- A lifelong Survivor fan is hoping to become a contestant on the show
- After many changes in her life in recent years, Jeni Schmidt has wanted to compete on the reality series, but hasn’t heard back after submitting three application videos
- Schmidt tells PEOPLE how she got the idea to make the latest application video a part of her wedding day
A woman deeply connected to Survivor incorporated her desire to get on the show into her wedding day.
Jeni Schmidt of Austin, Texas, tied the knot in November 2024. When she was planning her special day, she found time to include a game — a DIY creation she made with her husband. The puzzle game is similar to the type one might encounter on the reality competition series.
“I have been watching Survivor my whole life. It started in childhood. I literally hated taking baths when I was a kid and so one of the only ways my parents could get me to do [it] was to put Survivor on a little TV,” Schmidt tells PEOPLE.
“The way some people would sit down and watch a sport with their parents, watching Survivor is my activity with my parents,” she continues. “As I grew up a little, I wasn’t watching it every season or every week. Then I rekindled it a few years ago, during COVID. Like a lot of superfans, I had all this free time and the seasons were all online. So I went back and watched from season 1 all the way up to the present. We started a group chat and it just became our favorite thing to talk about.”
Aside from her work at TikTok, Schmidt is also a serial entrepreneur alongside her husband. The two decided to recreate the Survivor puzzle as one of their many projects. It was also good practice for Schmidt, who had started applying to be on the show a few years back.
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“We’re very crafty. We love to build and design and so we made our own cornhole boards. We made our own ladder ball. We decided on the puzzle and when we did it, we’re like, ‘I have to have this at our wedding. This could be my actual moment to catch their eye, because if I’m in my wedding dress with everyone around me, it would be something different,’ ” Schmidt shares.
“Up until this point, my application videos have been just me filming myself privately, no one around or listening. They do say you can include some of your family and friends to show what you’re like when you’re around them. So this was an epic way to try and capture attention.”
Schmdit auditioned three times prior to her latest attempt. The tries came after she went through a major shift in her life.
“A couple of years ago, I went through a pretty big breakup amid COVID and took the time to really do the work on myself. I trained and did a half marathon, all the therapy in the world. I was living in Portland all the time, so I was out hiking in nature and connecting with myself. I needed to do something for myself and I thought about Survivor,” she says.
“It’s putting yourself to the ultimate test. I’ve done so much work and Survivor was a way to put myself to my roots, strip away everything. It would be an awesome spiritual experience. It just felt like the right next step,” she adds.
“I’m not one to sit in front of the camera and talk about myself. The first time I auditioned, I made my video while I had roommates, so I was a little nervous. I didn’t want people to hear me so I was pretty quiet on my phone. It didn’t come off strong or reflect my full self because I was trying to keep it quiet,” she recalls.
“I remember talking about my role at TikTok, what I do for work and how that translates to Survivor. My slogan was, ‘I help brands spend millions of dollars every day. Now it’s my turn to figure out how to spend a million dollars.’ I also talked about bringing my dogs as my loved ones for a family visit.”
She continues, “My second video, I did a lot more storytelling about my life. I picked my five most impactful life moments, both positive and super challenging, and I filmed that as a means of introducing myself.”
“My third video, I actually filmed during a mental health leave from my job at TikTok,” she shares. “It’s pretty demanding so I had to take a step back. I wrote a book and launched a mobile bar business that year and despite all these big successes, I felt lost. I did that application video, which was like, ‘I’m totally having a quarter-life crisis about what I want to do for work and my career.’ ”
But this time was different. On Nov. 23, Schmidt was surrounded by loved ones cheering her on as she completed the homemade puzzle at her wedding.
“Some of my friends who are in our Survivor superfan chat knew about it, but most people that were going to be part of our wedding didn’t know. It was definitely the most memorable thing that happened at our wedding,” she says.
“People went wild, they thought it was so cool. A lot of people haven’t watched Survivor in a while and since then, they’ll text me like, ‘Okay, I’m two seasons in.’ It got them into the show.”
The reaction was so great that Schmidt decided to share the moment on her TikTok. Since then, it’s gotten more than 1.5 million views.
“I think anytime people share their passions with other people, it’s going to be well received. As someone who works at TikTok, I really do believe there’s so much joy to be had. Sharing my video with the broader world outside my friends and family has just been amazing. So many people feel that joy for my passion and are excited about it,” she says.
“A lot of the comments on my video were like, ‘I’ve never watched Survivor, but rooting for you and cheering for you.’ There’s so much community that can be had around Survivor.”
Noting some Survivor applicants don’t get calls to move on in the audition process for years, she’s feeling better about her chances than ever.
“It could be one year, two years, three years, four years. The timeline is to be determined,” she says. “But it’s meant everything to me, truly, to hear all of my friends and family in the background, chanting my name when most of them haven’t even seen the show, just because they know how special it is to me. They want to cheer me on and be a part of it,” she says.
“Survivor is hard. You don’t get good sleep, you don’t eat. The weather can be bad, but I just know I’d have the sound of them cheering me on in the back of my head to get me through those moments,” Schmidt continues.
“I think about the experience that originally drove me to apply to Survivor, and I didn’t believe in myself for a very long period of my life. Now I finally feel like I believe in myself to do this show and that I can conquer anything. I can do hard things.”
After growing up with financial struggles, Schmidt is hopeful she’ll make her way on the show, win the million — and be able to make life a little easier for the ones she loves.
“I think of the reasons Survivor is special to me is because growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. It was always fun for us to daydream about what we’d do with a million dollars. When I was 16, my mom was diagnosed with a heart condition and it completely changed the trajectory of my family. She lost her job and then we had all these medical bills because she couldn’t work. And then, it was around the same time as the recession. My dad was a real estate agent and that was bad. We ended up having to sell our house and downsize our life and it was definitely something that affected my mental health, having to deal with a financial scarcity mindset,” she says.
“I think the thrill of Survivor and the idea that I could win a million dollars and change the total trajectory of my parents’ life with a show I watched with them … It’s a beautiful idea to be able to take care of them into their retirement and take care of my own family. I think that’s why a lot of people love the show … it completely changes your life and experiences beyond that.”
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