CBS
John ‘JP’ Hilsabeck, Chrissy Hofbeck, and Ryan Ulrich on Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers.
Being on a competition reality show can be physically and mentally taxing, but that doesn’t go away when the contestants are done filming. For some, seeing their season play out on TV — with all the world able to weigh in — is harder than filming it was.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ryan Ulrich of Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers opens up about his mental health struggles that came after his time on the show — which just goes to show that this can affect anyone. Ulrich made it all the way to the end, finishing in third place behind winner Ben Driebergen and runner-up Chrissy Hofbeck. But it was still incredibly hard for him after the show.
Ulrich Started Obsessing Over What He Could Have Done Differently
Ulrich told Entertainment Weekly that once he got home from filming, he “could not stop thinking about Survivor, but it was no longer in a way that brought [him] joy.”
“Not knowing definitively how I placed was absolutely terrible. I spent all of my time thinking about if I made the right decisions, what I should have done differently, and what the final vote was going to be. I felt very alone, and it was unequivocally the worst time in my life,” said Ulrich, adding, “I just felt as though nobody could understand what I was going through. And I could not even speak to anybody because I was strict about keeping the confidentiality of Survivor. I watched a lot of baseball that summer and just tried not to think about Survivor, but it was ultimately the lowest point of my life.”
He also said that the show used to be an outlet for him, something that he had to “escape from everything and just purely enjoy.” But after he played, it “no longer served as that escape, but instead became the source” for why he was feeling so down.
It didn’t help things that when he came back, he was so starved from being on the show that he started eating everything and ended up 18 pounds heavier than before he went on the show. He also had a lot of medical problems.
“I had broken my toe out there on the swapped tribe, so I had to attend to that when I got back, two of my teeth were impacted so I had to get those pulled, I am pretty sure I had a UTI, my hair was incredibly thin, and my eyesight in my right eye changed. I also had some form of neuropathy in my foot, which thankfully subsided. Including all the cuts and bruises I had, it was absolutely brutal and I did not like looking at myself in the mirror because I looked so emaciated,” said Ulrich.
He Also Had Some Interesting Insights Into Production and Editing That Most People Probably Don’t Think About
Ulrich also revealed that he thought his edit on the show was “fine,” but there are always things that participants are surprised to see how they’re edited together.
“With any player’s edit, I believe that if you do not ultimately win the game, then the story on television is not going to be told through your lens. It was weird seeing how they spliced events that took place days apart to make it look like one shot and put people into conversations and moments they were not physically in,” said Ulrich.
He added, “Do I wish more things were shown from my perspective? Of course, but if you ask any player, even those who win, they want more to be shown that did not make the final cut. If a player loses, there has to be at least some justification from the viewer’s perspective why they lost. Conversely, there needs to be justification why a player won. It is ultimately a television show that strives to present a narrative to the audience.”
Survivor hopes to film season 41 in the spring of 2021 for a fall 2021 premiere.
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