Imagine going through the grueling Survivor casting process: submitting a video, going to a casting call, getting through all those interviews. It’s hard work but it’s worth it because now you’ve made it onto the show! You do decently well, enough to make it into the jury and hopefully have some sort of impact on the game. You get home, antsy to watch back your performance to see how they portrayed you to the world. The season starts and you’re mortified to find out that you are basically invisible your whole time there. Congratulations, you’ve received a purple edit.
While purple edits were given out before Nicaragua, they were only baptized thanks to the immortal Kelly Shinn of Survivor 21. She made it 11 episodes into the season only to appear in five confessionals, four of which were in her last episode. The reason for editing her out of the season almost entirely was that she had decided to quit late into the game and her presence on the island had been largely inconsequential to the greater story. Purple Kelly was a follower who voted as she was told and had no interesting opinions, at least from what we were shown… which is basically nothing.
There must be something to being a Kelly on Survivor because many of them have been afflicted with a severe lack of screen time. Purple Kelly wasn’t even the only Kelly in Nicaragua to receive minimal airtime. Kelly Bruno, the amputee who was the target of NaOnka Mixon’s one-sided feud, appeared in seven confessionals during her seven episode stint. Survivor Samoa’s Kelly Sharbaugh apprared only in eight confessionals through nine episodes. She was on a purple tribe and her last name started with an “S”, Kelly Sharbaugh easily could have been purple Kelly and nobody would have batted an eye. In Survivor: San Juan del Sur, Kelley Wentworth (technically a Kelly) had only six confessionals through five episodes. One of the Survivor OGs and the first ever runner-up, Kelly Wigglesworth, came back for Survivor: Cambodia only to blend in with the furniture as she made it nine episodes with only five confessionals.
While the number of confessionals isn’t entirely what dictates getting a purple edit, it’s a good telltale sign. Players are not magically gifted confessionals if they aren’t doing something within the game to merit getting one. Normally the story of the season is told through confessionals and production likes to keep everything streamlined as much as possible.
I was curious to see how many players throughout Survivor history had been hit with a low number of confessionals. Of course, going into this without establishing somewhat of a baseline would have been a practice in insanity. In order to make it easy to find what I was looking for, I looked at each season to see which jurors and above received less than a confessional per episode. Those are the people I included in my data.
You could argue that the first people to be recipients of the purple edit were players like Nick Brown or Amber Brkich in the Australian Outback. Amber was mostly remembered as Jerry Manthey’s lackey until she returned for All-Stars, Nick is mostly not remembered by anybody. They didn’t make the cut under my specific criteria but already by season two, producers were starting to leave some people a little less developed than others.
After putting it all together, these were the results:
Throughout 34 seasons, because Survivor: Heroes vs Healers vs Hustlers doesn’t get to be included just yet, 22 players have at least made jury and received less than one confessional per episode. There are only two pre-All-Stars players that make the list. Zoe was mostly a supporting character in the Rotu 4 alliance in Marquesas. It’s possible that Darrah simply didn’t get much material in Pearl Islands because it was impossible to understand her. Though Ryan Opray said in a Reddit AMA once that she didn’t get many confessionals because she didn’t like filming them.
One thing that definitely stands out by looking at the final list: purple Kelly doesn’t even have the worst ratio of the bunch. That honor belongs to South Pacific’s Whitney Duncan whose five confessionals in 11 episodes gives her an average of 0.36 confessionals per episode. Part of that might be because Whitney went on the season as a married woman and ended up in a showmance that was never shown. For obvious reasons.
Still, you have to question the Amazing Race’s casting decisions when Whitney’s eventual husband and race partner, Keith Tollefson, picked up a whopping 0.6 confessionals per episode in the same season. Put together, they almost average a confessional per episode.
Going through the names on the list is an interesting experiment in itself. There are some legitimately forgettable players like the Cook Islands duo of Brad Virata and Rebecca Borman. You could be forgiven for not remembering either of them even if you had just finished watching their season last week. The same could be said for Carter “rice fuels us” Williams and his performance out in Survivor: Philippines.
On the other hand, there are also some contestants who are either fairly well-known or considered dark horse favorites among the Survivor community. The most obvious of which is Ozzy Lusth in Game Changers. Accused of dominating South Pacific with Coach Wade in terms of air time, Ozzy more than made amends for it last season. He never really received much of a storyline outside of providing for the tribe and finding peace with Cirie and got cut early into the merge.
Then you also have the only other returning player, Danielle DiLorenzo in Heroes vs Villains. Danielle is definitely not on Ozzy’s level of Survivor celebrity but she is a losing finalist who made it decently far on her second season. She happened to fall into an alliance with Russell Hantz and Parvati Shallow but because she didn’t make any decisions for the group, she remained largely invisible. Her most memorable moment that season was fighting for an idol clue with Amanda Kimmel, rudely interrupting Colby Donaldson’s Treasure Island movie experience.
Obviously Kelly Wigglesworth used to be kind of a huge deal but by Cambodia, sadly a lot of Survivor fans might not have known who she was. Because she didn’t seem invested in her second chance, the producers did not show us much of the Kelly of old. Players like Stacy Kimball and Michelle Yi, both from Survivor: Fiji are some of the odd-ball favorites some fans have despite receiving small edits in comparison to the rest of their cast.
The other thing that is definitely noticeable is the often talked about 5th place edit. These are the players that make their season’s finale without being very visible on the screen. These players are often obvious vote-outs for the first part of the season finale because nobody is going to really be invested in their chances to win the game. Not all of these players finished exactly fifth but many of them made the finale or the penultimate episodes.
On this list, we are looking at eight players in this predicament. Darrah, Palau’s Jennifer Lyon, Stacy, Samoa’s Brett Clouser, Nicaragua’s Dan Lembo, South Pacific’s Rick Nelson, Kimmi, and Millennials vs Gen X’s Sunday Burquest. Brett’s edit is particularly terrible considering that through 12 episodes, he had only gotten four confessionals, including Samoa’s first confessional of the season.
Looking at that list, it’s obvious that this is a real edit that people are given. Producers want you to care about the eventual finalist, because they might win. They want you to care about the last person cut before final tribal council, because those are often the saddest boots of a season. Those 5th and 6th place finishers? You aren’t allowed to care about them because you will be upset if they get cut close, but not close enough, to the end.
While no winners ended up receiving less than a confessional per episode, Natalie White got pretty damn close. She appeared in 15 confessionals during Samoa’s run in only 14 episodes. It’s often been said that she got the worst edit of any Survivor winner and the numbers tend to back that up. It really does seem like the editors wanted that season to be about how Russell lost instead of how Natalie won.
It seems like there is no obvious road to getting purpled. Obviously being a fun personality is important to avoid becoming the next Kelly Shinn. So too is being important to the season’s overarching storyline. If you can avoid finishing around 5th or 6th, that would probably help too. Finally, if you’re going to get into a showmance, make sure you aren’t married first and try not to be the most boring people in existence. If you can do all of that, you should be good to see yourself on television when you get back from your Survivor experience.
