Billie Eilish is an avowed Survivor superfan. So much so that in this “In the Hands of the Fans” 50th season she got in the mix thanks to the surprise “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol,” a totem named in honor of the 24-year-old Oscar- and Grammy-winning pop star. The singer designed the idol, which competitors could find in the wild and then pass on to other players to strategically manipulate eliminations.
In an interview on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast this week, Eilish described how her Survivor idol came to be and whether she thinks she could make a run at it on the show. “So basically like I wrote a letter to the contestants being like, ‘Here’s your secret idol,’” she told Poehler. “‘If you use this idol, you can, you know …’” For the record, contestants who find the Eilish Idol — which comes with a letter from the singer explaining the rules for use — can employ it for immunity during Tribal Council, but they have to give it to someone in another tribe. If that person is voted out while still cradling the Idol, the immunity then “boomerangs” back to the original contestant.
Eilish, who sang “I put on Survivor just to watch somebody suffer/ Maybe I should get some sleep,” on her 2022 song “TV,” told Variety in 2023, that she’d love to compete some day. “I think that the physical stuff, I’d be great at,” she said at the time. “But you have to do math and s–t, and I would not be good at.”
And, well, she’s sticking to that, telling Poehler, “I love imagining that I could one day do it. But I am so bad with like — the math part of the problems are the things that I couldn’t do. Like I feel that I could do the physical stuff. I mean I say that, which sure who knows ‘cause it’s so hard-seeming.”
Eilish wasn’t the only A-lister who popped into the season, which also featured cameos from Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, Zac Brown and Jimmy Fallon.
While Eilish didn’t make it to the Survivor set, she will be on screens this weekend when her Billie Eiilsh — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) film — co-directed by the singer and Avatar director James Cameron — hits theaters on Friday (May 8).
Watch Eilish talk Survivor on Good Hang below.
