Welcome to Inside Survivor’s 50 For 50, a semi-regular feature highlighting 50 former castaways who we think should be considered for a spot on Survivor 50. In a snake draft, the Inside Survivor team selected ten players each, with the only rule being they couldn’t have played more than twice.
PROFILE
Name: Kelly Goldsmith
Age: 45
Season: Africa, 2001
Finish: 9th Place
HIGHLIGHTS
As the youngest player on Survivor: Africa, Kelly had something to prove, and boy, did she prove it. She was tough, unwilling to take BS, and could dish out some savage strategy well ahead of her time. But at the beginning of the season, she played under the radar, only emerging at the swap to help her fellow Boran members weaponize the past votes tiebreaker to weaken Samburu heading into the merge. Along the way, her relationship with Lex van den Berghe grew tense, inspiring her to deliver countless shady confessionals against him.
But the merge itself brought her into a brief and, unfortunately, short period of stardom. When a rogue vote was cast against Kelly’s begrudging frenemy Lex, he incorrectly blamed her and blew up the game, trying to vote her out as retribution. And so the most dynamic round of strategy at that point in the show’s history began with Kelly and Lex at the center of it all.
Lex gunned for Kelly, and Kelly flipped to Samburu, hoping to return the favor in a close 5-4 vote. All seemed good to go, but her all-time iconic move would ultimately fail when Lex pulled in Samburu member Brandon Quinton, flipping the vote back in his favor to take Kelly out as the first juror.
WHY SHE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED
Kelly played a game years ahead of her time. For Survivor’s first two seasons, flipping from one tribe to another at the merge was a serious taboo. Taking out your own members? Not that big of a deal as long as it was done for the “right” reasons. But a full-on flip? Unheard of… until Kelly tried to pull it off and almost got the move to stick.
But her legacy lived on in all the other notable merge flippers from Cochran to Kass, and players who make moves that big tend to secure a returnee spot because of the mark they made on the game. But because the universe isn’t fair, Kelly never got that second chance, being snubbed of a spot in Survivor: All-Stars.
If we’re looking at old-school players who are still fairly young and could hold their own against the young guns of the New Era, Kelly’s still in her 40s. She’s still in good shape, she’s still a great speaker who can dish out great lines, and she’s still willing to play as long as the stars (and the paycheck) align. And the journey of the youngest player on a cast returning over 20 years later as a grown adult with a family and career is always going to be compelling, so she’s got a great story to tell, too.
Since playing the game, Kelly has been involved in casting for the show itself, taking credit for casting a solid amount of Vanuatu’s players. And with reality TV behind her for the time being, she’s earned a Ph.D. in behavioral marketing from Yale and become a professor at Vanderbilt. It’s a successful life for sure, and that kind of rich life experience, particularly in the realm of social sciences, would make her a deadly player on Survivor 50, provided she’s down to play as hard as she did in 2001.
Written by