In his debut novel, Escape!, which came out last week, DC author Stephen Fishbach draws on his experience both behind the scenes as a former television executive and as a two-time contestant on the CBS reality show Survivor. The book taps his Survivor experience to tell the fictional story of eight contestants who have to figure out how to get off an isolated island to win a million-dollar prize. Escape! is about reality-TV redemption and who really holds the power once the cameras stop rolling. Since moving to DC from Los Angeles during the pandemic to be closer to his wife’s family, the Pushcart Prize–winning writer is focused on being known less as a reality-show contestant and more as an author and podcast host. I caught up with him amid his current book tour to talk about writing, the world of Escape!, and life after Survivor. How did Survivor shape your personal and professional life? I would say Survivor did two incredible things for me. The first thing was it opened up my own resilience and capacity as a human being. I lived a very comfortable life working in New York, and Survivor really tested, pushed, and showed me that I could excel beyond what I perceived my own limits to be. That’s how I became a writer—trusting that I could push myself past what I thought I was capable of. I had this incredible experience on [Survivor] Cambodia. There were torrential downpours for days. Everyone was having the worst experience of their lives; everyone was huddled in the shelter, weeping, clinging to each other for warmth, and I got violently ill. I had to strip off my clothes and leave them in the shelter to keep them somewhat dry, go out into the storm, and be violently sick. I had this true epiphany moment of, if I’m willing to do this for Survivor, how can I not do this for the thing I truly care about, which is writing? I had a similar moment on [Survivor] Tocantins, where I made fire for the first time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to. I was on Exile Island all by myself, it was starting to rain, and I knew I was going to be in for the longest night of my life if I couldn’t make fire. I was striking at this flint for hours—literally hours—and then, just as dark was descending, I got a spark. It felt so incredibly empowering that I did it. The second thing that Survivor did was it exposed me to people who were dramatically different from me. Everybody lives in bubbles these days, and I certainly did. Most of the people I knew were people like me—not in terms of their ethnicities or backgrounds, but in terms of their goals and mindsets, what they wanted out of their lives, how they envisioned a good life for themselves. Survivor is people who are just wildly different, whose expectations from life were hugely different. It broadened my perspective, and that enriched me as a human and therefore enriched me as a writer. Now I have this huge font of characters to draw from. You mention finding your authenticity and humanity within these very, as you write in the book, manufactured structures. Can you talk more about that? That’s the core of the novel and the core of what I’m most fascinated by in reality television. Especially for these jungle shows, people really do go out there seeking their deepest, most authentic self and some confrontation with the wild world around them that you don’t really get in our comfortable, safe, urban lives. I absolutely felt that I was finding some deeper part of myself while the cameras were in my face and it was going to be edited to air on CBS primetime. People fundamentally think of reality TV as this sort of trashy, disposable thing. There is human depth to the experiences of people on these shows that is so at odds with the cultural imagination of what reality television is. It’s really fascinating. How has living in DC changed how you think about power, strategy, and competition after Survivor? Certainly one of the themes of this book is the way that people use power to manipulate others and impose their will on others. That’s a huge part of our culture now; we see it all around us, the way people flagrantly use power, without considering the impact on the human lives around them. That’s the core of the book and that’s hopefully one way it’s relevant to people outside of the reality TV fan base–ultimately, this is a book about power and how the more powerful people get to construct the narrative of what’s happening. That’s what we’re facing in our country now. How often do you get recognized in DC, and what are those interactions like here? Honestly, I get recognized in DC more than other places, which is interesting to me. Maybe once a month someone will come up to me, and they’re all wonderful interactions. People come up and say, “Are you Stephen from Survivor?” I say yes, and then we shake hands and occasionally take a picture. It’s always lovely, and I always welcome it. I’m not “real” famous, so I’m not put off by it. I get to feel really cool in front of my wife and any friends who happen to be around, so it’s always a real thrill when it happens. How did you come to write Escape!? I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and it was that experience on Survivor: Cambodia that motivated me. When I came back, I said, “I’m going to write a novel.” I was committed to it. Initially, I was writing about a twenty-something in New York, and it just felt like stale terrain that I’d seen before. I realized I have access to this world—as a former contestant, as someone who worked on the network side, and as someone who worked with reality TV producers as part of a trade group. I’ve seen the whole scope of this world in a way that I’d never seen depicted in fiction in an authentic way before. I wanted to capture the real human texture of what that’s like. Image courtesy of Penguin Random House. The book focuses on a contestant, named Kent, and also a producer of the show, named Beck. Why tell the story through two points of view? You can’t tell the full reality TV story without getting both the producer’s and the contestant’s perspective. The contestants are the ones who are experiencing it, and I wanted to add that depth and humanity to them. But, of course, we all know that the producers are putting their thumbs on the scales. What is so fascinating about the producers is the way they are trying to structure the contestants’ lives into a three-act story—how they take these chaotic, messy lives, in the most extreme conditions of the wilderness, and structure them into a narrative. Fundamentally, this is a book about storytelling and narratives, and who gets to control the story. The contestants are trying to control their own stories, and producers are trying to control the story of the contestants. I loved that tension. It was really hard to plot. I spent a lot of time plotting out my different structural beats and having character arcs mapped against other character arcs, but I really wanted to create this tension between these two different worlds. What made you decide to have Kent return to reality TV and redefine himself after a very public scandal? It’s honestly something I’ve seen from former reality contestants who want to escape their real lives and get back to this vision of themselves that they had. These reality shows are filmed for a month; they air for six months. But for a lot of people, they come to define their identities, and then their real life can never measure up to that. They—we—go to events and kind of perform these cartoonish versions of ourselves, hoping to recapture that feeling for a moment. There is something very sad, but also very contemporary, about that desire to turn yourself into a two-dimensional cartoon and achieve some kind of cultural liftoff. We’re all seeking some fame within our little bubbles, some kind of notoriety, and reality TV feels like a real distilling of this. And on the other hand, there’s Beck, who needs to redefine herself after a career tragedy. How common are these behind-the-scenes motivations that audiences aren’t clued in on? That was the thing that was most interesting to me about the producers. The contestants have this view of the producers as these sort of gods. As a contestant, you are putting yourself entirely into the hands of these people. You’re going to a location, you’re doing these challenges, you’re allowing them to lead you blindfolded with this big, holy push—putting your faith in them, that the production edifice is going to take care of you. But ultimately, they’re just messy, flawed humans who are working through their own tragedies, their own chaotic pasts. That was what I wanted to capture: the person that you want to believe is in control is totally out of control. In Escape! you also write about this thing where reality stars have trouble letting go of the spotlight and get pulled back into other reality shows in order to keep it going. Why does that interest you?  It’s such a compelling feeling. Before I went on Survivor, I was not interested in being on TV at all. I thought it was a really cool game, and I wanted an adventure. Then, when I got back and it started to air, I noticed people treated me differently. This was literally just the fact of being on television. It wasn’t like I was on Top Chef, where I was demonstrating what an amazing cook I was, or Project Runway. It was incredible how being on TV changed how people treated me. It felt great. Then, suddenly, it goes away very quickly. The show stops airing, and a month later, you’re not getting those invitations anymore. Even more intense than the feeling of momentary celebrity is the low when you lose it. You’re just constantly kind of scrambling to get it back. Ideas about how editing affects a narrative are a major part of Escape!. Was that inspired by your experience on Survivor, when your story is essentially created by producers and editors in the editing room? I had it both ways. My first season of Survivor, I felt like I was portrayed as even more heroic than I really was, maybe smarter than I was. There’s a moment in episode two of [Survivor] Tocantins where I make a winning basket that looks like some huge heroic moment, but it was actually extremely long and embarrassing in reality. And then the second time I played, [producers] had the custom clown music [edited in]. I felt like I was made into more of a buffoon. I’ve seen how it can both elevate and give you this high, and I’ve seen how it can bring you down and make you embarrassed. It’s something that I was probably too aware of the second time. I think that actually made me get out of the moment, and maybe that’s why I didn’t have as great an experience. You must have felt a shift in how fans reacted to you across both seasons. Did you ever experience toxic fandom, and did that influence the convention in Escape!? I actually have not had a toxic experience. Overall, I’ve had an amazing experience with the fan base. That’s one of the best things that Survivor has introduced me to: this community of people who love and embrace the show, and who treat me in a lovely way simply for having been on it. With Kent in that scene, I’m trying to parody the narcissistic contestant’s perspective and how dismissive they can be—because that’s always something that really bothers me at fan events, when I see contestants high-handing the fans, who are the whole reason they’re there. To me, that scene was more about parodying the contestant than the fan base. Lastly, would you rather compete in a season of Survivor again or Escape!? Definitely Survivor. I could not survive in the conditions of Escape!. I’d do very badly.The post “Survivor” Star Stephen Fishbach’s Novel Pulls Back the Curtain on Reality TV first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less