It all started because one person didn’t own a TV. But, really, it all started because of a true friendship—and that’s a beautifully symbolic beginning for the Brice and Wen Present Survivor watch party enterprise. Because it’s friendship and the greater bonds of community that sit at the heart of what makes this watch party extravaganza so special. In many ways, the Brice and Wen Present Survivor watch party series has allowed one friendship to grow into thousands. It has taken one spark of connection and coaxed it into a bright flame that glows with fandom and community. And it has invited all fans, or as Brice likes to call them, friends, to bask in its warmth.
I’ve been in fannish circles my whole life. And I know from experience that any show, especially one as widely beloved and long-running as Survivor, can have a fan base. But to turn that individual love of a story into a shared experience that brings people together, connects them in their actual lives, and welcomes them to build a relationship, not just with the property they love, but with one another, is no easy feat. Fandoms, in their purest forms, where fans indeed become friends and a passion for a series transforms into a lifelong friendship, do not just happen. That alchemical shift doesn’t just ignite. Creating true, meaningful fandom takes work. It takes the dedication of those who want to nurture and protect a space that’s safe, welcoming, and joyous. And for Survivor, enter former player Brice Izyah and winner Wendell Holland.
“We’re just the little guys,” Izyah tells me earnestly on a call that comes on the heels of one of their watch parties, which I might describe without exaggeration as one of the most intense fandom outings I’ve ever been on. And so from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t feel that small to me. In celebration of Survivor 50, Brice and Wen Present organized nearly 30 watch parties in four months, not missing a week of viewing, and sometimes even doubling up on nights across cities, with help from other Survivor talent. Incredibly, these Survivor watch parties spanned the entire United States (and even went into Canada), hitting all of the usual suspects like New York and LA, but stopping at St. Louis, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Miami, and more. An impressive array of access.
To me, returning to this fandom after some years away, it quickly seemed like THE place to connect and celebrate with other excited fans. And though Izyah reiterates, “Wendell and I always say, ‘We’re the little guys’ when it comes to these big Goliaths in Survivor. Rob Has a Podcast, these huge Goliaths that we love and adore, but we’re just the little guys. We just want to go around, and do our thing, spread love, and allow people to have a good time.” In my opinion, that’s the biggest thing you can do. And that mission statement is so felt, emanating from the event series’ very origins.
Izyah walks me back to the very start of Brice and Wen Present sharing, “Wendell and I became friends right around the time he went on to Survivor: Ghost Island. I had been in the Survivor community a little longer than Wendell. And I’ve always loved to just show love to people and reach out. And sometimes the community’s amazing, and sometimes you don’t connect with people, but Wendell and I instantly connected. I literally just thought I was welcoming someone into the community, and I would see them around. I wasn’t expecting for this man to become my best friend and that we’d spend hours together. And so that was something that was surprising to me.”
And it could have just been a friendship for two, but a lucky mishap ensued. “After Survivor: Ghost Island ended, and I always love to say this because Wendell hates this, Wendell didn’t have a TV in his apartment. But I had a TV. So Wendell used to come over to my house on Wednesdays, and we would watch Survivor. He would bring sushi. I would supply the box wine. And we would watch Survivor, and we would be screaming and yelling. My neighbors would be like, ‘Can you keep it down?’ And so it really just was the beginning of Brice and Wen Present. It was literally two friends coming together. Our backgrounds are very different. We’re very different people, but together Survivor brings us together, and we just loved it. And so Wendell went on to do Winners at War. He was the first merge boot. And when he came back, we were like, ‘Oh, we got to celebrate this.’ So we threw a Brice and Wen party for Winners at War, and it was amazing.”
And that might have been where we would say, and the rest is history. But alas, a global pandemic shut the world, and Survivor, down for a good long while. “We went a whole year without Survivor.” Brice recalls, but that pause may actually have just intensified the need for community. He adds, “And so when Survivor came back, we were like, ‘We really need to take this on the road.’ We just were deprived without Survivor for a year. And we were fiends. We were fiending for it. And so we were like, ‘Let’s celebrate the return of Survivor and let’s bring our magic.’ And so it just started out with us going to three different cities. And then the next season, we’re like, ‘Okay, we’ll go to four different cities.'”
Izyah recalls that at first, people didn’t take the Brice and Wen Present experience very seriously. And kept saying, “What do you guys think you’re on tour?” And like all main characters, Brice and Wen took this mockery and decided to run with it.
“That was my Beyoncé moment.” Izyah explains, “When she wrote ‘Survivor,‘ people were talking about the ever-changing group members. And Beyonce was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to write this. I’m going to put this to a song.’ And so that’s what we were like, ‘You know what? We actually should do a tour.’ And so we mapped out some cities, and we launched, and I want to say that Season 43 was our Basquiat image, of Basquiat and Andy Warhol, where we actually called it a tour. So that’s kind of the very, very beginning. But when you ask about the origin lore of Brice and Wen and how it started, it starts from my living room because I had a TV.”
But really, it starts because of Brice and Wendell’s deep bond and their desire to share that love with others and help them to find that kind of friendship in their own lives as well. If there was ever any haterade or mockery, whoever was casting doubt has had to eat their words. Because the tour is alive, thriving, and doing exactly what it’s designed to. Izyah shares, “So many people will message us like, ‘I don’t have any friends that watch the show, but I want to come.’ And our motto is, ‘Come alone. You can come by yourselves.'”
And you won’t have to just come by yourselves and awkwardly try to make friends. No, the community at Brice and Wen Present will be there for you. Izyah laughs, “I spend so much time running around at these parties. If you ever see me at one of these parties, I’m always sweating because I’m running around because I’m a nurturer, I’m a water sign. And so I’ll meet someone, and they’ll say that they’re here by themselves, and I will have seen maybe people that have been here a couple of times, I’ll connect them like, ‘Hey, can this person join you?’ You can come by yourself, and we guarantee you’re going to leave with a whole set of friends.”
He recalls that “There was this young man from London, and it was his first day in NYC. He came to a Brice and Wen party. He didn’t even unpack; he just came to this event, and now he has this whole community. He’s never missed a Brice and Wen show since, and every time he comes, he comes with this community of friends. And it’s crazy to think three and a half years ago, when he got to New York, he didn’t know anyone.” And is that not one of the most beautiful sentiments you’ve ever read?
Another integral part of creating fandom, though, comes from building a mutual feedback loop of love and appreciation between fans and official sources, in some cases, cast and creators, in Survivor‘s case, players. At the core, most fans just want to be perceived by the people they recognize as an official part of the property they love. And if they feel seen in such a way, they feel validated in continuing to grow their love, thus allowing the property to evolve and thrive as the fandom does. And that’s another bridge that Brice and Wen Survivor parties have set out to and succeeded in building so beautifully. Brice Izyah shares, “Wendell and I, we don’t like to call our attendees ‘fans’ because I don’t know, there’s some kind of weird hierarchy to that, and it’s ‘friends,’ right? And we love it.
In fact, also on the call is Hansel Alexander Carter IV, a friend/fan of Survivor and Brice and Wen, who actually now helps to run the Survivor watch party empire. Izyah recalls, “I remember the first time I met Hansel, it was in Washington D.C. and Hansel was with some of his friends at our party. And Hansel was scared. He was scared to say something to me. And again, I had no knowledge of this. I just remember one of his friends tapping me and saying, ‘My friend is dying to meet you.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh.’ And I embrace Hansel, I hug him, we take a photo, and I remember maybe a week later, he posted it to his TikTok, and I started following him on his TikTok. And then I’ve just become so obsessed with Hansel’s TikTok because it’s amazing. And now, full circle, Hansel is one of the cornerstones of Brice and Wen, when it comes to staffing and reaching out to people. And right now, we’re kind of working on a little special project, and Hansel has been so pivotal. I could literally cry just thinking about how helpful and how supportive and how connected he is, and just willing to help and support us. And so it’s like, again, it’s all about community. It’s all about building relationships.”
And this desire to meet and befriend the fans/friends extends to every Survivor player that joins Brice and Wen for these watch parties. And it’s a part of the experience none of them take lightly, according to Brice. “We’ve had the opportunity to play this amazing game, and we know the odds are a lot of people won’t be able to play, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a bridge, and it’s like again, there are friendships.”
Izyah takes us back to another Brice and Wen Present moment with a popular player, the Survivor 50 winner apparent, Aubry Bracco. “We were in Boston, Hansel was there, and it was Aubrey, she was there, and it was like the pivotal vote where we thought Aubrey was getting ready to go home. And there was a young man, who, when we first arrived, had purchased a VIP ticket, and so he had come up to me, and he saw the VIP area, and I guess it was like Aubrey, Ethan Zahn, and Jeremy Collins over there, and he was like, ‘I can go over there?’ I was like, ‘Yes.’ And then later in the night, he’s like, ‘Can I actually sit down and watch with them?’ I’m like, ‘Yes.’ I’m like, ‘Do you want me to walk you over there? Let’s make this happen.’ And so I escorted him over there and got him comfortable.”
But then later on the night, something caught Brice’s eye, “I see this huge commotion, and it’s like during the vote and everyone’s kind of gathering around Aubrey, and I think I was like, ‘Hansel, come with me. ‘ ” Let’s go over there.’ And this young man is sitting next to Aubrey, video recording it. And at first I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s kind of like a little invasive. You’re kind of kind of close.’ Then I continue to watch the interaction. It’s Aubrey’s phone. He’s recording for Aubrey. They’re like having a kiki. He’s like on his family group chat, chatting to his family, that he’s watching this episode next to Aubrey. And that’s when he was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I get to watch with Survivors.’ And I’m like, ‘What you don’t realize is the privilege is to us that we get to watch with you, you guys make it better.'”
And truly, in those moments, fandom is formed, and watching Survivor stops being a passive act of one and a communal act of many, a tie of friendship and humanity, a mutual connection between player and fan, a great unifier. Something real.
And personally, when I attended my first Brice and Wen event, I certainly felt something real. On a whim, I bought a ticket to a “pop-up party” that surfaced in NYC with Ozzy Lusth, one of my long-time favorite players, whom I’d kind of had to hold back on loving for various reasons in previous seasons, but was all in on for Survivor 50. Unbeknownst to anyone, including Brice and Wen, who were hosting a different party in Austin, TX, Ozzy had decided to throw himself a Survivor vote-out funeral party. And the intense meta-realness of seeing someone see themselves get voted out in a room full of people that were rooting for them, with the added wildness of some unexpected emotional twists in the episode, was a perfect storm of fannish madness. But it was entirely real. Easily one of the most consuming fandom events I’d ever been to, and one that could only have been possible with the intense love, empathy, and safety that underscore every single one of Brice and Wen Present’s parties.
Brice shares, “Ozzy’s been my man for years and a good friend. And so, we partnered with Ozzy last season to do a couple of tours, a couple of stops. And when Ozzy came back from Survivor 50, literally, he was at the airport, and he called me, and I was like, ‘Hello.‘ And he was like, ‘I want to do more watch parties. This season’s going to be amazing.’ And so I was like, ‘Whatever you want, Oscar.’ And so with Wendell and I on tour and with us producing an Ozzy tour, we have seen the fandom reignite with Ozzy. And Ozzy’s had some ups and downs in the community, where it’s like he’s a heartthrob, and then he’s had some lows. And so for him to have this impeccable season and for him to be on tour, people have been going crazy for Ozzy. So we knew New York was just going to be amazing. So we had an expectation that it’s Ozzy and people are excited, but we had no idea he was going to get voted out. We had no idea. And again, in hindsight, I was talking to Wendell after the party, and I was like, ‘I guess maybe we could have figured it out with a lot of the press being in New York.’ But we just weren’t even thinking of that.”
We were all counting our chickens a little bit. Brice laughs, “Around Survivor 50 episode four, I’m like, ‘I think Ozzy wins. I think he wins.’ And so Wendell was like, ‘No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t.’ And then by episode nine, Wendell’s calling me like, ‘I think you’re right. I think he won.’ And so no, we had no idea. Wendell and I being in Austin, and we’re having this huge party, and then bam.”
In fact, Izyah had told Lusth that there might not be a big crowd because Rob Has a Podcast was doing a live show the same night. And, usually, out of respect for one another, the different Survivor parties will share dates. But even without foreknowledge of the vote-out, this one felt important. Brice shares that. He said, “‘I don’t know what the turnout will be, Ozzy, because Rob has 800 people, and you’ll probably be the only reality star there, because who doesn’t want to go to a Rob show? They’re the best.’ And so I just again was so shocked at … I’m like, ‘Where are all these people coming from?'” And the answer was, the people were coming to the carefully built community that Brice, Wen, Ozzy, and the rest had built over the last few years.
But even without the prior knowledge of the magnitude of the event, it all turned out okay for what became an epic sprawl of an evening, because “Coming back to community, having someone like Hansel there that I could call and be like, “Hansel, there’s a lot going on. ” And Hansel being like, ‘I got it. What do you need? Let me know.’ It was amazing.”
For Hansel’s part, as a fan turned official organizer, the love continues to flow on a feedback loop. He shares, “Honestly, at the Ozzy pop-up for me, I had someone recognize me from the Boston event, and I was like, ‘Oh, were you there? Are you from here?’ She’s like, ‘No, I’m from LA.’ I was like, ‘Elaborate.’ Her job flew out to Boston. She didn’t know the event was going on there, but she’s scrolling online, and she recognized me from the Run Club video with Ethan Zahn, and she just had so many questions about that, and wanted to know how she could get involved. And it’s just really awesome to be part of that community. I also want to commend Brice and Wendell for fostering this and building this from the ground up. I’m helping you guys like this because I support how you work and what you’re doing for people. It’s just a cool opportunity for people to not only meet the people on the show, but meet other fans.”
Hansel continues, “I grew up all around the world. I was in middle school in India, high school in Egypt, college in Vermont. Don’t ask me why. And then I moved back here to New York, but it wasn’t until I moved here and went to a Brice and Wen event in D.C., that one Brice mentioned, that I found other people who watched the show and I could talk to. That’s where I met Cirie. That was just a beautiful moment for me, my first event with you guys. And I met you, Brice. So it was just an awesome opportunity, not only for me, but for fans of any era.”
As the conversation starts to wind down, we look at the final pieces of the puzzle that come together to make Brice and Wen Present such a special Survivor watch party—and those are access and inclusivity. Two words that are easy to say, and honestly easy to live by, but so often get left by the wayside.
I commend Izyah for the sheer number of different locations that Brice and Wen Present has traveled to during Survivor 50. And he offers, “Although Jeff [Probst] says this season is in the hands of the fans, Brice and Wen, we’ve always been in the hands of the fans, and we’ve always listened to where people tell us to go. We would start getting comments like, ‘You need to come to Kansas City. You need to come to Austin.’ Sometimes the cities aren’t as big as New York City, sometimes they’re super small. And I kind of personally love the smaller cities because it’s like I can actually talk to people during Survivor. I know that kind of sounds annoying, but sometimes I watch Survivor and I’m like, I don’t really know what happened. I’m not processing what happened. And so I’ll turn to someone at a watch party and be like, ‘Bitch, what just happened?’ And so the wealth of survivor knowledge that is in these places is so fun. And again, just building on what you said, community, that’s what we are so about.”
In many ways, I feel like bringing fandom hubs to smaller cities, where fans may have fewer options to find one another, especially in supportive, loving spaces, is one of the most important things that Brice and Wen Present accomplishes. And that’s compounded even more by the truly inclusive mission of the watch party series.
In his Quarantine Questionnaire with EW, Brice expressed that he wished Survivor wouldn’t be just a microcosm of how the world is, but a utopian version of how the world could be. And that’s an ethos he brings to his parties. “I think the biggest thing that I love about our parties is that it’s a safe space that anyone, straight, queer, gay, Black, white, whichever race, whoever you are, can come feel safe and have a good time. I love that there are some events that at the end of the night turn into a dance party, and we’ll be in a city like Kansas City, and Beyoncé is playing, and there are 20 queer people dancing. That, for me, when I think about it, and I think about just my upbringing and being an openly gay, Black man, just remembering how I yearned for community, I yearned for representation. And so for me to travel around with my best friend and create these spaces that all people can come to and have a good time and just feel safe and feel fun, that for me, is like, it just speaks volumes to the community, and just that has to be my favorite part about Brice and Wen. And again, it feels weird to even say that because it’s like I don’t feel like I’ve done anything. I just showed up as myself, but in life, sometimes showing up as yourself is all you need to do, and it’s all that people need to see. It’s like, ‘Okay, Brice is here. I can come and feel safe.’ And so it’s so rewarding to see.”
And that’s only the beginning of this beautiful adventure. “The Brice and Wen brand is ever-expanding, ever-growing.” Brice shares about the future, “We just started Reality Karaoke, which is something that we do a lot. It’s like a karaoke party. We started the run club, Run with Reality. And so there are a lot of other things in the work. There are other shows that we are interested in dabbling in, and we really just, again, it’s not our idea, but as we continue to grow, we see a need, and our friends, the community that we built, are telling us what the need is. And so we’re just blessed to be able to have built something that now we can apply to different things.”
“And now we don’t necessarily have to be there…” He pauses, and then says with a smile in his voice and pleased hum, “But the Brice and Wen name speaks for it. Ooh, I just got chills. The Brice and Wen name speaks for itself.”
We bask in that for a moment, that accomplishment, the little guys, perhaps not so little after all, but not because they’ve gotten a big head, but because they’ve built something so monumental and necessary that it has become greater than the sum of its parts.
And then we continue on to the truly important stuff, “And so yes, it is forever evolving and just even me personally, working on the Zaddy calendar, the next coming Zaddy calendar, that’s something that’s like a hot ticket item for me as well. But also, I’m excited. I don’t want this tour to end because again, this is like one of our celebratory tours. It’s our 10th tour. It’s our fifth year, and so I don’t want it to end, but when it does end, I definitely want a hibernation week or a day. So stay tuned.”
Before we sign off, Brice flags, “The last thing that I do just want to put notes on is that something that we don’t necessarily talk about, but our imagery, if you go back and look throughout our 10 tours, people just think our imagery is just kind of like, ‘Oh, Brice and Wen being crazy and fun.’ But if you look again, I’m very inspired by Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé. And if you’re a part of Beyhive, she drops nuggets in different things. And so each one of our tours speaks to something, speaks to something very specific. And so again, going back to Andy Warhol and Basquiat, these two artists that were completely opposite, but together made such an impact. If you look at our Cowboy tour and the renaissance of Black cowboy creators and just different stuff, the presidential campaign, there are just so many nuggets, and we don’t talk about it enough, but we put so much energy and time into what the imagery and things look like because it’s like we want to represent so many things and we want to move with a purpose.”
So everyone, get out those magnifying glasses—it’s time to crack Brice and Wen’s secret codes—think of it like a Survivor challenge.
Ultimately, Brice shares, “Wendell and I, we just realized the more we pour into the community, the more the community embraces us. And I think that that really is what is so special about Brice and Wen, and about the Survivor community. Now my family, they seem to think we’re in a cult, but they don’t understand it, but it’s not for them to understand.”
I laugh and share that I’ve always thought that fandom, true fandom, operates like the best parts of a cult or a religion. Like the kind of support structures you can only dream about, and a connection that really matters. But none of that just happens from the ether; it takes a determination fueled by pure love to facilitate. And so, the Survivor fandom is lucky to have Brice and Wen Present and their watch parties. They’ve got everything for you.
You can learn more about Brice and Wen Present by following them on Instagram, and you can follow Brice, Wendell, and Hansel on their own accounts. You can check out their website here.