During his senior year at Evanston Township High School, Alex Moore couldn’t get enough of the competitive TV game show “Survivor.”
He’d even get up early for school where, before first-period Spanish, he and other devotees would analyze the previous night’s adventures and challenges in the unofficial club they had formed.
“We would have these debates and arguments over which players we thought were going to do well, which players were doing poorly,” Moore recalled. “We even wrote to Jeff Probst, the host of the show, saying, ‘Hey, we really bonded over this show. Can we please have tickets to the finale?’”
The tickets didn’t materialize, but Moore’s passion for the adventure competition only grew.
“From that day forward I knew I had to be on that show,” he said.
Moore, an Evanston native who now lives in Washington, D.C. as senior advisor and communications director for U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, got his wish this year when he was selected to join the cast of 18 players for the 49th season of “Survivor,” which filmed in Fiji.
Pitted against other “tribes,” contestants of the show compete in physical challenges and mental endurance tests as they form alliances and strategize ways to prevent elimination in order to take home a $1 million grand prize.
The season premiere airs Sept. 24, but many from his hometown learned Moore was in the cast when a video teasing the new season released in May.
“Just as soon as people saw me in the preview, my phone was blowing up from people I went to elementary school with, people I played baseball with,” he said.
Moore, who attended Walker Elementary School and Chute Middle School, grew up watching “Survivor” with his parents, Jill and Robert, and his sister, Jessica. A big bowl of ice cream was often involved.
“It was this moment for us to come together,” Moore recalled. “Other kids were watching Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, but I was watching “Survivor” with my family.”
At school, he found two more fans in Spanish teachers Nicole Roubekas-Lane and Patricia Hurley, which led to the unofficial before-school club at ETHS.
“He was able to really dig into [the game],” Hurley said of Moore. “He was able to look three steps ahead and see what it was going to look like, whereas I was just watching in the moment.”
When she saw “Alex Moore” on the list of Season 49 players, Roubekas-Lane immediately texted her former student with “sheer excitement,” she said.
“I’m super pumped for him and super proud that we have such an upstanding graduate representing Evanston, Northwestern and Chicago on TV,” Roubekas-Lane said.
A 2021 graduate of Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and political science, Moore spent his post-college life surviving what he jokingly calls the “swamp” of Washington, D.C. politics as a congressional staffer. But his life-long dream of winning $1 million on “Survivor” didn’t die. He recorded an audition video and after two attempts, was selected to go through the casting process and ultimately chosen as a castaway.
When Moore learned he had been selected, he made sure to surprise his parents with the news.
“He flew home and knocked on our door so he could share it in person,” Jill Moore recalled. “It was kind of emotional. We were so happy for him, but also scared.”
Moore said he understood his parents’ fears.
“This was going to be completely out of my comfort zone,’ he said. “I was a little nervous at first, but being on the show pushed me so much and I feel like I’ve grown.”
Some of his competitive spirit comes from playing baseball at ETHS, Moore said. His professional work also gave him some of the skills necessary to get the most out of the social game, he said.
“I think D.C. and “Survivor” have a lot in common,” Moore noted. “In politics and what I do on Capitol Hill, you have to know what information to use and at what time, what to withhold and how to get people on your side. D.C. is all about the relationships and connections you have. I took all of that out there to “Survivor” …. Basically, I turned the Fiji jungle into a little campaign. I was trying to win people over and get them on my side.”
One person already on Moore’s side is his boss, Schakowsky, who released a statement of support for her senior advisor and joked that “apparently surviving the Republican majority in Congress was not a strong enough test” for him.
Moore plans to return home to view the “Survivor” premiere with his family and friends.
“It’s exciting for me; I can’t wait to watch it,” his father, Robert, said. “This is something he wanted to do forever. I’m very happy for him.”
Moore, of course, is keeping details of the show under wraps. Even his parents don’t know if he scored the grand prize.
“I tried to ask questions, but I get the same answers that he’s giving everyone: ‘You have to watch the show,’” Jill said.
Moore isn’t the first Evanston native and Evanston Township High School graduate to land on “Survivor.” In 2021, Liana Wallace, a student of Patricia Hurley’s, appeared in season 41 of the show and placed 7th in the competition.
Having another student join the castaways is a source of pride, Hurley noted.
“I’m really hoping (Alex) mentions Evanston somehow,” she said. “We’re a very close school, and we have a very diverse and supportive environment. Alex embodies that. He has an aura of goodness around him and he’s just such a good soul that I hope he gets on the right side of the tribe!”