Entertainment
“Survivor 50” finalists discuss how they planned to win the record prize
If you thought Aubry Bracco came out of nowhere to win the historic “Survivor 50” title on Wednesday night, you’re not alone. That was exactly the point, she said.
“When you have 23 incredible players, you have to know when to put your foot on the gas, when to slow down, and there are a lot of times when I go, ‘Oh, this is happening over here, let the attention go there.’ … You remain in the pocket and wait to strike when it is your moment,” Bracco told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King on Thursday.
The New Hampshire native, who initially starred in season 32, took home the record $2 million prize on Wednesday night’s finale. Bracco made it to the final three in “Survivor: Kaôh Rōng,” but came up short in the final vote.
“I’m always having an out-of-body experience on ‘Survivor,'” Bracco told “CBS Mornings.” “[Host] Jeff [Probst] can attest, it has been 10 years and I came up just short, and you always taste it when you get that close.”
Robert Voets/CBS via Getty Images
On Thursday’s episode of “CBS Mornings,” the five finalists and Probst, who has hosted all 50 seasons of the show, discussed in-depth their strategy of how to win the show, which featured contestants from previous seasons, on Thursday.
“It is ultimately a game of social politics, and the big twist of ‘Survivor’ is you are getting rid of people that then in the end you have to persuade to give you $2 million,” Probst said. “That’s a tough thing do.”
Tiffany Nicole Ervin, who orginially appeared on season 46, said she thought she was voted out because she had “too many friends” on the jury, which made those still in the game concerned she would earn their votes if she made the final three.
“I think that’s why I was voted out, because I was friends with everybody on the jury,” Ervin said. “I think that’s a part of what makes you a threat.”
While Bracco tried to stay out of everyone’s minds, Jonathan Young wanted everyone to underestimate him.
“I thought about ‘Survivor’ every day for four years,” Young, who initially appeared on season 42, said. “Because I played a game, I knew if you watched me, you didn’t see any strategy. I was just the big guy. So, if I wear the same clothes, if I act similar, then nobody would believe I had any strategy — and most people didn’t.”
Ervin, a New Jersey native, said she looked at “Survivor” as an “athletic competition” and had total confidence in her strategy.
“I absolutely thought it was going to be me [who won],” Ervin said. “You don’t play a game like ‘Survivor 50,’ coming in not thinking you will be the winner.”
Robert Voets/CBS via Getty Images
On falling short again
Rizo Velovic had a very different experience than most of the other contestants. He appeared on season 49, and had only nine days in-between seasons, he said.
“Falling short twice obviously sucks, but to know that I’m a part of history is something that I wear as a badge of honor,” Velovic said.
Velovic, the New York native who crowned himself with the nickname RizGod, finished fourth in the last season and repeated the finish in “Survivor 50.”
Ervin, who finished eighth in season 46, was fifth in this year’s all-star show. But she had no regrets about how she played the game.
“It is so hard to regulate your emotions when you are playing a game like ‘Survivor,'” Ervin said. “You are hungry, you are tired. You are giving your literal blood, sweat and tears into these challenges.”
“I love this game so much. It is so hard not to get emotionally invested, and above all else we are passionate,” she added. “It is so difficult not for that passion to ooze out of my pores when something is going on or whether something is going good.”
Probst explains live TV mistake
Before chatting with the contestants, King asked Probst about what happened when he accidentally revealed Velovic had lost a challenge during the live show before the taped segment had aired.
As Velovic stood next to him on stage, Probst commented that he hadn’t managed to light a campfire in the challenge that would determine the final three contestants.
“I don’t know if there’s something in there to think about,” Probst said on the finale. “Anyway, Rizo, you’ve become the final member of our jury. Take a spot over here.”
The entire cast of the show immediately flagged Probst had messed up and the taped segment from the island hadn’t aired yet.
On Thursday’s “CBS Mornings” interview, the host explained why the mistake happened.
“What is happening when you are doing a ‘Survivor’ finale is two things: You are running the show, the episode, and then doing the live hits where I come out and talk to one of the players,” he said. “I’m not watching the show. I’m backstage getting ready for my funny question with Rizo about if only he had practiced fire-making.”
“So, I come out. We are all set up on the stage. We have an empty seat for Rizo. I don’t think anything is weird. It wasn’t until I started talking to Rizo about losing in fire that I’m telling —we had 1,200 people there — I could collectively feel the energy go to an emoji like this,” Probst said, mimicking the shocked-face emoji.
“What happened, I’m still not sure. We have a big team, mistakes happen. But we got ahead of ourselves,” he said.
Probst relayed that Rizo later told him he was confused what was happening as well. The host said Rizo told him, “I don’t know why he is sending me to the jury, I haven’t lost yet.”
“Live TV,” Probst said.
Entertainment
Dua Lipa’s ‘Live From Mexico’ concert film is out now
Dua Lipa has given fans one final gift from her Radical Optimism era, a concert film and live album capturing the closing nights of one of her biggest tours to date.
Live From Mexico is out now on YouTube, with the accompanying live album dropping on streaming platforms on 22 May.
Physical copies are available to pre-order, with shipping beginning on 5 June.
The film was recorded across three sold-out nights at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros, where Lipa brought her 92-date world tour to a close in December 2025.
The release runs through some of her biggest moments, including Houdini, Levitating and Don’t Start Now, and captures the atmosphere that made the Radical Optimism tour one of the landmark pop runs of recent years.
Over the course of the trek, Lipa performed across five continents and sold over 1.75 million tickets.
The Mexico City shows also featured a special duet with Maná frontman Fher Olvera on the band’s 1992 classic Oye Mi Amor, a moment that resonated deeply with the local crowd.
In the film’s trailer, Lipa addresses the audience with visible emotion.
“This tour has been the most beautiful and fulfilling experience of my career so far,” she says. “You’ve built something bigger than a show. You’ve built a family and I feel that every single night.”
She was equally heartfelt in the Instagram post accompanying the release.
“2 of the most special years wrapped up into 2 hours.. the end of an era,” she wrote.
“I hope watching and listening to this shows the euphoria, the love, the blood sweat and tears and most importantly the radical optimism (!!) that we all shared on this tour, we will have it forever now so thank you!!!!!”
For fans who were there, it’s a chance to relive it. For those who weren’t, it’s the next best thing.
Watch Dua Lipa’s Live From Mexico concert film here:
Entertainment
Stephen Colbert hosts “The Late Show” one last time tonight as franchise ends after 33 years
The iconic Ed Sullivan Theater marquee lights up and Stephen Colbert takes the stage one last time for the final broadcast of “The Late Show” on CBS Thursday night, before the curtain comes down on more than 30 years of late-night TV history.
In the days counting down to the franchise finale, a stream of prominent guests and fellow late-night hosts took their place in the seat beside Colbert to share stories, laughs and some emotional moments.
Actor Tom Hanks gifted him a typewriter. “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart brought something to help him relax: two massage chairs and a surprise serenade from Andra Day.
Colbert and David Letterman, the show’s host when it debuted in 1993, hurled furniture from the set off the roof of the theater — a nod to one of Letterman’s classic stunts, accompanied by some choice words for the corporate bosses.
“You folks wouldn’t be in the theater if it weren’t for me, and Stephen wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me, and we rebuilt this theater, and then Stephen came in and look at this, it’s like the Bellagio,” Letterman said on the show last week. “As we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice.”
David Byrne joined the show on Tuesday and he and Colbert, in matching blue suits, performed the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House.”
Bruce Springsteen, in the midst of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour, made a guest appearance on Wednesday.
The guests for Thursday’s finale were not revealed in advance.
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS News via Getty Images
CBS announced back in July that it would end “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and retire “The Late Show” franchise at the end of this season. The company said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
That explanation was met with skepticism from some viewers and media critics who suspected political motives, as Colbert has been an outspoken critic of President Trump.
“You have maintained such grace through this process,” Stewart said on the show this week. Fellow late-night host Jimmy Fallon, of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” said,”I think it’s odd the way it ended for you. And it’s a bummer because I wanted to do this longer with you.”
Last week, Colbert was joined by a lineup of Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — a reunion of “Strike Force Five,” the podcast the five hosts created when their shows went off the air during the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023.
“You guys have been wonderful friends and great models for me, and I’m so glad to know and love all of you,” Colbert told them.
In recognition of Colbert’s final show, Kimmel and Fallon both planned to air reruns on Thursday.
Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS via Getty Images
Colbert, who is 62, took over as host of “The Late Show” in September 2015 after Letterman retired from the role he’d held for 22 years.
Before “The Late Show,” Colbert spent nine years hosting “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central and had been a fan-favorite correspondent on “The Daily Show” under Stewart.
Colbert developed his own distinctive style behind the desk at the Ed Sullivan Theater, balancing humor, political satire and thoughtful interviews.
Back when the franchise first launched, Letterman told “CBS This Morning,” “It’s me in a suit with peculiar-looking hair, depending on the humidity, and we just try to do an amusing, silly, entertaining show.” After Colbert took over, “The Late Show” became more known for its political bent and commentary on current events.
CBS via Getty Images
Along with its celebrities and musical guests, the show gave viewers a more personal look at Colbert himself, who was also known to weave his devout Catholic faith into his monologues and interviews, even saying he wanted Pope Leo XIV to be a guest on the show before it ended.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” had been the No. 1 program in late night for nine consecutive seasons, CBS said last year. In September, it won the Emmy for outstanding talk series and received a standing ovation from the Emmys crowd.
“I want to thank CBS for giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re no longer doing this show,” Colbert said in accepting the award.
CBS announced last month that Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” will replace Colbert’s show in the 11:35 p.m. ET time slot.
Allen told “CBS Mornings” Wednesday that the cancellation of “The Late Show” was a “very unfortunate event” and said he will try to hold onto the late-night audience.
“I love Stephen Colbert. I’m a big fan,” Allen said.
When Colbert came on stage and broke the news of the show’s cancellation to his audience last summer, he said, “I’ve had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years.”
“It is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it,” he said.
John Paul Filo/CBS via Getty Images
More recently, Colbert told People magazine in an interview that he tried to “never take for granted filming in the Ed Sullivan Broadway theater, having that tremendous audience or having the ability to work with the funniest people I know every day and make jokes about the things that make me most anxious.”
“You can’t do this forever. … Who knows, maybe CBS saved my life,” Colbert told People. “Because it takes a lot of bone marrow to do the show every day, and now I’ll be stepping down with enough time, enough energy to do other things that I want to do.”
After the final episode, the set where he held forth for more than a decade will be donated to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.
Celebrity guests have been reflecting on what the show’s ending means to them, with Hanks saying, “I don’t know how the entertainment industrial complex is going to survive without you.”
“Thank you so much for holding the space for laughter,” Oprah Winfrey told Colbert before turning to the crowd during an episode last month. “Has he not held the space for laughter for us in our lives and been there for us?”
Watch “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT on CBS television stations or stream on Paramount+.
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