When you gotta go, you gotta go. And some people just have to go, and go and go.
If you’re competing on Survivor, that could become a problem, as Sage Ahrens-Nichols anticipated it might be before she embarked on Survivor 49.
“I’m not embarrassed by it, but I pee so much,” Sage, 30, told Entertainment Weekly in a story published Tuesday, September 16. “I’ve already peed 20 times today. I had to pee off the side of the boat, had a really intimate moment with one of the PAs — it was great.”
Self-awareness and a certain amount of self-deprecation could serve a player well in the 26-day game of social maneuvering. But while Survivor requires players to become one with nature, sometimes nature can call at the worst times.
“It comes on very sudden[ly]. So in challenges, as an example, we can’t pause those, and when I have to go, I got to go,” she continued. “So that’s honestly the thing I’m most worried about.”
But hey — it could be worse for Sage. She revealed to Parade in a September 5 story that she originally applied for Big Brother and was one of the final cuts on Big Brother 25 in 2023. Had she made it on that CBS show instead, she would have had to share a bathroom with 16 roommates while live-feed watchers tracked her frequent pit stops.
In Fiji, where Survivor is filmed, Sage can mostly disappear into the jungle when it’s time to go.
“I’m not really worried about the elements,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I was in the military for 10 years, pretty comfortable out here. I grew up in North Carolina. We were always in the woods, me and my twin brothers. So it’s definitely the bathroom situation.”
She added in her Parade interview that the first question she asks when she arrives somewhere new is, “Where is the bathroom?”
“I’m very directionally challenged, so it takes me a long time to get my bearings,” she admitted.
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While needing to go during a challenge or a long tribal council may be a problem (imagine Sage getting the urge in the middle of the final four fire-making challenge!), there are other social considerations at play. Constant ventures into the jungle could raise suspicion that Sage is hunting for an idol or trying to figure out a clue she discovered hidden in the wild.
In a social game, any seemingly innocuous quirk can become an instant story line, so there’s no telling whether Sage’s bathroom habits will be an issue to her fellow castaways.
Survivor 49 premieres on CBS Wednesday, September 24, at 8 p.m. ET and, no pun intended, streams on Paramount+.