Winner Winner
Ahead of the show's live finale, Probst breaks down a milestone season shaped by artists like Billie Eilish, Zac Brown, and Billie Joe Armstrong
For one glittering moment in 2016, a woman in an oversized two-tone wig and matching top hat stepped onto the Survivor finale stage to hand $50,000 to a gardener from San Francisco. The hefty prize had been awarded not because the man outwitted, outplayed, or outlasted his competitors, but because he refused to let his tribe slaughter a chicken.The woman behind the prize was Sia — yes, that Sia — and what first felt like a wonderfully random act of reality-TV chaos soon evolved into one of Survivor’s strangest traditions: the “Sia Prize,” an unofficial cash award for players whose stories moved her. More often than not, the money went to the underdogs. Across eight seasons, she handed out more than $1 million of her own money to 19 contestants before host Jeff Probst finally stepped in.
“I called her and said, ‘I’m stopping this because you’ll just keep giving money and you have a family,’” he told Rolling Stone. “She didn’t fight me, but she didn’t thank me either.” Now, the fan favorite award is back for the 50th season finale of Survivor, set to air Wednesday, May 20.
