The 32nd season of “Survivor” begins tonight with a 90-minute episode from 8-9:30 p.m. with Nick Maiorano, a personal trainer from Redondo Beach, among the 18 contestants.
Just like in the spring 2014 season, the season’s theme is “Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty.”
“I love the divisions,” said host and executive producer Jeff Probst in a video supplied by CBS.
“I love that we literally have some of the smartest people that have ever played this show this season and I like that we have brawn. You look at the hot tribe and you go, ‘They’re hot, guys and girls.”‘
Maiorano is member of the Beauty Tribe, “Gondol.”
“I do three things better than most people,” the 30-year-old said. “I listen to you, I’m interested in you and I accept you. I can pretend to do those things. I pretend to do them daily.”
Probst described Maiorano as “obviously a great-looking guy. He looks like Superman.”
“But Nick has got an edge for sure,” Probst said. “He’s cocky, bordering on arrogant, thinks he knows everything, 100 percent villain. He knows that. There’s no question he’s not a hero. I think he’s going to stir up chaos and I think he’s smart enough to maybe pull it off.”
Maiorano’s fellow Gondol tribe member Anna Khait, a 26-year-old professional poker player from Brooklyn, New York, said she would “play with my flirt card. I’ll flirt with a female if need be. I’ll do what I need to do.
Other tribe members include 19-year-old Julia Sokolowski, a self- described “Survivor” superfan who noted that “a year ago today, I was sitting in a high school classroom, raising my hand to ask to go to the bathroom and now I’m out here in Cambodia, playing ‘Survivor”‘; Caleb Reynolds, the fourth-place finisher in the 2014 season of the CBS competition series “Big Brother”; and Tai Trang, a 51-year-old gardener from San Francisco who was born and raised in Vietnam.
“Tai is a guy that when he walked in the door, he was on the show,” Probst said.
“He’s that energy I wish I had more of. A proud man. Gay man. Asian American man who has this great love of the world and people and that’s as beautiful as it gets. Tai would be one of the greatest winners ever if he could get to the end.”
Scot Pollard, who played 11 seasons in the NBA, is a member of the Brawn Tribe “To Tang,” along with bounty hunter Kyle Jason and body builder Cydney Gillon.
The Brains Tribe “Chan Loh” includes Neal Gottlieb, the founder of the ice cream manufacturer Three Twins Ice Cream; Elisabeth Markham, a quantitative strategist from Brooklyn who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and 72-year-old former FBI agent Joseph Del Campo.
The 39-day season was conducted on the island Kaoh Rong in Cambodia amid relentless weather and harsh conditions providing “one of the most physically grueling seasons in the show’s history,” according to CBS.
