Has it ever felt odd to you that for Survivor: Fiji, the season started with 19 castaways? An odd number of players had never been done before and it forced the show to use Exile Island before a player had even been voted off. If it seems like it wouldn’t be the best idea in the world, it’s because it was never intentional from the producers’ perspective.

Some may already be aware of this but Fiji did actually have a 20th player intended to appear on the season. Her name was Mellisa McNulty and she had gone through the same casting process as the other 19. She was on location in Fiji and ready to go into the game… until she decided she simply could not go through with it and quit.

By the time Mellisa made her decision, it was too late to bring anybody else in. She had shot her pre-game footage and taken the promotional pictures. From the footage we got to see in TV Guide’s Fiji preview, Mellisa was an attractive single woman who was, per her words, going to use her looks to her advantage. Unfortunately I have not been able to uncover any of this footage online. The gist of it though, was that she was going to try to be Cook Islands Parvati 2.0. She was officially part of the Survivor: Fiji cast and there was no going back.

So why did she suddenly back out at the last possible minute? As she told TV Guide back in the day, Mellisa suffered a series of panic attacks that would not go away.

My#1 trigger is being in a situation where I can’t get out. I get a claustrophobia kind of panic. I had multiple panic attacks in one day, which I’ve never experienced before. I tried to pull myself together, but….

To finish the sentence, what she is saying is that she simply couldn’t get it together. She talked to on-site psychologists and they deemed her ready to go out and play. Producers left it up to Mellisa to decide whether she wanted to go out or not. Unfortunately for Mellisa, panic attacks had been an ongoing trauma in her life and this time, she just couldn’t shake them. As she told the Star Scoop, she believes the cause of the attacks to be the confined sequester the contestants are placed under before the game begins and not Survivor itself.

I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard in my life, I was so scared because it does feel like you don’t have control of your body. They needed to call the producers to let them know what was going on, and one of the producers [came] in, and they basically asked me are you in, are you out, and I said, I don’t think I’m in any state to complete this. I don’t know why I can’t get a hold of myself; I was very distraught. They didn’t push me either way to stay or to go. They really wanted what was best for me and I absolutely appreciate that. They did not make me feel bad about it, they didn’t pressure me to just stay. Rumors have it that the game started the very next morning, but I have no way of knowing that. I flew home the next day. I don’t know when they started. If I would have known it was starting the next morning, maybe I would have been able to make it. I think it was being in a confined space, not speaking to anybody for a long period of time, reading every single book that I brought, my iPod was out of batteries. For somebody who suffers from panic, and the need to get out, and you know you can’t get out, just, far more than I could handle.

You might have guessed it given her background in modeling and living in Los Angeles, Mellisa was not an applicant. She was recruited through sheer chance at a bar.

I met a girl out at a bar in Hollywood, a mutual friend had known her. I don’t know how we got into such a deep conversation, but we got into a very deep conversation and at the end of the night, she gave me her business card and said, would you ever consider trying out for Survivor I think you would be awesome. And I said, I’m not so sure about that, and I really didn’t think about it. And I went home that night, and I actually went to Blockbuster to try and find the latest Survivor. I’d seen Survivor before, but I really wanted to get a feel for exactly what the game was. I went to three different stores before I found it, and I went home and I watched it that night by myself. Personally at that point in time in my life, I don’t know why she gave me her business card, but I felt like this is something I needed to do. I’ve been through many challenges in my life, been through rough situations, and I said, if I had an opportunity for 40 days, by choice to not eat and do these things, I was suffering from the panic attacks at the time…and I said what better way could I get over these things then put myself in the worst possible scenario I could, and that’s just the kind of person I am.

While I wouldn’t bet any money on it, mostly because I’m broke, I have a strong suspicion that the woman in question is Lynn Spillman. She was also the one who met Jonny Fairplay at a gas station and has done most of the recruiting for Survivor since the beginning of time.

As she says herself, production was really good with Mellisa and handled her situation well. Still, for the audience, the damage had been done and some already had knowledge that she had been slotted to appear on the season. As Jeff Probst said, the production team did not think they would need an alternate for the season and were thus left with an uneven number of people.

We didn’t bring an alternate with us. It’s a little weird. We had an alternate with us in Cook Islands because we had somebody we weren’t sure on, weren’t sure about. So we brought somebody. We had an alternate for Fiji, but when we got out there, Mellisa quit five hours before we started. There was no way to get anybody there. Had she quit three days before, we would have probably brought an alternate out. We really don’t typically bring anyone on location that’s not going to be on the show because you’re getting their hopes up and it’s pretty emotional on them. We did do it in Cook Islands, we didn’t do it on Fiji and maybe we should have.

In a way, Mellisa made a huge impact on the show, at least from behind the curtains. Since that situation, I know that production has started taking alternates on location to pretty much every season in order to avoid having something like this happen again. In fact, Jay Starrett of Millennials vs Gen X has stated that he had been an alternate for Survivor: Kaoh Rong before getting the chance to appear on his own season.

Going by the same TV Guide interview, Mellisa states that she still planned on watching Fiji and actually felt like she might be ready to try Survivor again should production have wanted her back.

I don’t know if they’d even consider having me back, but I would absolutely try Survivor again next year. I’m a stronger person. There are a lot of people laughing at me right now, and I’d like to have the opportunity to tell them I’m not this “weak prissy model” that everybody is calling me on the Internet. I’m a lot stronger now.

So my question in all of this: why she was never brought back for Game Changers? She was “technically” part of a previous Survivor cast. Besides, if they can call Sierra Dawn Thomas or Brad Culpepper Game Changers, why not Mellisa McNulty? At least she had an impact on how the show handles alternates. What was Brad’s impact? The implementation of the Culpepper math strategy?

All in all, Mellisa has been largely forgotten by the fan base. Many people in the internet community remember her simply for being the only person to ever quit the show without actually being on it. Otherwise, she goes by as a blip in the Survivor timeline mostly forgotten. Hopefully I was able to teach a few of you something new about the show and if not, at least help you remember a quirky part of the show’s history.