“Survivor 46” host Jeff Probst reacts to getting spicy at premiere Tribal Council

"That's just not going to fly," Probst tells EW of Jelinsky's inability to own his actions.

Survivor host Jeff Probst told us he was ready to “sling a few arrows” and get a bit tougher at Tribal Council this season, and we saw that new attitude right out of the gate on the premiere of Survivor 46.

The scene was set after David Jelinsky had an epic run of futility in his first three days of the game. Not only did his tribe lose both of their challenges with him on the key puzzle portion on both, but he volunteered to take part in the physically demanding sweat task and then quit, and also insisted on being the Siga tribe representative on a journey, and then essentially quit there as well — admitting he had the skull card and losing his vote so the other two players (Maria Shrime Gonzalez and Tevin Davis) got extra votes.

So when Jelinsky sat there at Tribal Council and insisted he was not the type to quit something, Probst pounced — taking the player to task for saying he was not the type to quit something right after quitting something. And when Jelinsky continued to make excuses, the host called him out for not owning that as well.

EW went to Fiji for filming of Survivor 46 and was at that Tribal Council — providing an account in our recap of many things that happened there that did not make it to TV — so we cornered the host on the set just minutes after Jelinsky eventually had his torch snuffed. What did he make of Jelinsky’s misfortune? Why did the host come at the player? How come Jess seemed completely unable to communicate? We asked Probst all that and more, and you can either read the entire interview or watch his answers in the video below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay Jeff. It’s just minutes after the first Tribal Council of Survivor 46. What'd you see in there?

JEFF PROBST:  Well, I think Jelinsky was in trouble and he kind of saw that in the first three days. He put himself in situations to do the sweat task, he put himself on the journey, he put himself on the puzzle. Those are big decisions, and if they work, you can cement yourself and have good standing in your tribe. If they don't work, you can be in trouble.

I thought it was honorable tonight, the way he owned his mistakes finally, and tried to see if he could recover. And that seemed to be the question: Is there a way for a guy who's saying he doesn't want to lie, and his feet hurt, and all the injuries he had, to survive in this group? And clearly there wasn't. Just from the outside, I would say it was probably the right choice.

Not that Jelinsky couldn't play a different game if he played again, but these first three days, those decisions you make often are very telling at your first Tribal Council. And I felt bad for him, because even though he seemed to think it was coming, when it happened, he did still seem shocked. And it's hard when you hear somebody tell their story, and they come out here and they play their best version, and it's not good enough.

But that high and that low and the contrast is what Survivor is all about. And that's why we have a vote. And that's why a torch does get snuffed. Because when you get to the end, what it means is it didn't happen to you! You survived Tribal after Tribal after Tribal. That's the game.

You don't even know this yet, because you didn't see his final words after he was voted off, but he said every ounce of him thought it was Jess tonight coming into Tribal. And what I really liked is that you're the eyes and ears and voice of the audience watching, and you challenged Jelinsky — respectfully, but you challenged him — when he said, “I haven't quit,” and you were like, “Hold on a second.” Tell me what you were hearing and why you had to come back at him a little bit.

I think there's been a weird thing sort of happening lately that I've been picking up on, which is this feeling that it's okay to just be good. “I tried. I'm going to quit. I tried. I've done that enough. My feet hurt, and I don't have any stake in it.” But you can't quit and then say something about the word "several" meaning "seven" — that's just not going to fly.

So yeah, I was pushing back. Jelinsky finally did own it. It took quite a bit of work to get him to own it. And I think that justifiable ethics — the way we couch things and the way we see it — is one of the things that's so interesting about Survivor. Because if Q had had a different partner, I'm not sure they would've quit. My guess is Q realized “I can't do it alone. He's going to give up. So let's just stop now. Let me cut my losses now.” And that's probably one of the reasons Jelinsky is gone.

It's interesting to hear his words because he was clearly trying to sell Jess as the one to go and make it feel like it was him to blindside her. And he clearly had no idea that the entire tribe had turned on him. That's the brutal part of the game. And the irony here: Here's the guy who said, "I don't want to lie," and five people lied to him.

At one point you listed off all the things that had gone wrong for him in these first three days. Is that just bad luck, or do you make your own luck in this game? Or is it a bit of both?

It's a good philosophical question. The one thing I didn't want to hammer Jelinsky on, but he did seem to have a bit of “This happened to me, this happened to me, I had no chance.” We've done a lot of sweat challenges: No one has ever failed, and no one has ever quit. [ED NOTE: This was recorded before Survivor 45 had aired, where both tribes failed the Sweat and Savvy task.]

We test our tasks and our challenges so they can be successful, but they require work. So he painted it as though it was impossible. It's not; we tested it a lot. We could probably do it again next season and it would be accomplished. Just happened to be his feet were hurting him. I don't know how bad they are. They sound pretty bad. So that's real. Those things can happen and make it hard to get around, but you’ve got to own it. And I'm sure that was a part of the group decision as well, is that if you can't own it here, then it's hard to maybe trust you to own it in the future.

I don't know, Dalton. I mean, for real. I don't play. I'm not out there. I don't know all the minutiae, I don't know all the details. I just see the big picture. I think Jelinsky is going to look back and think, “I could have played it differently.” I hope he doesn't beat himself up. Survivor is a game. You play, you take a shot, it works. It doesn't work. But all you can do is play your game. Jelinsky played his game. It didn't work. He got voted out.

You had Jess tonight, who really had trouble even speaking at this Tribal Council. Do you see that a lot? Where people get in the game, they don't have the food, they're maybe awed by the experience of sitting across from you at Tribal Council and it's going to take them a minute. Or maybe even more.

I think it's one of the hardest things to translate to the audience, how real it is. And we can say all we want: Think of the last time you were hungry, but you're talking days. And as Jelinsky said, sleeping on bamboo, it's not comfortable. You do it because it's the best alternative. But Survivor is difficult. And I think seeing Jess try to deal with that several times tonight, struggling with her words, that's real. And hopefully she'll get over that hump, because some players don't and they're never able to fully form a sentence.

And the reason that matters is, if you don't have all of your faculties, it's hard to make an argument, it's hard to persuade, it's hard to remember your lie, it's hard to play this game. It's hard enough to play it when you're on and all cylinders are running, but every day just takes a little more away from you, and depletes you a little more and makes it a little more difficult. And every time you come here, that fire is burning behind you and you want to leave with it still burning.

You’ve seen a lot of emotion in this game over many seasons. Did it surprise you to see Bhanu so emotional and in tears after they lost the very first immunity challenge?

It didn't surprise me. And the reason it didn't surprise me is what you said, is that I've seen it so many times, and I'm aware that there sometimes is a separation between watching it at home and trying to understand why it can be so emotional. And a lot of that is deprivation also, not just food and sleep, but deprivation from trust. People that you can talk to, you don't know who you can trust out here, and then suddenly it rains or you're hungry or you go look for coconuts together and you form a bond that you can't believe you form with this stranger.

And then you lose and realize you have to vote somebody out. And if you have empathy, that can happen. Even though you're playing a game, that can exist where “I want to blindside you, but I really don't want to hurt your heart.” I don't think anybody wanted to hurt Jelinsky. He's a nice young guy, but I'm not going to tell you I'm voting for you. So I think that's where the emotion comes from. It's this conflicting collision of playing the game, but knowing you're playing it with other people who also want to play the game.

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