The first two seasons of Outlast on Netflix casts a group of people together to try to survive. It brings to mind survival stories and movies. The TV show is the opposite of something like Alone where survivalists try to brave the elements on their own.
Executive producer Grant Kahler told Outside Online that he wanted to do something different with Outlast. Basically, he envisioned Naked and Afraid mixed with the movie Alive. What would it look like trying to survive as a group?
He said, "Alone was doing really well during the pandemic, and I think streaming services started to see this and wanted to explore other avenues with these types of shows. I had worked on Alone, and when we were working on Season 1 we kept thinking of what would drive the series. It ended up being a show about overcoming social isolation in a survival setting—90 percent of people who quit do so with food in their bag."
He continued, "With Outlast, I wanted to test survival within a group dynamic: self preservation and greed versus loyalty to others. I wanted to see how we get through a survival situation with strangers, because most life-or-death situations would actually be like this. You think about the movie Alive, where a group of people need to survive but they don't have a choice of who they are trapped with. This started as a social experiment that I wanted to test, and I brought it to Netflix and they were excited. We went through a four- or five-month brainstorm and casting period, and that was it."
'Outlast' Producer Talks Show
The concept also played a role into who producers decided to cast for Outlast. They wanted people who were a bit more outgoing than introverted as was the case with Alone.
He said, "We were going after people with outdoor skills, because what we put them through was extremely difficult. We reviewed more than 1,000 applicants. And really looked at their skills as the number one criteria—safety is important and you don't want to put someone out there who is totally a fish out of water. Once we got past that baseline of skills, we wanted people who were more introverted. The whole show is about asking whether lone wolf-type people can survive as a pack."
He continued, "Were they the craziest and funniest and most outgoing characters? No—but they brought different personalities to the show. With Alone, skill is a little more important because they literally have to do everything by themselves. For Outlast, we were looking for people with different skills—one person might have a background in fishing, or climbing, while someone else has a background in hunting, and if those two come together then they have to get along."
