Boston Rob is a Survivor legend, having played the game a record five times and winning it once along the way. In addition to creating an unmatched legacy in the game of Survivor, Boston Rob has become a major player in the world of reality TV, appearing on a handful of shows, including fellow CBS competition series, The Amazing Race.
While Boston Rob has appeared on two of CBS’s biggest reality shows, there is one that he’s somehow managed to avoid over the years: Big Brother.
Despite appearing in multiple seasons of Survivor and competing on The Amazing Race, Boston Rob has never stepped foot inside the Big Brother house and it seems one legend of the game is finally calling Boston Rob out on that.
During the Aug. 21 live eviction episode, Big Brother 16 winner Derrick Levasseur extended an open challenge to Boston Rob by proposing that he partake in a Survivor vs. Big Brother season of the show. He didn’t stop there though, as he made it clear to Big Brother’s longtime host, Julie Chen Moonves, that he would love to participate in a showdown between players from CBS’s two hit franchises.
“If [Boston Rob agrees], maybe I’ll come back. Big Brother vs. Survivor,” Levasseur proposed.
The proposal was met with cheers from the live audience and, surprisingly, Boston Rob didn’t shut down the idea of appearing on the show. When asked by Moonves whether he could handle playing the game of Big Brother, Boston Rob poked a little fun at the houseguests having it easy before admitting he’s not sure he could deal with the “lunatics” in the house.
“I’ll tell you what, Julie. I think you got a shelter over your head, we’re eating. However, all summer with these lunatics, I don’t know.”
To be honest, as much as we’d love to see Boston Rob compete on Big Brother, the odds aren’t in our favor. While both games are tough and challenge players in varying ways, Big Brother requires a major time commitment with players in the game for literal months, whereas Survivor seasons typically last less than a month. This requires houseguests to cut all ties with the outside world for three times as long, which we doubt Boston Rob would be interested in.
Still, there is always a chance he could be persuaded to compete on Big Brother if CBS were to do an abbreviated format, such as what we see with Celebrity Big Brother. Those seasons typically only last three to four weeks as the game moves at a faster pace, and would make it a lot easier for legends of both Survivor and Big Brother to compete.
With a Big Brother and Amazing Race mashup season coming this fall, we have to imagine CBS would love to stage a Big Brother and Survivor crossover. A season in which fan favorites and legends from the two shows face off in the Big Brother house would surely be a major draw to fans. If it works out, CBS could even flip the script and do another version of the show but with Survivor getting home-field advantage with Big Brother players heading out to Fiji to compete on Survivor.
It seems like a ratings win waiting for CBS to make happen, so we can only hope they’ll take Levasseur up on his pitch and bring us a Big Brother vs. Survivor crossover of some kind!