{"id":50379,"date":"2024-04-27T11:21:08","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T09:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=2032356"},"modified":"2024-04-27T14:21:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T12:21:54","slug":"survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivor star, Sonja Christopher dies, aged 87"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rssexcerpt\"> Christopher was a music therapist, known for playing the ukulele on the show. <\/p><p class=\"rssauthor\">By James Hibbs\n                \t\t<\/p><p class=\"rssbyline\">Published: Saturday, 27 April 2024 at 09:21 AM<\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/><?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>\n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body> <p>Sonja Christopher, a contestant on the first season of US competition series <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/tv\/entertainment\/reality-tv\/survivor-2023-winner-matthew-newsupdate\/\">Survivor<\/a>, has died at the age of 87.<\/p>\n<p>Christopher competed in the season, which was called Survivor: Borneo or Survivor: Pulau Tiga, in 2000, and was the first to be voted off the island.<\/p>\n<p>The news of Christopher\u2019s death was confirmed by fellow Survivor contestant Liz Wilcox, who viewers are currently watching compete in the show\u2019s 46th season, in Fiji.<\/p>\n<p>She wrote in a post on Twitter, which has been re-branded as X: \u201cToday, the legend herself Sonja Christopher of Season One passed away. I had the pleasure of meeting her on Christmas. She had so much spunk + love for Survivor and what the show brought to her life. I hope you\u2019re singing + playing your heart out somewhere beautiful, Sonja.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Today, the legend herself Sonja Christopher of Season One passed away. I had the pleasure of meeting her on Christmas. She had so much spunk + love for Survivor and what the show brought to her life. I hope you\u2019re singing + playing your heart out somewhere beautiful, Sonja. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/H2hqRX1Cjc\">pic.twitter.com\/H2hqRX1Cjc<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Liz Wilcox (S46) (@TheLizWilcox88) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheLizWilcox88\/status\/1783979083400978858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 26, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"\/>\n<p>Wilcox then added in a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheLizWilcox88\/status\/1783992104617722123\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">separate post<\/a> that fans should not send flowers, but that \u201cdonations may be sent to Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church (Walnut Creek, CA), the Cancer Support Community of the San Francisco Bay Area, or the Sjogren\u2019s Foundation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/ew.com\/tv\/sonja-christopher-survivor-20th-anniversary\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Entertainment Weekly<\/a> in 2020, Christopher revealed that, after she retired, she had become a music therapist, going into assisted living facilities with her banjo to get senior citizens involved in singing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was doing that sometimes five or six times a week,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd also, people would ask me to play for club meetings or parties. So that\u2019s what I did, but I retired in December [2019].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Christopher also revealed how she ended up going on Survivor in the first place, explaining that she was\u00a0recovering from breast cancer treatment at the time, and had just come to the end of an 11-year relationship.<\/p>\n<p>She said that she was by herself with no ties, living in a senior retirement community and with her son being \u201cgrown and taking care of himself\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>She explained: \u201cI was reading the morning paper, and it said something in an article about CBS looking for 16 Americans to cast away on a deserted island and see who could survive for 39 days. Well, I had always wanted to see if I could survive using only my hands and my wits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I read on, it said something about the one who stayed on the longest would get a million dollars, and they\u2019d vote someone off every three days, and the program was called Survivor<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was around October 1999, and about the same time I was one of 18 breast cancer survivors from around the country who were selected to go on a three-day outdoor training program, sort of like Outward Bound. We were taught mountain biking and kayaking and rock climbing and orienteering. I was by far the oldest of these breast cancer survivors. I was then 62.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"mntl-sc-block_28-0\" class=\"comp mntl-sc-block mntl-sc-block-html\">Fans were quick to pay tribute to Christopher on Twitter\/X, with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BillyGiese\/status\/1784057375139279304\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one saying<\/a>: \u201c<span class=\"css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3\">Sonja Christopher is a legend in the <\/span><span class=\"r-18u37iz\">#Survivor<\/span><span class=\"css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3\"> world. She was robbed when she took a fall in the first challenge, she had the potential to reach the end and win\u2026 had it not been for a single vote, and her ukulele scene is something I\u2019ll never forget. R.I.P.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/robcesternino\/status\/1783989400373784858\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Another said<\/a>: \u201c<span class=\"css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3\">She paved the way for every person to ever play Survivor. We will always smile when we think of Sonja Christopher. <\/span><span class=\"css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3\">RIP to a legend\u201d.<\/span><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Christopher was a music therapist, known for playing the ukulele on the show. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":50380,"template":"","categories":[1,5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87.jpg",1378,919,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87.jpg",1378,919,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2024\/04\/survivor-star-sonja-christopher-dies-aged-87.jpg",1378,919,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Christopher was a music therapist, known for playing the ukulele on the show.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/50379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}