It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week that night. Welcome back to TV Reload. My name's Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast I go behind the scenes with the biggest players in television. Each episode you will get a front row seat with content makers like executive producers, writers, editors and casting agents, plus the talent that we see on our screens.
TV Reload reloads the shows that you were currently watching and gives you a better insight at our television industry and streaming services today. On the podcast, I have two interviews which both involve Lego Masters Australia. I have a chat with Brickman himself, who is the judge and co host of the show with Hamish Blake. I then chat with one of the teams from the twenty twenty two series which starts Monday night at seven thirty on Channel nine,
and that team is Josh and Henry. Joss and Henry stood out pretty quickly as I previewed the first few episodes. Straight away you could tell that they had some pretty cool lego bills, which we're going to be that of popular contention as the series goes on and we will get some pretty cool behind the scenes goss from their
time on the show. Brickman himself, whose real name is Ryan McNaught, also shares his wealth of knowledge on Lego and his time on the full series, which have been a huge success for Endemolshin in Australia and Channel nine. I have to admit the more that I watch the series, the more that I realized that this show might be a front runner for the ratings battle which is about to play out on Australian Freedoware televisions. However, let's get started.
I'd like to welcome our special guests to spotlight the brand new series of Lego Masters for twenty twenty two.
Everything this season was the best that it's been on Lego Masters.
Last year we took things to the next level.
I'll tell you the pros and the cons of making something Lego maths.
This year, Lego Masters is tougher than eva.
You might be on the show. We can't guarantee just yet.
Well, that's why it is less. Legos fairly ubiquitous in that most people have had a relationship with it.
You fuck up, Australia, this is Lego Masters. You've just completely wiped hours of good footage because you've just been littering it with curse word.
Hi brickman, how are you.
I'm just awesome. Thank you for having me.
Well, congratulations on Lego Masters. It's such a celebrated show which you and Hamish just nail every year.
Well, we have a lot of fun making it, so we figure if we have so much fun making it, then obviously hopefully people will enjoy it. If anything, even without an audience, we just want to do it for us, for no one else but our films.
Because it almost feels like you are two you know, naughty schoolboys and you're just having a great time and we just get to watch.
It pretty much. And to be honest, the naughty school boy's definitely Hamish. He's the naughty one. I'm the one that puts his homework in on time and gets thing done just.
So you know, just to clear the air.
It's an awful amount of time to be in one room with Hamish.
Well, he does spend a lot of time in the brickpit, and that's usually him stealing lego like as a rule, is a bit light fingered like that even at one point, not this season, but I think it was last season. We actually had to hold him upside down and shake him to get the Lego out of him. He was stealing that much. That's Hamish for you. He's a lot of fun.
I'm sure that Hamish can afford Lego.
You would assume. But the thing about the Brickpit is, and as our contestants over, it's just full of the coolest stuff. So I guess it has a certain appeal.
All and we still have Brickman.
Australia's only the Southern hemisphere is only Legos certified professionals.
Were soucky to have him back as your mentor, your judge, your guide through the season.
Welcome back Wickman, Thank you ha good to be here.
This has been a big success for Channel nine. Why do you think that this show has been so successful.
I think it's a couple of things. First off, Lego's fairly ubiquitous in that most people have had a relationship with it, whether they had as a kid, or they're a cool uncle or you know, whatever the case happens. We even stood on a brick you know. There's everyone
has a relationship with Lego. So therefore it makes it really relatable and so when you see the contestants doing what they're doing and how they're working and using a medium that we're familiar with, it makes it really really relatable. So it's kind of a thing that everyone kind of gets behind and runs with.
That moment that you just talked about, which is standing on a piece of lego, which we've all done, just brought back a memory of my mum standing on lego that I left on the floor, and it made me realize that if I was ever on lego masters, I don't think I could do it with my mum.
Yeah, it's a thing. It's almost like a rite of passage. You kind of have to earn the right. It's like the hot coals, you know, that whole trust exercise of running over the coals. Same with lego bricks.
Well, these people on the show could probably make that for us, right, They could make us like a mock fire trail. Had you thought that maybe a lego stature of the cast have married at first Sight might be a really good segue for you coming off the back of that show for Channel nine. I mean, I'm sure you've been alced to make some pretty outrageous things before.
I have I'll tell you the pros and the cons of making something Lego maps. First off, you wouldn't need a lot of bricks because they don't wear a lot, so you probably don't need to think about covering them up too much. So that's that's that's definitely a pro. But on the negative side, Lego don't really make a flesh tone colored Lego brick or everyone's yellow in Lego Land, of course, so I'm not sure we're going to get We're going to get what we need there.
You're going to need too many of those very lucrative, very rare skin colored pieces of Lego, which I know that you've been hiding away because you just want to use them for special things, maybe not something for mass In fact, I.
Reckon we could probably do a good Lego dinner party. I think that would be okay too. I think we could. We could definitely nail a dinner party, have all the nice food and they kind of stuff laid out. But as for the contestants, I'm not sure. I'm not sure we can get them though.
Sorry, Moving away from that, do you think that it's important for kids to still watch television with their parents?
Look, it's funny, isn't it. I mean, much like yourself. You know, I grew up the same thing. Okay, you know seven thirty on a Tuesday. We'd watch I don't know, a country practice or whatever together or you know, we had our things as a family that would that we would do. I grew up in the country, so we only had two channels like the ABC and one commercial channel, so it was even more so. And it was it
was a real bonding activity. It was a thing where we'd kind of get together to do that particular whatever it was that we would watch. And I think obviously with the today generation and the ability to get whatever content you want now or in whatever format that you want, we've kind of lost that a little bit. So I think it's I think it's a good thing.
I think it's a great thing. And I think it's good that we're making content on television that can be digested by families, you know, and that they can be sitting around and having that bonding moment. I think we need more of it. Talking about the competition, if you were trying to win this competition, what kind of tactics would you drive Because in other reality TV shows you could fly under the radar and pretend that you're not good at LEGO. To start with, I don't know what's your tactics.
Ye are two things. First off, before I give you the answer, what I will say is hopefully Hamish and I we've been angling for years to do an international version where it's the host and judge versus the host and judge of other countries. So we really want to represent Australia. That's our thing. So we do want to get on the show as contestants one day. So taking that on board, I think two really important things. First
is it is about time management. You have to find the perfect balance and this is where it gets tricky between pushing yourself to the absolute limit of your time limit of what you're capable of doing and not going over it because if you go over it, you're not going to deliver, but if you go underneath, it'll be too underwhelming. So you really go to hit this absolute sweet spot in terms of your time management of making something that you as the time the absolute best. So
that's the first tip. The second tip is the advantages in the immunity. They are worth their weight in absolute gold. So I don't think you can really rest your laurels at all at any stage. You really want to win those. And you know what the first the first one obviously where you're playing for a brick, you know that means something that is absolutely critical, So that's what. Yeah, they're probably the two things. I think.
Is there any of a sabotage that we haven't seen on television? Like, has any of the contestants, you know, tried to use any tactics to sabotage anyone else's lego?
Because we run a pretty positive show, we don't really see anything like negative like that, so we don't see people going around stealing bricks or those kind of things. So I don't think I've ever seen in Yeah, no, I'm not sure we have. I mean, occasionally, what will happen is say you as a team, you've got a
certain idea. I don't know, let's say you want to make a forest for example sake, and of course you might go to the brick bit and take all the easy tree pieces first, and so you know, that's not sabotage, but it's an advantage because you got your idea first, and you might get those parts first before everybody else. So there's probably some game type stuff happening, but we don't see it intentionally.
No, and you're probably not casting for that either.
No, that's another show that you talked about. It's a different one.
Stop talking about maths. How old were you when you realized that Lego was more than just a toy and you know, could possibly be your life?
Good?
Good question. Well, I loved Lego as a kid. I thought Lego was awesome up until I was about thirteen or fourteen. Then it kind of became uncool as a teenager. It's about sport and your friends and girls and those kind of things, and so life kind of took a bit about normal attack there. But it wasn't until we had kids in my early thirties that I kind of got back into Lego and sort of rediscovered it there.
So probably I'm going to say early to mid thirties when I realized how awesome it was as a medium and kind of realized that there's something in it from there.
And then I've obviously been living under a pile of pile of Lego. But can you tell me your story behind the Nick Brickman.
Essentially back in two thousand and seven or thereabouts, I was starting to get a few commissions. People are asking me to make things out of Lego. I thought of stuff, I really need to get a website. I really need to find something or another. And I'm like, oh, what do we call the website? And eventually in the big brainstorm on the whiteboard was the Brickman, And so I thought, oh, well, I'll just I'll just get that as a website. That'll
be fine, and I won't call myself that. It was more about just the website, and eventually it stuck so very unglamorous.
Yeah, you started signing checks for it, you started asking your wife to call you Brickman instead of it took over your life.
Yeah, when you land at the passport office, hey Brickman. Yeah, yeah, that's on my passport, you know. Yeah, it's a thing.
How did this show come up for you? Because I can imagine that you must have pitched this to Channel nine. I mean this must be like a dream job for you, But like, can you tell me how it came across your table?
Yeah? It was actually the other way around. So Lego Master has actually started off in the UK quite a different format, very much more family. They have kids on the show as well. As adults, very much a different
sort of format show. And then some really i'm going to call them TV heavyweights people and enemol shine a chat by the name of David McDonald who's like Television Royalty invented goggle Box and master Chef and all sorts of things like that, and he saw the format and thought, wow, I could do stuff with this, and then basically they got working on what the show would roughly be, and then they got in contact with me and said, hey, look, we've got a very rough concept for a show. Are
you interested at all? And I'm like, oh, well, I've seen the UK one. Yeah, sure, And then they kind of explained how different it was going to be and what it was going to look like and how it was going to work and how much of a totally different production, and I'm like, yeah, look, I'll give it a go. It's one of those things. I know how popular Lego is and I know how cool Lego is, but whether that translated to a television audience that's a very different question. And so yeah, we kind of just
merged the two together. And obviously once Haymen came on board as well, it worked well.
Both of you added tone to it as well, which I think is kind of your own signature. You know, like you can't really be Haymission. We've seen that with people trying to be him on radio, and you can't be you with your knowledge on Lego and I don't think we have anyone in Australia that's at that level. Have you asked d Mac whether or not you could be on goggle Box as well, because he's obviously given that job to Hamish'd.
Say that for the real celebrities, mate, I'm like d Grade, So I'm very happy watching goggle Box if you don't mind.
How stressful is it for the contestants each day?
I think there's multiple levels of stress and it happens at different points of time. First off, the initial concept, so we're all creative. Everybody's creative in their own way.
But what we do on the show is we tell them you need to be creative right now, like right this very second, and we're going to put ten cameras in your face and lights and Hamish just going to come around and pester you and I'm going to say, what the hell's going on and all this kind of stuff, right, So the poor contestants have to come up with something very very quickly, and that's that's actually hard to be creative on demand. So that's the first sort of level
of pressure that hits them. And then secondly, of course you know that we talk to say it's a ten hour bill, you know, there's actually a hard slog where the've actually got to do a lot of work, and at various points in milestones they'll be like, oh gosh, I needed to have done this or I haven't done that yet, and then they'll have to adapt their plans
and change and that kind of stuff. And then usually some TV stuff will happen, you know, in between hamish'll come out and do something crazy all that kind of stuff. So we kind of have this building pressure and it's really I don't know why this is a thing, but it always comes down to like the last ten minutes. It always does without fail, and that just of course amplifies all of the pressure that's on top of everybody.
I was imagining the people from Endermulshine just you know they'd finished the lego through three hours early, and you know that it'd be like the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, you know, with the family that you get one person in particular to do it, but you quickly rush them to the table, quickly, quickly, make it look like it's been really intense. But interestingly enough, which you can explain to us, is that, yeah, they are just working all the way right to the very end.
Totally, and you know, it's this classic thing and we can see without contestants all the time when is a model finished, a lot of contestants they would love another ten hours to do all this other stuff with their model, or add to it, or change it up or do whatever, right, but the time is the time, and once it goes,
that is the ultimate end of it. So often what teams will do, let's just say you're cruising, things are going great halfway through and they'll look over the room and they'll go, oh my god, look what they've done. This is like twice the size, or it's like the coolest idea ever, and then they'll need to change it up and go. So it's very very rare. We've had some people that might go, oh, you know what, we've
got a couple of minutes to go. Let's do nothing too stressful, do a bit of set dressing, just tidy things up a little bit, but as a rule, people are like full on, and even some of the technical challenges their contraption or the gizmo might not even be working until like there's a minute to go or something. So it's pretty full on, pretty full on.
Do you know if there's a lot of people that want to be on Lego Masters.
Yeah, there is. I prefer not to get involved in casting because I love to meet the contestants first time when they come through the door and have that whole chemistry as they arrive. I have. I have done some of the casting bits and pieces, and literally, you know, thousands of people do apply, so it's not something that we're ever going to run out of contestants or anything along those lines, which is great.
So I just imagine people trying to bribe you with some lego, some of that rare flesh colored lego, you know, just a hego brickman, here's a pound of lego, flesh colored lego. Can you get me on the show?
Yeah?
No, Fortunately I don't. I don't make the casting decisions likely, So no bribery whatsoever. I'm all good.
What's the best advice though, that you offer people? I mean I'm sure that you get a chance to speak to them, you know, on their first day. You know, what sort of advice do you give these contestants in starting out in the competition.
I think if I was to look from a from a competition perspective, if I look at all the winners that we've had on the show, they've all got one trait is they've learned each of the skills in each of the challenges and then learned how to apply them.
And so whoever grasps that the best will end up making the coolest, grandest, most incredible thing because of all the things that they're picking up and natural when you're putting a lego at home, for example, like you don't often think about the perspective of how a lego model is viewed. You just make something awesome at time.
That's just what you do.
But of course for television, hey, we're looking for a very particular angle. So as we're teaching people skills like that one, and you know, we tach probably thirty or forty different skills, but as we teach in that one, people who understand and grasp that and can take that going forward, they end up going places. So probably the ability to learn. As strange as that sounds.
On a show, this might be the nerdiest question that I can ask you about Lego, But what is your favorite piece of Lego constructed over the last for a few seasons.
Look, it's tonny. I do get asked that one a bit because you know, everyone has their own favorites, and so it's kind of like picking your favorite child, and you know you can't do that, so it gets a little bit tricky. But I have a few. I think Henry and Kaid's tried and coming out of the water with the boat, I think that was pretty incredible. That kind of set a tone for what the show's about,
So that definitely sticks in my mind. From the previous season, Scott and they made this arcade machine called the strum King. I don't know if you remember that one, but it was mind blowing from a lot of reasons. It was so much fun. It was them in Lego personified, and it had some of the most craziest contraptions and gizmo's in it. So in terms of my favorites, it's probably those and the tiger as well in the tree that was unreal as well. So we've been very lucky.
I just love that there's some people sitting around every year coming up with the weekly challenges, like what about if we get a jukebox and we get them to get a record from a popular piece of pop history and then get them to build a piece of Lego and then ask Delta Gudrum to guess what it is? I mean, I mean, who's making this stuff up?
It's funny to say that. So there's quite a challenge team at Lego Masters that are incredible people, and we actually have probably I don't know, maybe a good one hundred or so challenges that we've just never got to yet. We've had a brainstorm and we've got ideas for them. But what the most important thing about all the challenges
is is the challenge team and everybody. We actually do these challenges ourselves to make sure that they work and we know what to expect and that they're reasonable and the timeframes great and that kind of stuff. So we actually test all of them first, which is often hilarious.
What did you do with the jukebox?
I probably would have sucked on that one, let's be honest. But the first episode, of course, which is underwater with the whole sunken world. I tested that one. I had like an Atlantis underwater, which was the stereotype and the trope, but I managed to do a few wacky things with
some characters, so it was a lot of fun. Actually, the ability to do stuff like pyrotechnics or explosions or flames of this kind oft we just don't get to do that stuff normally, so when you get to do it on the show, it makes it a lot of fun. It really does. Well.
I'm so excited for this series. As I said, I've been lucky enough to see a few episodes, and I think that the casting this year is just magic. So I think there's some brilliant people on the show. One question I ask everyone who joins the podcast is what is something from behind the scenes that we did not see that we will not see that you can share from behind the scenes of Lego Masters.
Well, great question, I think for me. I mean, we filmed this series in like peak COVID, and so we were all in a bubble and all of the contestants were in the one hotel, you know, having to basically couldn't go out to dinners, couldn't do all those things. So they basically kicked up. And I think this group, as a collective of contestants, they are so tight together they are like a family, and that added a whole another dynamic to teamwork and to helping each other and
stuff like that. So I don't know if they'll make the cut, but there's a lot of great parts in the show where other teams are helping teams, which in a reality competition show is like unheard of when there's money on the line or there's eliminations and whatever the case happens to be. And so watching people do that just out of the nature of their heart and stuff, this series is like next level.
For that every other reality show that's an opportunity to throw someone under the bus, but for these people, this is an opportunity to help them beat them in the competition, which I think says something about the type of people that we get to enjoy on this show, and I think that's the magic of the show in itself. So thank you so much for being able to answer some really random questions about the show.
Thanks it.
You're a fantastic guest on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I mean I took about at Master's forever, so no problems at all.
A special thanks to Brickman for joining us up until this point. But let's get into our chat with Joss and Henry, who I'm delighted to have on TV reload.
I'm Josh, I'm twenty four, and I'm Henry. I'm twenty one, and I'm Justic's younger brother. Going up. Every single hobby was share. We'll build Lego together, We'll listen to the same music, we'll do the same video games. Everything just is really amazing at.
Creating creatures, that possibility of just making anything in your mind in a physical form. I can't wait to show what.
We can do. Hey, boys, congratulations on making it onto Lego Masters. Is it a dream come true to be on this show?
Absolutely? I mean this is kind of just like It's the pinnacle, really, isn't it. If you're into a Lego it doesn't get much better than this.
Who decided to apply for the show?
That was That was my doing. I don't want to make it sound like I didn't want to go on the show. Josh had applied like for a previous season or season one, and I didn't apply with him at that time, but then he sort of said, oh, do you want to do this? And I haven't really built Lego mocks as they call it, like own creations, Like I haven't really done that well, Like think the last mock that I made was when I was about twelve
years old. So we did like the Lego Master's Crash Course about a month before we left, where we were up till like three am at Just's place, just like building stuff to try and like get me back up to speed and like building Lego again.
Introduce it all the new parts that have come out in the last few years.
Yeah, that's so strange. So that when you applied for the first season, then who were you originally going to be doing the show with.
I have a work mate I work at a Lego store and we both work there and we're good friends and we both do very similar sort of builds and stuff. So I applied with him for season one, but we just didn't make it. So I was like, I kind of want to go on with someone who I'm like really close with and I can that kind of interact with very seamlessly. And I was like, oh, Henry knows me inside and out.
Like I came the same word, Ah, yes, that's right, how delightful. I think Josh is the only person that I could tolerate for three months straight and be doing a competition with straight away.
As soon as the series starts. For some reason, the two of you really stand out. So I mean, we can't spoil anything to say how well you do on the show, but straight away, from a viewer's perspective, you guys look like an early favorite.
That's so bizarre because we were well, I don't know, I don't want to speak to Josh, but I was so nervous, and I think that comes from the fact that like I haven't been haven't been on on the Lego game for as long as Joss has, like I haven't been. I haven't been as deep into the Lego field. So as soon as it was like, hey, you're in the brick pit, build some cool stuff, I was like,
just forgot how to build Lego. For about an hour, was like grab some two by four red bricks and was trying to build a little castle or something, and I was like, all right, there's there's a lot of a lot of learning to do. But we found what worked. I think pretty quickly, like we found what each of us could do for a build and how we could make it work. It was never really like all right, you build this entire part, I'll build that entire part.
It was usually quite a bit of just jumping in wherever we saw fit and saying, oh, I want to build that bit, and we're like all right.
Our character bio says that you know, we're the architect and the engineer, but really there's no desert needed person for each of those roles. It kind of just depends on who knows more about like the subject matter and the like, you know, what would work best for it in Lego, so very much differs between builds.
You know, I think this is an important question to ask you at this point. Do you think that you will get more attention from the ladies now that you've become Lego famous or do you think that you're just going to get more attention from other Lego nerds.
Well you've better not.
Jos.
Definitely Lego nerds, hopefully Lego.
That's the only attention we want a Lego nerd community.
Josh Hamish kicks off the news series saying that this year is going to be tougher than ever, is tougher than ever. It was hamish just being hamish.
Oh no, it's absolutely the toughest one ever. Like you'll see from Challenge one, you know, we got the most difficult first challenge. And you'll also notice that throughout the season if you're a fan of the show and you've watched other seasons, they typically sort of have the same amount of hours for certain kinds of builds, so you know, this will be a twelve hour build, this will be
like a sixteen hour build, like things like that. Hours are all like an hour or two shorter than they normally would be.
And you felt it too, like you as soon as the time gets thrown up, you're like, oh is that all? And then watching previous seasons like we're screaming at the TV, like, oh, they've got so much time, Like what is why?
Well, Henry, how long was the application process and what do you have to do to get on this show?
So I believe for us it was like you do just the internet application on the website first, and then an interview, then an audition build, and then a couple more interviews and more interviews and things like that, and it was all pretty like up in the air. I'd say, like you were like are we going to be there? And then what just the week before or something?
It was pretty much all right the way you go, like they get you to do all this stuff and it's just like you might be on the show, we can't guarantee just yet. And then yeah, like like you said, a week before, it's like, okay, you're on pack up everything up, come.
And then we I mean, did you have to pack everything up and go and live there for three months?
That's very much?
Yeah, that is crazy. How do you put your life on hold to go and build Lego for three months?
I just didn't have much going on, so I was I was stoked. Actually I was sitting at home because this is COVID. In fact, I think when we left it was still part of a lockdown. Yeah, so I was really bored. So then when it was like, hey, do you want to go hang out with people and build Lego for a while, it was like, yeah, yes I do. That's great.
Well how old did you guys get along with the other people building? Were those work rooms anything like married at first sight, dinner party or was it very different?
I was super chummy like, I mean everyone got along so well and again almost everyone, Yeah, almost everyone.
Spill the tea who didn't get along with who?
There's always one no that that's very true though, Like I think we've got the best cast, so so good. It sounds like we're selling it real hard here, but I think everything is better about the season. That's why I'm so excited to watch it, not just because we're in it.
I'll be honest, I'm really glad that I guess I didn't get on for season one because there weren't as many pieces in the brickpit at the time. So they've added more now, and you know, they've had more time to kind of get on their feet, and you can tell, like the people who are designing the challenges are doing such a good job now, and like it's all really fun, really like stimulating. You do some really interesting stuff you wouldn't think to do with lego, and I got to do it with Henry.
Did they pat you down to make sure you weren't stealing any lego out of that room?
Stupid? It's a great honor system.
More unintentionally than not, you ended up stealing some lego from the brick pick because you're just like you're running back and forth putting things in your pockets, just like oh, I got to get it back to the table, and you just forget about it.
They've got the buckets and stuff, but sometimes it's easier to just like grab a pocket full of that color because you don't need a whole buckets. So then like, I've got these like cargo pants that I was sort of just like finding lego in for for a long time. I was like, oh, there's more.
Well that's a really good point. You know, like you're in that workroom for ages, and how do food breaks work or toilet breaks? I mean, I feel like I wouldn't want to go to the toilets. I'd be wearing an adult diaper. But you know, how does that all work?
Well, you're absolutely right, Like we do get like a designated like lunch and everything, but if in crunch time you need to go to the executive office, that's on your time. So it was a bit like that sometimes where it's like you've got an hour left and you're like, I've just got to stick it out.
You know.
That might be TMI, but there's a bit of exclusive insight for you.
The exclusive insight of the people from Lego Masters. Let's talk about their toilet break.
That's why we're here.
You know, I was chatting with Brickman yesterday and man, he's a piece of work and so lovely. Did you try and charm Brickman? I mean, I can imagine that he would have found it really hard not to give a lot of input, But were you trying to charm him to try and get tips or anything? Oh?
All the time?
It's just like, you know, you're constantly asking him, like, you know, should I do this? And he kind of gives you liqu a hmm, and it's just like, just tell me, please, please.
He's very good at what he does, not just in the lego sense, but in the being a judge sense. He's very good at giving you just enough of a hint of that being the right thing to do. But then you're sort of playing this little riddle in your head where you're like, is he doing a double negative with me? And it's all very very strange to read, and.
Like there's a lot of pressure to impress him because he is the only judge on the show exactly right, You've got to impress Brickman's that's the end of the game.
I'd be bribing him with rare pieces of lego, That's what I would have been doing.
Well, it's so unfortunate, right because he's the lego man, so he's got it all.
He's got it all. Well, he was saying yesterday that you know, Hamish was stealing so much lego, and I was like, doesn't Hamish earn millions of dollars for being on this show? Can't he buy his own lego?
But it's brickpit lego. He gets to bring it home to his kids and go, look at this.
It's celebrity lego, this case of legos.
As famous as an inanimate object can get?
What about a duo name? Because I was watching it and I felt so old because I was like, you know what nickname can these guys are going to get? Who are they going to be related to? And I was thinking Ren and Stimpy? But I was thinking, probably don't even know who Ren and Stimpy Isak, God, what.
Did we do to deserve that there was actually Rand? And which one Stimpy? I'm definitely ran, I know.
I guess I'm left with Stimpy.
Well, what who is a better duo name? Did you get given a nickname while you're real.
Yeah, the most the most famous of those nicknames was the brothers grim right, Yeah, and that was from Paul. But we quite like was that.
Because at the start one of them was claiming that you guys weren't smiling or you just had like the very serious Yeah.
Throughout the build, we had people coming up to us asking, are you guys okay, Yeah, you're not smiling. You're so quiet.
I haven't seen you laughing.
Yeah, I haven't heard you laugh. I've been laughing enough. Jos, I think that's that's evil. Yeah, that's sinister, isn't it.
Josh?
Josh and I being brothers, we don't have nearly as much to talk about as you know some of the teams who've just met each other, you know what I mean. Joss and I kind of get in there and we're like, okay, cool, it's the lego competition, so let's just crack down and
build some lego. So there's a lot of moments where it's like we probably just look like absolute serial killers, just building lego in silence next to each other with straight faces, but having a ball on the inside, right, Like just amazing.
But still actually name the brothers grim and Stimpy.
That's great.
We look very grim and our subject matter for build is often very grim as well.
That being said, I will put Ren in my bio and from.
There, some random dude has nicknamed us rend and Stimpy and we're running with it.
Great.
You know, Josh, do you think that there are any advantages to being you know, the best at this game? Like what kind of processes did you go to? You know, we always trying to follow the brief? Were you just trying to use your imagination? Like what was the process like for you every time you had to do a build?
I think it kind of evolved as like time went on. So, you know, we started off just like trying to do as much like our own spin on it and like trying to sort of like bend the brief in more weird ways. But as like we progressed, we realized that it was all about you know, them teaching us how
to do a certain thing. And so rather than trying to make the brief into something you're good at, trying to sort of of embrace the challenge of it being something different and trying to like rise to that, because that's what really impresses Brickman.
Yeah, and Henry, what would you say is the hardest part of this competition? Like what was the hardest thing for you to get your head around.
The whole building? Lego came back pretty quick, like I started to get the hang of things and like figured out what worked and what didn't. But then I'd say, yeah, the hardest part was the brief. You don't want to seem like you're trying to bend it so that you can build whatever you want using a brief, because that's not what our intention is. It was just like you
want to stand out, you know what I mean. So a lot of the time you get given a brief and there's one idea that comes to your head straight away, and you're like, that's probably what everyone else is thinking, so then what's the next thing? But then sometimes you get a bit lost in that and you go down a rabbit hole and suddenly you're miles away from what the brief is asking. So that was probably the hardest part, was a bit of self restraint on like actual build ideas. Sometimes.
Well, in the first episode when you were building the Sea Dragon, I would say, but it was funny, like I was like this is amazing. But when brick Bank came over and said, you know, like when this is going to be coming out of the water, you know you want to be able to see the most impressive thing about it. And so you guys turned its head a little bit. But it's so interesting to watch the show because you know, I didn't think about that, do
you know what I mean? Like I didn't think about the angle that it was going to be coming out of the water.
So oh, neither did we. So that's such a good point because that is like one of the pivotal moments where we sort of realize, oh, this is something you need to think about from now on, you know what I mean. Like, you can't just how it is at home, where it's like I'll build this thing and I'll photograph it from whatever angle I want. I'll figure it out when I'm done. You've really got to think, like, okay, so where is a brickman and b the camera going to see this and is it going to look good
in that context? So that's something that we learned from that point straight away, and we tried to incorporate every single time from then on because we never really well, I never built much by myself, but I know Jos doesn't do set pieces as much as he would just sort of create a character for something. But that composition side of things was something that we really It.
Was something I relied on you a lot for I think towards you know.
We also said to ourselves at some stage, we are so happy with committing an hour of planning for every build. If it takes us an hour to get a good idea good composition, we're happy, you know what I mean. We're not feeling that we're wasting time because we know how important it is.
Now well, I can I only I mentione how excited you guys are to watch this because you know, episode two there's a lot of smashing of lego and it was definitely the highlight for me, thus far from watching a few of the preview episodes, because I actually watched every single person's, every team's smashing of the lego through that hoop. I think I saw like two or three time. Go back and watch it again and again and again, because do they show you any of the slow moo parts?
Yeah, so like when we look up at the wall and everything and that's real, Like we do get to see it in slow moo straight away. But like you said, we love to sit there and press the replay button over and over and over again.
It was the best, just so good. Anyway. One of the questions that I ask everyone who joins the podcast to sort of wrap things up, is you know, what is something from behind the scenes that we did not see, that we won't see that you can share from your experience of making Lego Masters.
I don't know if I get in trouble for saying it, but I'm not the best with like refraining profanity, Okay, so I would just that's probably what I would say is Lego can be frustrating. There's one episode one build where I was sort of going off like an old sailor and actually had someone sort of saying you, like, look, you've got to like, can't we can't use this, you
know what I mean? You've just you've just completely wiped hours of good footage because you've just been littering it with first words.
We'll look out for that in the future episodes. We'll just see looking like you've got Tourette's as your.
Hair just madded to his face. You'll know what's happening.
I don't think they're going to be putting swearing into Lego Masters any time, so I'd appreciate it though.
I think it'd be hilarious. We have had There was one moment on the show where someone goes, oh shit, and I was like what because I didn't know that that was koshit.
You know.
I we were what season one in the Bridge episode, Yeah, we were like, oh, I see they let one sugar honey iced tea to Yeah.
I didn't have said it.
Well boys, I as I said, I've only seen two episodes and I absolutely loved it. And I think you guys do such a great job on the show. I hope you enjoy watching it along with the rest of Australia. And thanks so much for being able to chat with me today.
Oh thank Chris Man.
It's been an absolute treat.