Jeff Probst says players cut from Survivor 49 were disrespecting the rules: ‘An even more blatant level’

Survivor 49 kicked off last night with a two-hour premiere featuring the franchise’s usual collection of thrills, chills, and spills. It also featured complete challenge domination from the Hina tribe. What makes that so interesting is that two of the Hina tribe members — Jason Treul and Michelle “MC” Chukwujekwu — only joined the cast mere hours before the season began filming.

That’s because two Survivor 49 cast members were cut from the season the day before shooting began due to rules violations. Host Jeff Probst previously discussed the decision to drop the two contestants with Entertainment Weekly — who was on location in Fiji when the switch occurred — but the host expanded upon the behind-the-scenes drama on the latest edition of his On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast.

Probst was asked by On Fire producer Jay Wolff to explain how the pregame process works and what went wrong on season 49.

“So the way it works is in the days leading up to the beginning of the game, all the players are together. They’re at a place we call Ponderosa,” Probst explains on the podcast. “So you have all of your competitors, but you’re not allowed to talk. That’s why we have so many handlers there to make sure nobody’s talking. You can obviously look at each other, you can try to make eye contact. That might work for you, it might not.… A lot of people scribbled down assessments of their players. Like, ‘I think this,’ or ‘Maybe I’ll get aligned with that person, whatever.’”

That’s all fine and allowed, of course, but two of the contestants took things too far. “The only thing is we have rules,” Probst continues. “And the rules are you cannot talk to each other, for obvious reasons. And in this season, season 49, we had two players who were disrespecting that rule. They just kept talking. So much so that I got a call from our Ponderosa team saying, ‘There’s a level of concern.’”

According to Prosbt, the duo were essentially told to knock it off. “So we asked [the Ponderosa team], ‘Please remind them with a stern warning that you can’t talk.’ And I went and met with our executive team and said, ‘Look, we might have a situation.’ And before we could even finish our discussion, I got a second phone call saying that the level of disrespect had reached an even more blatant level.’”

That’s when things reached game-over territory. “That was all it took,” reveals the host and showrunner. “Candidly, the decision was made in that moment to immediately remove those two players from the game and replace them with our alternates, Jason and MC. And it sent shock ways through the rest of the players as it was very clear that something was happening with those players.”

It also reassured the rest of the cast that they would all be operating on a level playing field once the game began. “What really happened was the players, once they were able to talk, they thanked our producers because they said ‘We were all aware that this was happening. And it felt like cheating. Like there was an advantage being had.’ And now they’re in the situation of: Should I do that as well?”

Want to be kept up with all things Survivor? Dig deep and sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free Survivor Weekly newsletter to have all the latest news, interviews, and commentary sent right to your inbox. 

By taking such decisive action, Probst and company sent a loud and clear message to not only the Survivor 49 cast, but to all future potential players as well. “It’s the first time in history we’ve ever done this, which is saying something. We’ve done this 49 times, several hundred people have played. But it should be clear to future players, although I doubt this will ever happen again, to just know we will not hesitate to pull you from the game. It doesn’t matter how much time or money we’ve invested in you, we value the integrity of the game more than anything.”