‘Naked and Afraid: Castaways’ Filming Location: Where Is the Island Located? 

Will these castaways survive the island? In Discovery Channel’s latest spinoff of its hit reality series Naked and Afraid, nine former cast members are marooned on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. With no tools and no maps, they’ll have to rely solely on what they find in the surrounding environment to survive 21 days and make it to the extraction point. But where exactly is this supposedly uninhabited island? Here’s what we know about the Naked and Afraid: Castaways filming location. 

‘Naked and Afraid: Castaways’ may be filmed in the Pearl Islands 

In the season premiere of Naked and Afraid: Castaways, the cast was dropped on a remote island “in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean” that is “hundreds of miles from civilization.” The island and the water around it are home to saltwater crocodiles, wild boars, sea snakes, bull sharks, and other potentially dangerous wildlife. 

So far, Naked and Afraid: Castaways has been vague about the show’s specific filming location. However, we do know it is eight degrees north of the Equator. That’s one clue it might have been filmed in Panama’s Pearl Islands, an archipelago off of Panama’s Pacific Coast. 

The Pearl Islands are also located about eight degrees north of the Equator. One of the boats that drops off the castaways has the word “Panama” written on its side, while the other boats appear to have Spanish names. (Spanish is the official language of Panama.) Plus, the “HP” prefix on the tail number of the aircraft one team finds indicates it is from Panama.

Wherever it was filmed, the resulting show is different from past seasons of Naked and Afraid.

“People will see that Castaways is unlike anything you have seen,” cast member Justin Governale told the Laredo Morning Times. “Based on my experience on it, I can also say that it will be a very exciting thing for people to see. I can’t say that much, but there are a lot of things that will happen that people might have never expected to happen in such a show.”

‘Survivor’ and other reality shows have been filmed in the Pearl Islands 

If Naked and Afraid: Castaways is filmed in the Pearl Islands, it wouldn’t be the first reality show set in the tropical archipelago. Several seasons of Survivor have filmed there, including season 7 (Survivor: Pearl Islands) and season 12 (Survivor: Panama). An episode of the BBC series The Real Swiss Family Robinson was also filmed on the Pearl Islands. So were several international versions of Survivor.   

The new Discovery reality series Survive the Raft was also filmed near the Pearl Islands. That show challenges nine diverse cast members to survive for 21 days after they set sail on the Acali II. It airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.  

New episodes of Naked and Afraid: Castaways air Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Discovery. 

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