[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Weitz

You don't get to pick your "outfit". The producers do.

Yup


https://www.zmonline.com/the-latest/...bout-survivor/

While cast members are allowed to bring their own clothes to the show, it doesn’t mean they can wear whatever they want. Producers get to decide what they wear. They have even picked out bathing suits before for players. There are of course the nerdy guys who end up wearing a long sleeved shirt. It's not his fault. The producers made him do it.
Cochran, who is a well known Survivor player, who won the championship one year never wore sweater vests in the real world for example, but the producers told him to wear one because it looked smart and nerdy.



also


If you're trying to get on Survivor, your chances are worse than you thought.
While they get tens of thousands of applications, only a handful are what they are interested in. They usually recruit people to be on the show that they think would make good contestants. For example on the Survivor Fiji season, all of the players were recruited except for one.

and Challenges



Well, they are actually a surprise when Jeff Probst announces them the first time but it doesn't quite go down how we think it does. A member of the production crew does a walk through of the challenges with all the contestants, and makes sure they understand what is going on. The players can ask questions and think of strategies while they do this. There is also a group of people that run through it first as a sort of dress rehearsal while the crew gets all set up.
So, they don't know what the challenge is going to be when it is announced but by the time it happens, they have heaps of time to try and work out how they're going to do it, and numerous people have already gone through and tested it.