Kyle Fraser didn’t expect winning “Survivor” to follow him onto the subway platform in Brooklyn. But these days, when the 32-year-old attorney steps off the train at Atlantic Avenue, briefcase in hand, someone usually does a double take.
It’s been that way ever since Season 48 began airing last March. And next Wednesday, he’ll return to TV screens when he joins the all-star cast for the show’s milestone 50th season, stepping back into the game just months after earning the title of Sole Survivor.
“I get off at the Barclays stop coming back from work because I was working full time — I still am, right?” he told Brooklyn Paper in an interview from his law office. “And people would stop me and say, ‘Yo, you’re doing your thing right now — you and that other Guyanese girl.’”
From Brooklyn to Sole Survivor
For his first time in Fiji, Fraser crafted a resume that made him one of the most complete winners of the modern era. He concealed his career as an attorney by telling tribemates he was a teacher, lowering his threat level and positioning himself at the center of the game’s social web. As part of a tight majority alliance, he built deep emotional bonds and maintained a secret, season-long strategic partnership with fellow Guyanese player Kamilla Karthigesu.
He delivered a flashy early idol play, helped orchestrate a defining blindside and, in his view, made the pivotal move of the season by voting out his close ally — a decision he said determined whether he would “lose or win with that vote.”
Kyle Fraser (lower left) competes alongside Kamilla Karthigesu and Chrissy Sarnowsky during a challenge on ‘Survivor’ Season 48. Fraser returns for the show’s milestone 50th season with Karthigesu, joining a cast of legendary and fan-favorite players.Robert Voets/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
By the finale, he’d checked every box.
“I caught fish. I played idols. I won challenges,” he said. “I don’t say that to brag. I say it more so to say I got to experience literally everything that the game has to offer.”
His win “meant the world.”
“[The] ‘Survivor’ fan in me literally said like … I did it,” he said. “I didn’t just win — I won and I got to do everything I wanted to do.”
Now he’s back for the show’s all-returnee 50th season, competing on the Vatu tribe as one of the newest winners in the cast — a turnaround he never saw coming.
“When I got the casting call, I literally had just gotten back to my original weight from being back on 48 because I’d lost 28 pounds there — TBD on Season 50,” Fraser laughed. “I thought I would never go back in the next couple of years.”
Quickly, a new reality set in: winning once can make you a target — and returning after only one season practically paints it on your back.
“I was terrified going into 50 that people would look at me as this person who would be a threat on all levels,” he said.
And then the boat pulled up.
“Being back on the island, smelling the air and the ocean, and then on top of that, seeing everyone else who was out there — like being on an island with these legends in so many different ways, both on ‘Survivor’ and outside of ‘Survivor’ — was insane,” Fraser said.
Kyle Fraser (third from right) joins fellow returning castaways for the historic three-hour premiere of ‘Survivor 50.’ The milestone season, themed “In the Hands of the Fans,” brings players back to Fiji, where Fraser returns just months after his Season 48 win to compete once again for $1 million.Robert Voets/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
Leaving his everyday life for the show, though, was more complicated this time.
“It was significantly tougher to leave a second time,” he said. “My wife Maggie and I were talking about the future. She had just taken a new job. We had just moved back to New York. I just finished a clerkship. There were a ton of life changes going on.”
And the stakes have only gotten higher since.
“My wife and I, we’re expecting a little girl in May,” he beamed. “We just built our nursery. We’re in Boerum Hill, and we plan on raising a Brooklyn baby.”
The lawyer who wasn’t
On his first season, Fraser made a strategic choice to hide his career as a lawyer. Lawyers, he knew, carry baggage in a game built on trust and deception.
Instead, he leaned into what he calls being a “well-rounded winner.”
“I love ‘Survivor’ because you can hit on a physical element, survival elements. Most importantly for me, a social element — getting to live with these people that you’ve never met before. Like, that is what attracts me to the game.”
That social instinct, he said, didn’t come from nowhere. Fraser grew up between Bronxville, Mount Vernon and southwest Virginia, the son of a Guyanese immigrant father. Summers were spent back in New York; the school year unfolded in a place with a “very rural bend.” Moving between those worlds meant constantly adapting.
“The story of my life is just being in all of these different diverse groups of people… and trying to figure out how I fit in,” he said. “At some points in my life, that’s been really a lot of turmoil… and other times, I realized it’s what makes my life so great.”
Left to right: Joe Hunter, Kyle Fraser, Cedrek McFadden, Chrissy Sarnowsky, Shauhin Davari, Charity Nelms, Mary Zheng, David Kinne, Eva Erickson, Kamilla Karthigesu, Star Toomey and Mitch Guerra on ‘Survivor’ Season 48. Fraser says growing up between southwest Virginia and New York taught him how to adapt to “different diverse groups of people” — a skill he credits with helping him navigate the island’s shifting alliances.Robert Voets/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
On the island, that lifelong practice paid off.
“I can just get along with people because I like learning about them, and they like learning about me,” he says. “You actually have to practice being around new people and being open to that. And I didn’t realize that both my time in New York and my time in Virginia was the best practice you could ever have for a game like ‘Survivor.’”
Fraser said some of his most surreal moments haven’t happened on a beach in Fiji, but at home in Brooklyn.
On Election Day, he and his wife headed to their polling place like any other couple. But even there, the game followed him.
“A couple of the people running the polls were just saying how excited and proud of me they were,” he recalled. “It’s all different types of people,” he said. “That’s why you live in New York, right? So you can be around the diversity of people.”
Big target, bigger love
As for how he plans to watch “Survivor 50” unfold, he’s hoping for something a little more low-key this time around. During season 48, he traveled frequently, attending watch parties in cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta and (runner-up Eva Erickson’s house in) Minnesota to support castmates and celebrate the season together.
This time, he’s looking for something a little more “intimate.”
“I plan on doing a little bit more of just watching with Maggie this season, or at least having like one or two or three episodes where we can just sit on the couch and talk about the strategy ’cause that’s what we like to do,” he said. “That’s what got me into ‘Survivor’ — bouncing ideas off of her and her family.”
And of course, a Brooklyn watch party or two.
Kyle Fraser, a Brooklyn-based attorney and Season 48 champion of ‘Survivor,’ returns to the island for the show’s milestone 50th season, balancing life as a newlywed and soon-to-be father with another shot at the $1 million prize.Robert Voets/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
For someone who never watched reality TV before COVID — “not a day in my life,” he said — Fraser has become one of the “Survivor” franchise’s defining modern players. He stumbled onto the show during the pandemic, but what hooked him wasn’t just the competition.
“If you like games, watch ‘Survivor.’ If you like adventure, watch ‘Survivor.’ If you like just drama and people dynamics, watch ‘Survivor,’” he said. “It has something for everybody.”
Now, as he balances briefs and baby prep with the glare of reality TV fame, Fraser seems clear on what matters most: “I hope to just be a part of this community and hopefully represent well on ‘Survivor’ and for my daughter.”