Deal or No Deal Island winner David Genat could have walked away with a seven-figure prize four times during the show’s season 2 finale, but the Survivor Australia legend rejected seven total offers and instead went home with the biggest prize in TV game show history.
The season finale, which aired Tuesday, March 25, mainly centered around Genat’s historic game, after it was revealed in the first few minutes that he had defeated Alexis Lete to be the last player standing.
Once Genat, 45, got to the final temple, he played a classic game of Deal or No Deal, but with a $12,232,001 case on the board — the total that the players banked throughout the game. Through a mixture of luck and risk taking, Genat eliminated lower cases as the offers from the banker, revealed to be Chrissy Teigen, dramatically increased.
But, with Genat already earning $500,000 from his Survivor win and hosting Australian adventure series Rush, he wasn’t going to stay in it just to take home a prize that most reality shows happily cough up.
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Finally, after knocking out almost every one of the 26 cases on the board, Genat accepted Teigen’s offer of $5,800,000. That number nearly doubles Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings’ previous reality TV prize record of $2,520,700.
Along the way, Genat rejected three six-figure offers as well as offers for $1,523,000, $1,980,000 and $3,870,018. By the end, he was taking massive risks, continuing to play while his fellow contestants begged him from the sidelines to take one of the life-changing offers that Teigen, 39, had made.
He called his own game “cavalier” in a conversation with Us Weekly. “Risky” also works, as Genat could have easily picked the wrong case and gone home with only $75.
“I came into this show and I wanted to do something people hadn’t seen before on television,” he told Us. “I go, well, ‘1.8, I’d do a couple more shows and I can, if this works out for my career, make $1.8 million over the course of the next decade or so.’ It’s a lot of money, but you have the ability to make that kind of money. I definitely had these little moments where I could justify it.”
While Genat’s historic game of Deal or No Deal came in the season finale of NBC’s competitive reality version of its classic game show, the player nicknamed Survivor’s Golden God navigated a tough road to get there.
His size and stature made him an early target among his fellow players, even as he kept his identity as a Survivor Australia legend a secret. Genat aligned with fellow Survivor alum Parvati Shallow and Dickson Wong in the Family alliance as the group did its best to keep each other safe throughout.
Genat was the last one standing, but he’s not stopping there. The season 2 winner is reportedly set to compete in Survivor: Australia vs. the World, set to air later this year.
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