Summary
- Naked and Afraid contestants receive a few thousand dollars for their appearance and have their flight and hotel covered.
- The show focuses on authentic survival challenges rather than prize money, with contestants often citing personal growth and pride as their main motivation.
- Casting directors look for contestants with strong survival skills, and the show is now seeking participants with unique survival stories.
On Discovery's popular survival reality series Naked and Afraid, two naked strangers are dropped into the wilderness and challenged to survive for 21 days with only one personal item each.
For many of us, there is no amount of money that would make us strip down and sit alone in the jungle for three weeks, but for the Naked and Afraid contestants, it might be more about the experience. Unlike Survivor, the contestants of Naked and Afraid are not offered prize money for staying the whole time and are offered nothing more than pride for their dedication to the reality show.
In the following, we take a look at how much Naked and Afraid contestants are paid to participate and how Discovery Channel casts their Naked and Afraid contestants.
What Do Naked And Afraid Contestants Get Paid
While many reality shows offer huge prize pots, Naked and Afraid only offers bragging rights. While Naked and Afraid does not offer prize money, cast members are compensated.
In 2022, Naked and Afraid XL participants Alyssa Ballestero and Stacey Lee Osorio revealed to People that they only received a few thousand dollars for their appearance on the show. Contestants flight and a two-night hotel stay are reportedly also covered by the production team.
“We’re taking them away from their job, and we realize that, and so we give them a weekly stipend to compensate for their lost wages, but no, there is no prize,” casting director Kristi Russell told Channel Guide in 2015.
Contestants on Naked and Afraid XL get slightly more compensation, but they spend double the amount of time spent in the wilderness. It has been reported that Naked and Afraid XL contestants are rewarded with $24,000 for their 40 days battling the elements.
The idea of the show was not to be a reality TV series where competitors tried to win a big prize pot, but to "come up with the most authentic survival challenge ever," explained executive producer David Garfinkle, "and I think we've done that... And for us, the nudity, within the first hour, it's kind of forgotten because now they have to really survive for the next 21 days with no food, no water, no shelter."
"It's incredibly difficult, as you know, but it's real, and it's raw."
There have been several medical emergencies on Naked and Afriad, but one of the worst happened in Season 2. Contestant Manu Toigo was bit by a mosquito carrying dengue fever and she developed dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can be fatal.
Why Naked And Afraid Contestants Are Okay With Small Salary
So, why would people go on such a high-risk show if there was no life-changing money reward at the end?
In an interview with Reality Tidbit, Naked and Afraid Season 2 contestant Jeff Zausch explained why people go on the show.
"What I always say is ‘This is who we are. This is what we are made of’. Some people were made to be race car drivers. Some people were, you know, made to be CEOs of companies. We were made to push the limits of what’s humanly possible."
"The No. 1 reward of this show was the pride that we got from completing the challenge," Zausch added.
"The feeling on Day 21 when we were rescued was absolutely the best day of our life. That's why we did this challenge."
Adventurer and former contestant Eva Rupert maintained that doing the show is a "life-changing experience" that is "like stripping yourself down to the very core of your existence."
"It reveals a layer of yourself that you cannot know in any other way, shape or form," she said. "It's only until you are pulled down to the rawest, most central core of your existence that you can really learn who you are. … That's how you grow as a person, and that's how you develop and change and become even a greater sense of yourself than what you already are."
After an appearance on Naked and Afraid, many contestants go on to appear on spinoffs and other reality shows. Andrew Shayde appeared on the original reality show and its spinoff Naked and Afraid: Castaways. He was also a contestant on the new CBS competition series Buddy Games, Peacock’s Snake in the Grass. Zausch and hosted Discovery’s Dual Survival with fellow Naked and Afraid alum EJ Snyder.
Laura Zerra hosted an online show called Decivilized for Carbon TV and wrote a book, A Modern Guide to Knifemaking. In 2022, Blair Braverman released a novel, Small Game, partly inspired by her time on Naked and Afraid.
How Naked And Afraid Contestants Get Put On The Show
The main thing casting directors need you to prove before being cast for Naked and Afraid is that you can start a fire. They also ask applicants to have a good knowledge of shelter building, and that they can list different ways to access water and prove it.
Casting director Kristi Russell explained that some contestants receive training before being sent to a mystery location with only a radio transmitter and a bag to ensure they can handle the three weeks of mental and physical challenges.
"We gave them each the amount of training that they would need so that they would be able to survive out there, so fire, shelter, and water. Those are the three basic survival tools that you need to have to have a chance, and that’s what we really focused on."
They admit that the show may be running out of elite survivalists, believing they have "tapped every wilderness school, and every ex-military survival group, and all the areas of survival that we can find."
Now, the show is looking for contestants with more interesting survival stories, like those involved in ship wrecks who have been lost in the jungle or in the desert. While they may not have the physical skills or survival knowledge of an ex-military contestant, they clearly have the mental fortitude to handle Naked and Afraid.
Sometimes Naked and Afraid contestants know where they are going before filming, especially if that area has very specific survival requirements. "We will give them a very short amount of notice so that they have time to adequately do some research and give themselves the best chance for survival."
Naked and Afraid
- Release Date
- June 23, 2013
- Network
- Discovery
Cast
-
Michael BrownSelf - Survivalist
WHERE TO WATCH
- Main Genre
- Reality
- Seasons
- 18
- Studio
- Renegade 83
- Franchise
- Naked and Afraid
- Distributor
- Discovery
- Sequel
- Naked and Afraid XL
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