Survivor turns 20: Sonja Christopher recalls being the CBS reality show's first ousted cast member

Entertainment Weekly

Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of Survivor's premiere in 2000. May 31 also marks the 20th anniversary of Sonja Christopher becoming the first contestant voted out in Tribal Council. "Host Jeff Probst has now snuffed 610 torches in his Survivor career, but Christopher’s was his very first," says Dalton Ross. "And while that may seem like a somewhat dubious distinction for the ukulele-strummer, it has also given her a small measure of reality television fame as the first person to endure such a cruel fate — and do it with a smile on her face and a song in her heart." Twenty years later Christopher, who's now 83, remains the oldest female contestant to ever play the game. "It's a mixed bag," Christopher says of her role in Survivor history. "I'm very glad it happened to me at the age I did, because if it happened when I was younger, I would've really gotten caught up in it and it would've changed my life more, I think, not for the good. I became aware that it would be easy to lose myself and get caught up in this and I didn't want to do that." As for being the oldest woman to still have ever competed on Survivor, Christopher says: "There is something to ageism, because I see it again and again, that the older ones often get voted off first in the subsequent shows. It's not so prevalent anymore, but I find myself having that bias too, but it's the opposite: I get kindly disposed towards older women, unless they're a jerk, just because look at them go!"