‘Survivor’: Why Isn’t Richard Hatch On Season 40’s ‘Winners at War’? – TVLine

Survivor premiered its 40th season Wednesday with 20 mature champions competing for a doubled prize of $2 million. Whereas plenty of the show’s neatly-known faces are succor in motion, one insist winner — Season 1 victor Richard Hatch — is conspicuously lacking.

In a promotional interview for the contemporary Winners at Battle season, Survivor host and govt producer Jeff Probst said, “I didn’t feel at ease having him out on the show and representing a show that is for families,” per chance alluding to Hatch’s affinity for nudity.

Probst additionally suggested Us Weekly that he wasn’t sure Hatch had ever severely been within the conversation for a popularity within the Season 40 forged. “The larger consideration used to be ‘The build is the show now?’ and ‘End these 20 winners signify the show at this time?’” he said. “In that sense, we didn’t feel that Rich match into the equation.”

Hatch, now not surprisingly, disagrees. “All individuals is conscious of the true winner must aloof be on Season 40. I must aloof’ve been on,” he said in a most up-to-date YouTube video, sooner than contending that he used to be requested to bag part within the all-winners season and accomplished the general casting job. “I used to be suggested I used to be the sole one who every single producer said they wanted [on the show]. I used to be golden,” Hatch alleges.

Hatch, who claims he withdrew from a PhD program to bag part, says that two days sooner than he used to be dwelling to cruise out to the positioning, he and Survivor: Australian Outback winner Tina Wesson got cell phone calls asserting “issues were paused.”

Hatch speculates that closing fall’s Survivor: Island of the Idols sexual harassment controversy likely doomed his chances to seem return to the game. “At some level of the filming of Season 39, once they acknowledged issues had been going to be touchy with appreciate to sexual harassment, and plenty of others., they puzzled what it will most likely well well be cherish for me, who is a fearless figure on the show, to bag part in Season 40 and for those conversations to potentially be persevered,” said Hatch. “I mediate they made a horrendous mistake in deciding to exchange their thought and to lift me from the solid. There’s no sexual harassment in my previous.”

Hatch’s Borneo season, which aired within the summer season of 2000, used to be watched by better than 50 million folks and changed into a cultural phenomenon worldwide. Hatch paved the vogue for truth TV villains and helped lay the inspiration for alliance-constructing and technique now not only for Survivor, nonetheless for all subsequent competition sequence. He additionally got attention for being overtly homosexual. He played all all over again in Survivor: All-Stars where he perceived to rub in opposition to fellow Borneo contestant Sue Hawk whereas nude throughout a problem. Hawk quit the game, nonetheless later appeared on The Early Disguise with Hatch where she said the network helped contend with the matter and that she and Hatch had “reach to phrases with it and agreed to switch forward and previous it.”

In a most up-to-date tweet, Hatch slammed the “salacious editing” of All-Stars by CBS, adding that the network used to be “making an are trying to scapegoat me to remain some distance from their very bear responsibility for the travesty that used to be closing season’s mishandled subject.”

Hatch isn’t any stranger to controversy. In 2006, he used to be sentenced to 51 months in federal detention center for failing to pay taxes on his successful test and other revenue. He served three years in 2009 and an additional nine months in 2011 for now not amending his 2000 and 2001 tax returns, in accordance to Forbes.

Survivor fans: Would you own gotten cherished to behold Hatch compete in Winners at Battle? Hang forth within the comments!