EW: Did Garrett just not want to play this game? We heard him talk on day 4 about how miserable he was and about not digging the manual labor and the starving and how it wasn’t a cool adventure at all. And then he appeared particularly adverse to any form of strategy talk in that second vote. Could this guy just not hack it?
PROBST: I do think Garrett underestimated how physically difficult this game would be. You can tell by his body that he takes extremely good care of himself and his sculpted body— in part — comes from eating an extremely balanced and well timed diet consisting mostly of proteins. So four days of existing on only handfuls of rice is very tough on his system. This isn’t an excuse, it’s just the truth. Someone whose diet is a bit more average doesn’t have the same reaction. I also think Garrett realized that he’s an “indoor” guy — again, nothing wrong with that. Just don’t sign up for Survivor next time. I think Garrett got what he wanted from the experience. I don’t think he quit, I think he was still playing, he just made a mistake in holding an “open” Tribal Council and it backfired. Same with David. He made a big move and it didn’t play out. He tried to take out the guy he thought was the big gun and it came back to haunt him. But I loved that he made such a big move so early on. It showed that he came to win. We hated to see him go so soon. He was someone we absolutely loved having on the show and really hoped he would last a long time.

EW: When you have a situation like this with J’Tia ruining 98% of the tribe’s rice supply, what do you as producers do? Do you give them a new supply? Because you can’t let them actually starve to death out there, can you?
PROBST: The basic philosophy is we do nothing. We want to see them figure it out on their own. There are lots of ideas they could try before we would intervene. But if it got to where they truly had nothing and needed help — we’d give it to them, but it would come at a massive price. (Survivor fans remember Survivor: The Australian Outback when I took their entire camp in exchange for more rice. Every decision has a consequence.