Long Island-raised Jon Lovett, ex-White House speechwriter, joins 'Survivor' season 47

A Woodbury-raised former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is among the 18 castaways competing for $1 million on “Survivor” season 47, premiering Sept. 18 on CBS.

Jon Lovett, 42, is now the host of popular podcasts, including “Pod Save America” and “Lovett or Leave It.” He says in his “Survivor” introductory video released Wednesday that, “Being a speechwriter is about figuring out the best way to convince a bunch of people to either come along with you or agree with you or support you. I think that’s a lot of what ‘Survivor’ is.”

Reaching the season’s climactic Final Tribal Council “is a political campaign, it’s an election,” he says, “and it is very fun to think about, but I know that if I’m thinking about that, I’m not thinking about what I have to do to get there.”

Lovett is a 1998 Syosset High School graduate whose Reform Jewish family belonged to North Shore Synagogue in Syosset. He's additionally known for being the former fiance of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow. They were together for the better part of a decade when Farrow, the son of actor Mia Farrow, proposed in 2019, but the couple broke up post-lockdown.

In his “Survivor” promo, Lovett self-deprecatingly concedes that he is “best in small doses.”

After graduating with a mathematics degree from Williams College in Massachusetts in 2004, Lovett did some stand-up comedy in New York and volunteered for John Kerry’s presidential campaign. After working for speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz, he went on to write for then-New York Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign. He later joined Obama's White House speechwriting team.

After that stint, Lovett went on to co-create the single-season White House sitcom “1600 Penn” (NBC, 2012-13) starring Josh Gad, Jenna Elfman, Bill Pullman and Martha MacIsaac. In 2017, he and fellow Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau (not the actor-filmmaker) and Obama national security spokesman Tommy Vietor founded Crooked Media. The company has launched more than 40 podcasts and this year’s book, “Democracy or Else: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps.”

“When ‘Pod Save America’ listeners and ‘Lovett or Leave It’ listeners discover that the reason I was gone for five weeks is to be on ‘Survivor,’ they’re going to think that that is bananas,” Lovett says in the “Survivor” promo. “But there was something really exciting about putting that aside to focus on this game where everybody starts at zero.”

He additionally wrote on X Wednesday, “Can't believe I actually went on @survivorcbs and then you all see it in 2 weeks.”