Bill Posley explains why he and “Survivor” tormentor Colton are now friends

Any person who signs up to play on Survivor knows they will endure hardships. It could be the lack of food. Or maybe it’s the flesh-biting bugs. Or perhaps the torrential rain is to blame. For Bill Posley, his hardship was named Colton Cumbie.

Colton was relentless in his mocking and annoyance directed at Bill during Survivor: One World in 2012, and much of that mocking and annoyance centered around Bill’s desire to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian.

“Get a real job,” Colton would tell his tribemate, who was struggling at the time to break into the business. “Have a back-up plan,” Colton lit into Bill during a particularly harsh Tribal Council. “Don’t live off the kindness of others.”

That last comment set the usually unflappable comic off. “I don’t want a fall-back plan,” he fired back. “That’s what I want to do with my life.”

That decision to stay the course seems to have worked out pretty well. That’s because after Survivor, Posley doubled down, and that effort has been rewarded. He landed a gig in the writer’s room on another CBS show, The Neighborhood, and then moved on to work on Netflix’s Cobra Kai, before landing a plum job writing on the Apple TV+ hit series Shrinking.

Not only did Posley recently get promoted to executive producer for season 3, but he is also currently starring Off-Broadway in his second one-man show, The Day I Accidentally Went to War, which both hilariously and dramatically chronicles his time serving in the military and the fallout upon returning home.

The Day I Accidentally Went to War is now playing at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City through Aug. 30 before moving to London for a two week run. And it already has one big fan from the Survivor community, although it is the person you would least expect: Colton.

Colton popped up recently in a video posted to Posley’s Instagram account congratulating his former tribemate on the new show. “I am so excited for it,” Colton says in the clip. “I am so excited for him, and I hope that all of you will come out and see the show, and I hope this is a great experience for Bill, and I hope that it just skyrockets his career to the next level. And Bill, I love you, man, and wish you all the best.”

While this reconciliation may seem like shocking news to Survivor fans, Posley’s entire life — recounted in The Day I Accidentally Went to War — is about upending expectations. We spoke to the man now commanding both stage and screen about his journey from One World to the world of being a successful writer and performer.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Survivor fans saw you 13 years ago as a struggling stand-up comedian sleeping on couches. Now you’re writing on a hit TV series and have a stage show in New York and London. How did you get from there to here?

BILL POSLEY: It sounds like an oversimplification, but I just did not quit at all. I just continued to make things, write stuff, put myself out there. After Survivor, I doubled down on, on my career. Coming out of that Tribal Council and all of those things, I made it be known that I’m gonna put my money where my mouth is, and not just say that I’ll never give up on my dream, but actually pursue it. And when I came back, I had a fire and a passion, and it changed everything.

I mean, Survivor genuinely changed everything. It sent me back home and I created this routine for myself like in the military where I wake up every day at five o’clock in the morning, and I do the same thing every day. I make this weird protein drink with a whole bunch of crazy supplements and crap in it. And then I write for two hours. Whether it’s standup, screenplays, sketches, or movies, I dedicate two hours to just writing. And I have not broken from that in 12 years.

That’s a lot of early mornings.

And once that started to be a routine and a rhythm, I started seeing all these things change. I got better on stage, my writing got better. So when I submitted scripts to people, they weren’t just reading the whims of a madman. And I started accumulating material and just getting better.

I wish there was this like big home run moment, but it really was a ton of base hits. After Survivor, I vowed to make a hundred videos in a year. And I shot two videos a week, every week for, for a year. In 2015. I put myself through UCB and Second City. I became a new face of comedy at JFL [Just for Laughs]. And then I was in the CBS showcase. And then I got my first writing job on The Neighborhood, and then Cobra Kai, and then my first one man show went to Off -roadway in New York, and then Shrinking. And now my next one man show. And so it’s just been gradual wins moving forward.

You talk about military PTSD in your show, so let’s talk about Survivor PTSD for a minute. People always ask me, “What’s the dumbest move in Survivor history?” And while I think it’s actually pretty easy for one person to make a bad move, for me, that can’t compete with an entire tribe willingly giving up immunity to go to Tribal Council. Anyone could have paid the price, it happened to be you. Was that difficult to get over?

After it all went down, you, you have a moment of realization where you’re like, “Oh man, everybody was lying to me.” And you, you have this moment where you’re like, “What did I just do? I can’t believe this.” And you replay it a million times in your head, and you’re like, “Oh my God, I wish I could change and do this differently and make this move.”

But at the end of the day, if you are a fan of Survivor and you’re somebody who understands that that’s the nature of the game, then you have to tip your cap and say, “Dude, I got got.” And I would rather be a part of the dumbest move  in Survivor history than to be completely forgotten about altogether. [Laughs] Bad press is still press.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about your post-Survivor life is that on your social media you have a message from someone advocating for folks go see your new show, and that message is from Colton, of all people. Apparently, he loves you and you love him. How did all that happen because he said some of the most horrible things about you out on that island?

Survivor saved my life in a way. I don’t even think they knew they did at the time, and I don’t think anybody really knows that it did. At the time, I was struggling with drugs and alcohol. I had been sober for about six months when the Survivor thing happened. I was living in a sober living facility, and I did not know how to start my life. And here comes this opportunity, right? I get a chance to go on Survivor!

So when the Colton stuff happened, I genuinely at that time chalked it up to the fact that he was 20 years old. I thought him more as an idiot kid than I did this lifelong racist, hating person with irredeemable qualities. I just didn’t think he was that type of a human being.

So cut to seven years later, and in those seven years, I had also heard he had gone through some very tragic things, right? He lost the love of his life [boyfriend Caleb Bankston, who appeared with Colton on Survivor: Blood vs. Water and died in a 2014 railway accident]. I know he had left home. And so at that moment, you start to realize that people are just human beings, and they’re bumping into each other.

So I’m in New York and I’m doing my first one man show and I get a phone call from a number I don’t even recognize. I get off the train at 125th Street and it’s raining just a little bit. And I answer, and I hear that southern voice. He goes, “Hey Bill, this is Colton.”

And he proceeds to tell me what his life has been with losing Caleb and leaving home. And he was the age I was when I was on Survivor. And he said, “Now that I’m that age and I have lived a little bit more life, I realize now that you were somebody who was pursuing their dream. And it’s something I always wished I would’ve done, and I am inspired by you and proud of you.”

Wow.

He gave the most sincere apology you could have ever imagined. Me and him talked probably for another hour. We talked during the pandemic, we talked all these other times. I mean, this isn’t a joke. He might be my realtor! I’m looking to buy property in Alabama, and I’m talking with him about it. And so we not only mended fences, but I still talk to some of my Survivor castmates, and there were people that I was close to that I don’t wanna talk to. And I talk to him! [Laughs]

And so it was just a friendship that was born out of two people when they were young in a situation, and now that they’re older, they actually found out that they really do have a ton of things in common and are much better friends than they ever were enemies.

You mentioned earlier how you were in a totally different place when you went to go play Survivor. Now you’re seemingly in a really great place. So would you go back and do something like Survivor again at this point in your life?

I would! I want to go back to do Survivor, badly. I would like some redemption. Not that anybody isbeating their door down to get me back on Survivor, but I want it the way that like Mike White has it where I’m established in this other thing.

Because when I first came back from Survivor, I wouldn’t get auditions because they’d be like, “Oh, we don’t want a reality person” This was during the stigma of reality TV versus scripted. And so people thought I was just a reality TV star trying to get his 15 minutes of fame and maximize it. I didn’t want to be seen that way. I wanted to establish myself first. I’m almost there, and then I can reapply and see if they’ll let me come back.

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