season one. HBO and HBO Max typically measure audiences for 90 days after a season premiere — though The Pitt, with 15 weekly episodes, plays out over a slightly longer time (98 days).
Related Stories
Nielsen’s 35-day measurement for season one — a considerably different metric than HBO’s internal data — put season one at 6.18 million viewers per episode. Weekly streaming totals from Nielsen for The Pitt so far this year have been far above last season.
Based on HBO’s internal numbers, The Pitt becomes the sixth current HBO/HBO Max series to average 15 million or more viewers over the course of its run. It joins House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, The Last of Us and It: Welcome to Derry in that category.
HBO Max renewed The Pittfor a third season before season two premiered and is looking to replicate the 15-episode model with two other projects at the pilot stage: How to Survive Without Me, a family drama from executive producer Greg Berlanti and starring Joshua Jackson, Kaley Cuoco and Ray Romano; and American Blue, a crime drama starring Milo Ventimiglia.
Rif Hutton, the veteran character actor who recurred on shows including Doogie Howser, M.D. and JAG, has died. He was 73.
Hutton died Saturday at his home in Pasadena after a 13-month battle with glioblastoma, his wife, Bridget Hoffman, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hutton had a thriving career as a voice actor, looper and ADR artist, with work on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and films in the Shrek, Kung Ku Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Rio, Ice Age, Hotel Transylvania and Angry Birds franchises.
He also had a gig in 1990s commercials as the owner of a KFC restaurant.
Hutton appeared as Dr. Ron Welch, a friend and colleague of Neil Patrick Harris’ title character at Eastman Medical Center in Los Angeles, on 17 episodes over all four seasons of the ABC sitcom Doogie Howser, M.D., created by Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley.
And on JAG, he portrayed Lt. Cmdr. Alan Mattoni on 10 episodes of the Donald P. Bellisario-created CBS drama JAG from 1997-2001.
Walter Hutton was born in San Antonio on Nov. 28, 1955. With his father in the U.S. Air Force, he was raised all over the U.S., mainly in New Jersey. In the eighth grade, he won a statewide speech contest reciting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and said that made him think a career as an actor was possible.
After graduating from Seton Hall University and serving in the U.S. Navy, he showed up on episodes of such shows as The Jeffersons, Remington Steele, 227 and Night Court from 1985-87 and appeared in Stand and Deliver (1988), starring Edward James Olmos.
Hutton also worked on the daytime soaps Tribes, General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful; on series including L.A. Law, Married … With Children, Hunter, Wings, Murphy Brown, The Larry Sanders Show, Star Trek: Generations, Babylon 5, Family Matters, Seinfeld, ER, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cold Case and Monk; and in such films as the Richard Pryor-starring Moving (1988), L.A. Heat (1989) and The Thirteenth Floor (1999).
Survivors include his wife, Bridget Hoffman, also a voice actor (they married in 2001 and worked together often), and his son, Wolfgang.
“People knew when they hired him for a voice job that he was going to be the most prepared — he always was,” fellow voice actor Steve Apostolina wrote on Facebook. “He was also always first to show up on a gig — I had the great pleasure of beating him a few times and scooping a treasured chair, but those were few and far between.”
The Season 2 finale of “The Pitt” was the series’ most-watched episode to date.
The 15th and final episode of the medical drama’s second season reached 9.7 million viewers through its opening weekend, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. Additionally, Season 2 is averaging 15.4 million viewers to date across all episodes — a 50% improvement on the Season 1 average.
Achieving that statistic makes “The Pitt” only the sixth series in the history of HBO Max to surpass an average of 15 million viewers, following “House of the Dragon,” “The White Lotus,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” “The Last of Us” and “It: Welcome to Derry.”
It’s still an open question whether an AI performer can actually “act,” but awards bodies will soon have to confront whether such a performance could ever be eligible for a major award.
It seems like a storyline plucked out of some Hollywood dystopian satire. Still, with the arrival of concepts like AI “actress” Tilly Norwood and, now, the likeness of Val Kilmer in an upcoming movie role a year after his death, the question of whether AI-generated likenesses could ever be awards-eligible is lingering over multiple organizations that recognize achievements in filmmaking.
Kilmer was cast in “As Deep as the Grave” before his death in April 2025, in which he was set to portray Father Fintan, a Catholic priest and Native American spiritualist. Due to complications from throat cancer, he was ultimately unable to appear on set. Writer-director Coerte Voorhees, who had built the role around him, refused to recast. Instead, with the cooperation of Kilmer’s estate and his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, Voorhees reconstructed the performance using generative artificial intelligence, assembling the role from archival material and digital tools.
“He was the actor I wanted to play this role,” Voorhees told Varietywhen the film’s trailer debuted. “It was very much designed around him.”
The film, which does not yet have U.S. distribution, arrives at a moment when the industry is still in the process of considering the ramifications of AI attempting to replicate actors’ performances.
And while we don’t know if “As Deep as the Grave” will be a viable awards contender or if the Kilmer likeness will be deemed a success or failure, it’s nonetheless forcing awards groups to confront a question their rulebooks were not written to answer: Can a performance that no human being has given compete for the industry’s highest honors?
The answer, depending on whom you ask, ranges from “possibly” to “probably not,” and “we are still working on it.”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took its most public position on the matter following the 2024 awards cycle. That season encompassed the controversy surrounding Brady Corbet’s historical epic drama “The Brutalist,” which used generative AI to enhance Hungarian dialogue in Adrien Brody’s performance and produce architectural imagery. That prompted enough unease within the Academy that it felt compelled to respond, although the response stopped short of an official ruling. AI tools, the Academy said, “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination.” Voters were instead instructed to weigh “the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship.”
Surely that is a principle, but it’s not yet a policy. In the case of Kilmer, it raises more questions than it resolves. The organization will announce any updated rules for this year in the coming weeks.
The Actor Awards, which are helmed by SAG-AFTRA, have drawn a harder line. Under its current rules, performances “fully generated by artificial intelligence” are disqualified from Actor Awards consideration. Work enhanced by AI may still qualify, but only when the performer has provided consent in accordance with union agreements. The consent portion is a standard that Kilmer’s estate has satisfied, but it seems likely the performance would be considered “fully generated” and thus not eligible.
Earlier precedents — including the digital resurrection of Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” which involved roles those performers had previously inhabited, drew their own fair share of criticism.
However, this isn’t a question only plaguing actors. The use of AI in creative work is affecting every craft. Other major awards organizations have arrived at positions of varying clarity. The Recording Academy, responding to its own reckoning with AI-generated music, established in June 2023 that only human creators are eligible for Grammy recognition. Works containing AI elements may still qualify, but the human contribution must be meaningful — not incidental.
“We’re not going to be giving a nomination or an award to an AI computer or someone who just prompted AI,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told Variety at the time. “It’s the human award highlighting excellence, driven by human creativity.”
The Television Academy, which hosts the Emmys, requires disclosure when AI-generated material exceeds a minimal threshold and is tied to its code of ethics. BAFTA has discouraged the use of AI in certain categories, particularly in its games vertical. Notably, none of these positions were written with a Kilmer scenario in mind, and none are fully equipped for it.
One of the deep discomforts lies in the question of what an AI performance actually is, and who, or what, deserves credit for it. Kilmer delivered performances over four decades that remain staples of his legacy. I think often of his turn as rock icon Jim Morrison in “The Doors” (1991), his career-defining work as Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993) and his gay and wisecracking private detective in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (2005).
The prospect of posthumous recognition, through a role constructed after his death, raises its own kind of unease. Would that recognition honor Kilmer himself or simply the technology deployed in his name? Would this warrant consideration for best visual effects, standing toe-to-toe with “Avengers: Doomsday” or “Dune Part Three”? I’d imagine many members of the Visual Effects Branch would be divided on the answer.
But what is clear is that studios are not waiting for the debate to settle.
Sun Zhonghuai, a senior executive at Tencent, projected in late 2025 that AI-driven productions could account for 10% to 30% of film, television and animation output within two years. The tools are accelerating faster than the ethics can evolve, and the embrace of AI is accelerating faster than rules can be made.
Groups like the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards have yet to formally establish AI guidelines, but are expected to do so in the coming years (perhaps even sooner?).
Versions of this conversation began long before Kilmer’s film reached the marketplace. Andy Serkis’ lived-in work as the terrifying hobbit Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” and as the warrior ape Caesar in the modern “Planet of the Apes” trilogy pushed audiences and awards bodies to reconsider what constitutes acting. Serkis was nominated by the Critics Choice for best supporting actor for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011) and given a special prize for best digital acting performance for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) by the org.
The debate continued with the arrival of James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009) and persisted even in voice performance work such as Scarlett Johansson’s turn as the AI Samantha in Spike Jonze’s “Her” (2013), whom the CCA also nominated for supporting actress in her respective year. And even for this upcoming awards season, questions are likely to surface around whether Rocky, the lovable sidekick to Ryan Gosling’s astronaut in “Project Hail Mary,” is a performance worth recognizing, thanks to puppeteer and voice performer James Ortiz.
If audiences respond positively to Kilmer’s performance in “As Deep as the Grave,” awards voters will find themselves facing a verdict that no existing guidelines anticipate. Are people watching a tribute to a beloved actor or just another instance of AI slop?
The answer matters. But whatever it is, it won’t be the last of its kind.
Amazon is putting out some “Bait” to hook Emmy voters.
The streamer’s British six-part miniseries “Bait,” starring Riz Ahmed, is making a push for the Emmy season, with plans to submit in 21 categories, including outstanding limited or anthology series, Variety has learned exclusively.
“Bait” follows Shah Latif (Ahmed), a struggling British Pakistani actor navigating an existential crisis while auditioning for the role of James Bond amid cultural backlash, professional pressure and strained family relationships. The Prime Video series, which premiered globally on March 25 after debuting earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, has received positive reviews from critics and currently sits at 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
On the Emmy front, “Bait” will mount a wide-ranging campaign spanning major series and craft categories.
Ahmed, an Oscar winner for producing the live-action short “The Long Goodbye” (2021) and a best actor nominee for the intense drama “Sound of Metal” (2020), has established himself as a multi-hyphenate across film, television and theater. At the Emmys in 2017, he made history as the first South Asian and Muslim man to win an acting Emmy for his role as Nasir Khan in HBO’s miniseries “The Night Of.” That same year, he earned a second nom in guest actor for HBO’s comedy “Girls.” He’ll be a huge focus for the campaign, going for another nomination for lead actor (limited).
Guz Khan, who portrays Shah’s cousin Zulfi, will be submitted for supporting actor (limited), while Sheeba Chaddha, who plays Tahira, will vie for supporting actress. Actors may self-submit for Emmy consideration, and many final choices regarding episode submissions for artisans will not be fully known until nomination voting begins in June.
Director Bassam Tariq will put forth episode 3, titled “House or Home,” which will also serve as the official writing submission for writer Azam Mahmood.
Along with Ahmed, the series’ executive producers are Allie Moore, Ben Karlin and Jake Fuller, with Chris Sheriff, Karen Joseph Adcock, Dipika Guha, Prashanth Venkataramanujam and Azam Mahmood serving as producers.
This year’s Emmy timeline begins with nomination-round voting from June 11-22, followed by nominations on July 8.
The full list of Emmy submissions for “Bait” is below:
Limited or Anthology Series
Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie — Riz Ahmed
Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie — Guz Khan
Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie — Sheeba Chaddha
Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie — Bassam Tariq, Episode 3: “House or Home”
Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie — Episode 3: “House of Home” by Azan Mahmood
Casting for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Cinematography for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Picture Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie Production Design (Half-Hour Narrative Program)
Contemporary Costumes
Contemporary Hairstyling
Contemporary Makeup (Non-Prosthetic)
Title Design
Music Composition for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or Special (Original Dramatic Score)
Music Supervision
Sound Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or Special
Sound Mixing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie
Stunt Coordination for Comedy Programming
Stunt Performance
Special Effects (season or episode TBD)
All six episodes of “Bait” are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Ben Collins, CEO of the Onion, confirmed to Variety details of the company’s new plan to assume control of Infowars under a deal with Gregory Milligan, who was appointed by a bankruptcy court to manage the Infowars site.
Under the terms of the agreement, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license the infowars.com domain name and associated intellectual property including its name, as first reported by the New York Times. The deal would run for six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
In November 2024, the Onion gleefully revealed its winning bankruptcy-auction bid for Infowars, which was sued into bankruptcy (as was Jones) after the families of victims in the Sandy Hook mass shooting in Connecticut won a judgment in 2022 against Jones in a defamation suit. Jones had repeatedly lied and posited baseless conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. (During the defamation trial in Texas in 2022, Jones testified that he now believes the Sandy Hook shooting was “100% real.”)
Now, under the new deal with the court-appointed administrator, the Onion said that in the coming weeks (and pending court approval) it will launch a new digital platform and comedy network at Infowars.com, led by creative director Tim Heidecker and head of programming Mia DiPasquale. The effort “is designed to create a home for emerging and established comedic voices while expanding The Onion’s role as a modern satire institution,” according to the company.
“A lot of institutions and people gave up on doing the right thing over the last two years. Despite an insane amount of threats and bullshit, we persevered,” Collins said in a statement. “Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they’ll finally get some justice, and even some money. You will get a new home for funny things on the internet, a tote bag with a good logo on it and a great newspaper made by human beings in your real-life mailbox.”
Heidecker, whose credits include “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Adult Swim, commented: “There are a lot of talented people making great work with very little support. This is a chance to build a place for ambitious, specific, internet-native comedy and to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history.”
The Onion said the plan was developed with the support of Sandy Hook families. “The Sandy Hook families took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others. For years, he used his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit,” said Chris Mattel, partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder and attorney for the Sandy Hook families who won a $1.4 billion verdict against Jones and Infowars in Connecticut. “When InfoWars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families’ courage and The Onion’s vision, persistence and stewardship.”
Alex Jones has not commented on the Onion’s new plan to take over Infowars.
In April 2024, New York-based G/O Media sold The Onion to Jeff Lawson, co-founder and former CEO of Twilio and a longtime fan of the satire site. Lawson hired Lawson, a former NBC News reporter covering disinformation, extremism and the internet, to run the company.
On Monday, The Onion shared a fake message from the fictional CEO of Global Tetrahedron, “Bryce P. Tetraeder.”
“With this new InfoWars, we will democratize psychological torture, welcoming brutal and sadistic ideas from everyone, even the very stupidest among us. It will be like the Manhattan Project, only instead of a bomb, we will be building a website,” Tetraeder’s post said. “The InfoWars of tomorrow will converge into a swirling vortex of content about content, talent acquiring talent, rings of concentric media mergers processing all human artistry into one endlessly digestible slurry. This will be a dank, sunless place, one where panic and capital feed on each other like twins in the womb of a hulking, unknowable monster — a monster known by many names, but which I like to call modern-day America.”
Singer D4vd could be facing the death penalty after being charged Monday with first-degree murder by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office in connection with the killing of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, whose dismembered body was discovered inside an abandoned Tesla in the Hollywood Hills last year.
L.A. District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced at a press conference Monday that the 21-year-old singer, whose real name is David Burke, faces a first-degree murder charge with special circumstances, including lying in wait; committing the crime for financial gain; and murdering a witness. He was also charged with a second count involving lewd acts with a child, as well as dismemberment of the 15-year-old girl’s body.
“These charges include the most serious charges that a D.A.’s office can bring,” Hochman said.
In September, a severely decomposed body was discovered at a Los Angeles impound lot inside a vehicle registered to Burke in Hempstead, Texas. Police said the remains were placed inside a bag in the Tesla’s front trunk.
The dismembered body was later identified as the missing Inland Empire teen. A decomposed head and torso were found in a cadaver bag inside the Tesla, according to court documents; additional dismembered body parts were discovered in a second bag inside the vehicle.
Rivas had been missing since April 24, 2024 — nearly 18 months before her remains were discovered at Hollywood Tow on Sept. 8. She was identified after the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner noted a tattoo on her right index finger reading “Shhh…,” prompting her mother to contact the office.
Burke was named a suspect by Los Angeles homicide detectives in November. He was arrested in Hollywood on Thursday on a probable cause warrant and is being held without bail. It remains unclear whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
“The determination on whether or not the district attorney’s office will seek the death penalty will be made at a later time,” Hochman said.
The Hollywood Reporter was unable to reach Burke’s attorneys at Berk Brettler LLP on Monday. Last week, following his arrest, the singer’s attorneys said they “will vigorously defend David’s innocence,” in a statement.
Burke was in the midst of a string of dates on the d4vd Withered 2025 World Tour when Hernandez’s body was identified in a car registered in his name. A Seattle concert scheduled that day was canceled, and the remaining tour dates were soon scrapped.
As d4vd, Burke broke out on TikTok and SoundCloud in 2022, leading to a rapid rise that included opening for SZA and performing at Coachella ahead of his debut album. He amassed more than 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify and signed with Darkroom/Interscope.
His debut album, Withered, released in April 2025, notably featured vocals largely recorded on an iPhone in his sister’s closet, as he told The Hollywood Reporter last year.
Out in Fiji, Benjamin “Coach” Wade was a popular pre-game winner pick among the press — a calmer, more introspective version of the Dragon Slayer who seemed poised for a deep run on Survivor 50. That calm didn’t last. In his exclusive exit interview with The Hollywood Reporter below, Coach explains where the game slipped away, how old instincts crept back in and why he believes he may never be meant to win Survivor.
***
Before the first Tribal Council of season 50, a lot of us in the press had you pegged as a potential winner. You were my winner pick. In pregame, you were really introspective and seemed like Coach 2.0, but we saw the Dragon Slayer come back pretty quickly. What changed from that pregame zen to that traditional Dragon Slayer game that we ended up seeing?
I’ll tell you. I had amassed an enormous army of real connections with people, real conversations. You can’t name a single person out there that didn’t want to play with me. Kamilla, Charlie, Mike — who very easily could have been Final Four. I set that spot to be the nucleus of every single beach that I was on. And even when we merged, Emily came up to me and we had a really good conversation. I had one commodity coming into that game, and that’s my word. When I say I’m going to do something, I do it. People misconstrue my honor and integrity. It’s not about getting through the game without lying because that’s impossible. I tried to do it in Tocantins and failed. It’s more about I’m going to vote the way I say I’m going to vote.
You can’t find a single time where I went into a vote saying, “This is what I’m going to do.” And then I did something different. That’s my commodity. When Ozzy tried to erode that commodity, I stood up for myself. But I was at the nucleus of everything and had this huge army that was systematically being picked off, unbeknownst to anybody knowing that it was the group that I was assembling. So that kind of unraveled me a little bit. What really happened was when we went to the “Blood Moon,” I made a huge mistake in forgetting that Colby didn’t have a vote. Colby and Joe asked me to throw a challenge before the merge, that last one. They said, “We got to get Colby’s vote back and we got to get out Aubrey or maybe Tiffany.” I said, “That goes against what I think as a competitor, so I can’t do that.” In hindsight, maybe we should have, but I forgot that Colby didn’t have a vote.
So we’re up there on the pegs (of last week’s challenge) and I couldn’t go longer. Dee turns around and looks at me and says, “Coach, I got you. ” I said, “Dee, are you sure?” She was like, “Yeah, I got you, Coach.” So I stepped off. Then in the moment where Colby says, “Coach, we’re screwed.” I said, “No, we’re not, man. We still got the votes. It’s you, me and Cirie.” He was like, “Coach, I don’t have a vote.” I say the F-bomb. You can see it on TV. They bleep it out. That’s the moment I realized I made a huge mistake, so it really derailed me because I then went and played very messy with Dee and scrambled and didn’t want Colby to go home.
Then I was like, “Frick, Colby just went home. So all right, let me be calm and cool. Let me reconnect with the people.” Then we get into the Dee vote and it’s a very simple one. I said, “All right, let’s go. Let’s vote Dee.” It was just a group of us. It was not me running the show. Then we said, “Well, who’s going to go second?” I think it was me, Jonathan and Joe having a conversation. The three of us agreed we needed to have Tiffany out because she’s Dee’s best friend. So we came up with that decision and then it was like, “who’s going to vote for who? How are we going to split the votes?”
You’re talking about all returning players. You’re going to go into a vote and not split it? If you have the numbers, that’s Survivor 101. And they refused to do it. I couldn’t believe it. So I started getting agitated because again, it was based on fear. I had already made some mistakes. I saw people leaving that were in my greater alliance and I thought, I cannot go home tonight. We could have been sitting here last week and you would’ve been saying, “Well, why didn’t you fight harder to convince people to split the votes?” I would’ve said, “Nobody wanted to split the votes, so I just put my tail between my legs.” That’s not me.
The other thing is that I am a performer. There’s this time, 10-12 days in, where I start thinking, “I have to make sure that I take this to the next level and that what I say does not end up on the cutting room floor.” So I think that there’s a little bit of that.
I’m a big believer in destiny. I’m not a religious man, but I’m deeply spiritual. I don’t think that I’m meant to win Survivor because I think that it would go so to my head. My ego would be getting so big — bigger than it already is — that it would be to the detriment of who I am as a character and the impact that I have on people. It doesn’t surprise me that you guys said that [I was a potential winner], but I’m very comfortable with what happened. I did not compromise myself. I think the farther I went in the game, maybe I would’ve had to betray people and change my votes up and compromise that part of my game.
Chrissy Hofbeck and Benjamin “Coach” Wade on Survivor 50.
After the challenge, you were told to lay low by Chrissy. How much did you actually buy into her advice and in hindsight — was she right?
I think there’s a middle ground. It started with Rizo the episode before. It does show that I have grown. I better have grown as a man — but in Tocantins I would’ve been like, “You’re not telling me what to do.” But I took the advice. I thought it was sound advice for the time. I know that I’ve been aggressive. I know that in order to get the vote split, I had to really throw my weight around. And then it was like, “okay, now let me be calm and let me sit here and let me let the chips fall.” I didn’t spend the whole day in the hammock, but I felt like it was sound advice and it coming from a good place, so I took it.
You were aligned with Ozzy. Did you have a sense that he hadn’t fully let that early Fight for Supplies issue go?
Hats off to him for playing the most strategic game he’s ever played. So congratulations, not coming in the same way that he’s always come in. Cirie, Stephenie, Joe, Jonathan — you could go over most people. They’re coming in the same way they came in last time. Ozzy has evolved strategically and good for him. But I knew that at the end of the day, he and I were not going to be sitting at the finals together. And it was really a matter of who was going to get to the other one first because I imagined him coming down to six, and then cutting him at six.
If you’re curious about my boot order, I was thinking it was going to be Stephenie, Cirie, after Ozzy, whittling it down like that. And then me, Jonathan and Chrissy at the final three. But it was inevitable. Ozzy and I have never had the luxury of starting on the same beach together. So we’re never going to have that day one alliance and that day one trust.
When Cirie came back from Exile, it looked like she shifted the vote onto you and Chrissy. Was that the turning point or were you already in trouble?
I think that was still part of the plan going into tribal, maybe not 100 percent but maybe 50/50 or 60/40 against me. Then Deven’s idol definitely tipped it 10 percent one way. But I did not think I was in trouble. I think Cirie came back and it was interesting because she and I had a talk on the hammock and she said, “Coach, I don’t know what it means for you to be an alliance, but I’ll tell you that for me to be in an alliance, it means that I will fight for you. I fought for you with the Colby vote and I will fight for you until my last dying breath out here.” That level of emotional deception is what made her dangerous in the moment. Hats off to her.
I did send her a text message and she said, “Well, Coach, you got to know that Dee actually said to me that you were going for me for the Colby vote.” Then he said, “But Dee later came back and said that she was lying about that.” It’s like a resting snake. They’re not really dangerous and she really has done some things, but she hasn’t been the strategic mastermind in this game. And in fact, I was sitting there thinking, “Is Cirie overrated?” Then she does something like that and shifts the whole game and you think, “yeah, she is dangerous.”
Coach and Jonathan Young.
You got a pretty memorable sendoff with the Tai Chi, rock formation, the haikus. You even got a song. What was it like for you watching your final episode back, even though you went home?
They’ve really honored me over the years. I have nothing but gratitude for the producers. I’ve got nothing but joyful times and memories, even the bad times. The fact that they don’t have to show any of that stuff. It’s all icing on the cake. They didn’t have to show the nicknames. Now it’s gone viral. And I’m literally having thousands of requests. I’m running this limited nicknaming ceremony on my website and we’ve almost sold out. It’s crazy. And as I said to the producer that did that episode, “You didn’t have to show that. And so thank you for giving me honor all the time in this edit.” Sometimes it’s including eye roll. Sometimes Tiffany’s finally getting airtime by slagging me off and reaming me a new one.
A lot of people should be thanking me because attached to me, good or bad, they’re getting the airtime. I just feel humbled and blessed and honored they have continued to put me up as one of the memorable characters. Five years from now, 18 of these contestants from season 50 will not even be remembered. But they will think of 50. And whether they love me or hate me, they will remember me being attached to this season.
Coach, you’ve always approached Survivor with a sense of mythology and a personal narrative. What story do you think the season ultimately told about you?
That I can be wise, that I can be a big character, I can be eclectic. I think the biggest thing is that I can be joyful, because they really showed my happy side. I’m singing and dancing almost the whole time. I think that that’s the biggest takeaway; but that I can be stupid and that I can have holes in me because I’m older and I’m vulnerable. They can show all of the above. It’s why in the words of the great man himself, “There’s never been a Coach, there will never be another Coach.”
The joyful part really shows where I’m at in life. I have this amazing family. I’ve got a great job, a great career. My kids’ artwork is hanging up behind me. The meaning of life is not what it was 15 years ago. It’s shifted and is different. It’s to have a relationship with the creator of the universe. It’s to have a relationship with the creator of the universe. That’s first and foremost. There’s a spot inside of our soul that will not be filled up with anything other than that, whatever that looks like to you. Number two is to find your soulmate and crush life’s obstacles together and leave a generational legacy through your children. And number three is to keep the magic inside of us that we’ve been born with.
It’s joy, kindness and love. The world wants to beat it out of us, especially when we’re men. And it beat it out of me for a while, but I see it in my kids every day and I protect it in my kids every day. If we give that to everybody that we meet – joy, kindness, and love – the world’s going to change. And in my corner of the world, I do that every day and it has been changed. Whether I’m at the high school or I’m radiating light through these kids that are coming through my program and they in turn are radiating light to the student body, or where I’m conducting the symphony, where I’m coaching soccer. It’s there. It’s a ripple effect and we can all do it. We just have to let go of our ego and our pride.
To close us out, do you have a haiku, quote or a song that sums up your Survivor 50 experience?
I’ll give you a haiku and then I’ll give you a quote. So Walter Savage Landor once said that, “It’s easy to look down on others, but to look down on yourself is the true difficult task.” And I think that’s apropos. It’s easy for people to talk smack online. But when you look at yourself and your introspective and say, “This is not who I want to be, ” then that’s the difficult task and something that I think I’ve done over the survivor journey. A haiku, “Bitter at this time. My heart is downtrodden now. Resilience will come.”
Coach, always a pleasure to talk to you. I look forward to seeing you at the finale in L.A. next month.
You too, brother. I appreciate you.
***
Survivor airs new episodes on Wednesdays at 8pm on CBS and Paramount+.
