Osher Günsberg - THE BACHELORS - Presenter

It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast past week that.

Might welcome back guys to TV Reload. As you may know, my name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the insight gos on the popular TV shows that you may be watching from around the world. Undeniably, our TV sets are still a major part of our home entertainment, and yet very little is known about how

It feels really romantic.

We will talk about why this series looks and feels different and how the producers went above and beyond to make this the most romantic season of The Bachelor We've ever seen. I'll ask about the pressure of being a TV host here in Australia and if men have the same pressures as female hosts.

We will talk about the.

Editing and how by the click of a finger they can change the way that the audience relates to these participants. Plus we will get plenty of exclusives from behind the scenes of The Bachelor's which, as I mentioned, is out on Sunday night at seven thirty on Network ten and you'll be able to catch up on ten play if

But anyway, let's bring Osher in.

Hey, I'm going to tees. Are you there? Put yourself for a conference seck.

I'm just gonna have to say I'm sorry in advance because you might be dealing with some shit today.

Okay, oh wow, Okay.

I love this for you, so do I I'm excited for a new chapter.

I can't believe we just did a whole radio tet and I had no idea who I was talking to.

It looks good, Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Well.

I saw you two days ago.

Really should you look about fifteen years younger?

This is wow.

Look I've got the all clear from a document Sorry for people who are listening, like, I have literally got the same haircut as I did when I was five.

It is I think it's like maybe.

A two blade, maybe a two it's maybe it's zero in the back and it's all blonde. And yeah, I sliced about six months of growth off last night because I've got the all clear from a documentary that I've been shooting because I was a bit you know, we were just wanted to make sure we didn't have to do any pickup shots. And I call Lash, my executive producer. He goes, no, we're good, You'll be fine. We won't

So yeah, it looks.

It looks amazing. Thank you. If you cut fifteen years off, I mean you look twenty to begin with.

So wow, Well I kind of forgot.

I knew I had my haircut, but I kind of forgot that I was going on television today.

Uh so look that'll be interesting, Tess.

Definitely. Well, I'm going to put myself on new I'm going to turn off my video.

I'm going to collect myself.

You do that.

I'm going to ask about this in the podcast to be fair, Like, I think we need to talk about image and brand and what it's like to be a TV presenter and getting approval.

I think that's all really quite fascinating.

And now, look, I love what you've done with the green screen background. Ben.

Actually it's got that kind of it's got that rental crisis kitchen vibe about it, which I really I really like you're a man of the people obviously.

I mean I spoke to I was at my studio, so I had the full set where today you're in Bendigo and my mother in law's kitchen. Yes, and you know we're able to do this because you know, once COVID happened, we realized we could all work remotely.

Mate.

I paid for fiber to come into my house. I bought all of the good shit off eBay, and everyone's like.

I can't get an lights. I'm like, dude, did you not read the news?

If you need light or toilet paper or rat tests, I'm your man because I read the same artica you did.

Six weeks ago. But then I went on eBay and you just carried on when your day and now I'm fine and you're panicking.

It's mental. It's mental.

Well, welcome back to another series of The Bachelors. It feels like this year they worked out from the last season we were talking about in January how to really level up and make this format really work. I mean, it was ambitious to have three bachelors when we saw it in January, and.

It was interesting to watch.

But this launch episode is the best launch episode of the franchise of twelve.

Have you seen it? I've watched it twice, my friend.

It is really it's so different, though, did you feel, like, you know, when you turned up this time around, considering that you've got two seasons of the Bachelor's at in one year, did it feel very different to what it was like being in the GC. Oh?

Yeah, absolutely, because like any I mean, I don't know.

I think this is the twenty third edition of the Bachelor version of the franchise that we've done between Batchet, Bachelorette and Bachelor and Batch in Paradise, and like any relationship, you've got to keep things fresh, you know, you've got to you've got to make sure that you keep people interested. You've got to make sure that there's enough of what people first came for that that's there.

But also as people's.

Tastes change and the environment that you're existing in the market changes, you need to make sure that you keep up with that. And this particular season when in reality television or nonscripted television, but anything that you're creating, you can there's a few dials you can turn, all right, you can, you know, if you're making a film, you can have more fight scenes, more car chases, less explosions, more romance, you know whatever. So with ours, and you'll

You can have make it.

Funnier and on this season, and we've done you know, some of those. This season we have just gone romance because it's all there, all right. We could click a finger of an Adobe premiere, you know that US premiere.

They probably use something really good like.

Abbot or something.

But we could click a finger on an edit sweet and change the show. But the romance really plays in this one. And I don't know about you, but I've worked in nonscripted television twenty something years now, and I thought my heart had hardened to just this impenetrable shield

And I watch it, I just go oh, and I'm like, oh, there's so much terrible shit.

Going on in my life.

When I wrote open my Phone, it's.

Just like, well, death, famine, hate way, climate change, sea level fuck, jamming. And then I see these people meet each other and just have these twinkles in their eyes.

Oh, that's so nice, and I have an emotional response to it, and it's so lovely that I get something out of two other people having a nice time. And so we've dialed that up a bit on this season, which is really lovely, but.

It also feels quite expensive in the sense that, like when we were on the GC, it was like the girls were drinking out.

Of plastic cups like you would if.

We were pull side. It was oh and X come now.

But this time it's crystal and the girls are wearing dresses that you'd see the Kadashians wear to like the met Gala, So like it does feel very expensive.

But the thing we have a word for it ben Yeah, money, money on screen.

That's what they call it. Money on screen.

And it was most definitely a deliberate editorial choice. There's things that we can again, there's levers we can pull to change the feel of the show, and that can even go to the choice of lenses, because that will dictate how close or far away you are from people, and the closer you are in proximity, the more where they are of your presence, and the more their behavior may be affected. If you're right in their face or

Do that once.

So if, for example, season two, we started shooting at a beautiful Harveside mansion in Hunters Hill, which was directly under the landing path of both Sydney runways at the airport, which is about four kilometers down wind. So on a Friday night or an evening Saturday or Saturday night, mostly a Friday night, we would have to shoot the show in forty five second chunks between seven three, seven, eight hundreds flying across my.

Wait, don't don't, don't tell, don't break her heart just yet?

Wait and okay, Sam week good goes, samp go like very hard to have an authentic response.

Actually it was Blake that one.

That one.

For sure, that sort of technical difficulty can happen. But as you mentioned Spence before, I know her very well. She is brilliant. And I was there while you're filming this series and having a chat with her about it.

And where did you come to? Did you come to the Brighton place?

I was at the Brighton one. Yeah.

Remember I told you the awkward story about the first time I interviewed you on national radio. Oh yeah, And the producer said to me, I used to work with Osha and put a question in the rundown and I asked you the question, which was asking you about your partner who you'd separated from. My research, I would have known. And you said to me when we're on the set of this season of The Bachelor's you said.

I bet you you've never done that again.

I bet you you've never read because you only need to do it once, right, I do it once, and you will never read a producer's question without doing that research yourself.

It happened to me once, and I happened to me while I was interviewing Keith Urban. And because I am so fucking busy, I don't have time to write my own prep When someone hand me a sheet, I was real at my own ass, so it was still drinking, and I handed the sit and asked this question and he was.

Like, oh, that's not me, mate, And then oh fuck me.

It's like one of the greatest greatest musicians our country's ever produced, one of the greatest country artists of all time.

I've fucking put my foot in it, and never, never, ever again. I still get other people to help me with my research and my prefers. I don't have enough time to do it.

All, but I always, always, always go over it and double check it. I don't just like read it live to air, because that is a dangerous game.

I felt the same way, mate, because I was like, you're the longest standing male presenter in reality, like as in, you've done more reality in the last twenty years, which I have loved, idolized, and I felt like I should have known better. And it's literally like walking up to someone that you want a validation from and then shitting on them, do you know what I mean? Like, and you're like, and you can see it in the face as it goes anywhere.

Anyway, I think I think it's I keep myself through a very high standard, all right. And I because of the standard that I keep myself.

Too, I have you know, I am.

Employable, I am reliable, I am professional, and people go, yep, we can get that guy.

And I want other people to have that too.

And if I kept me.

To a standard, and I actually think that there's something really powerful in that. But you know what, Asha, You've always been really good at, you know, active listening, and that's what makes really good conversation. And you can see it in this season of the Bachelor's the way you're interacting with the bachelors and with the women.

Oh, you've got a hard.

Job to come across on a show like this that could be quite camp and look authentic and look honest and like you're still managing to do this well, like.

It's twenty three or twenty four.

I think it's twenty three. I'm pretty sure it's twenty. Do I have to get test can rapidly test. If you can rapidly find the numbers, i'd appreciate that, But you're gonna have you're gonna have to count back to that chair and batch and paradise and the amount of episodes.

No, not in the episodes, but seasons at least. I think it's twenty three. It's a huge amount of things. But I guess you know.

I think the greatest problem, the greatest mistake you can make in this kind of TV, is to dehumanize your participant. Yeah, because once you do that, then a you put the integrity of the show at risk, You put their emotional response at risk, You put.

Them at risk.

If you can treat them with respect and on face values like you're here to fall in love or cook great recipe or whatever, build a house, whatever it is, and treat you know, and honestly meet them at that place, you're going to get better, better stuff on camera.

Then you'll ever get otherwise by setting them up.

But you're valuing your product in a way.

I mean I had a conversation with an executive producer years ago and you know, won a series of Big eleven years ago, and they wanted me to come back and be in the audience for a finale for one eight seasons later, and they put me in the back row of the finale and it was really awkward because all these people that were there were all super fans of the show, and it sort of devalued the brand and a little bit to be like, we're trying to put value on winning this show, but there you are.

You know, you can't devalue them.

Absolutely, You're asking people to literally change their lives forever to come on and put their The currency we trade in is authentic human response. Right, whatever show you're making,

We we work really hard to try to do everything that we possibly can. It's a workplace like any other.

And I say that to people all the time, like entertainment is no different, you know, and a lot of the pressures that we put on ourselves as well exists in TV. It's probably magnified a little bit because more people are watching it, but ultimately the effects that it has on the mind and the mental load is still the same, you know.

Yeah, oh well, yeah, man, whatever your I mean, it's you might you might get off. Most reality works in a case of elimination, you know. So you may start with the many, and like any race, you know, whatever it is.

There's only a few that get to the last part of it.

And so for the first few weeks or something, with a massive debut, you might have been quite prominent, and then your storyline goes and ends, and in the end, George from wins, but you for the rest of your life will have people stare at your while you do your groceries. And you you know, we do have very best to let everyone know in the casting process, in the you know, when people do come to us, to let them know on that this is what's going to happen.

You could leave on the first day, but it won't change the.

Fact that you'll be at Wet and Wild with your kids in ten years from now.

And someone's going to go in fact, like that's going to happen.

All right, stomach hanging out.

I've been or went wild looking not looking as triminous terrific as once was, and have people say can we get a photo? And then they put it on Instagram and you're like, oh God, maybe shouldn't have had those edibles during lockdown because I'm looking a bit rubbery around the sides.

Oh boy, that's a dangerous that's a dangerous hit man.

That's a conversation for a different podcast. But I was going to ask you when you turned up today. You've turned up and you've got your hair shaved beyond Justin Bieber could pull it off at nineteen. Somehow you're pulling it off. Let's not say your age, but you know there'll be fifty in March. It's mental, It is mental. Is that I would love to know from your perspective because you've been on TV for twenty years as a

Look the same And I don't know.

I just love to know what you think of the difference between a minute man and a woman being a female presenter.

Oh man, there is no competition. Men get to grow old on camera. Yeah, that's the fat Men get to grow old on camera, all right, And women in our community still generally don't get that chance, or do get that chance, but not without you know, it's twenty twenty three, and yet we call that. You know, we'll get out outraged at someone's microaggressions, but we will look at a female presenter and have the fifties on camera and have you know, like, come on, we are are or we

Do you have to have conversations with an image consultant with saying do you have to be like imagine if you wanted to go and I don't know, I don't know if you've ever done this, but if you ever wanted to get fillers or botox or do you could do you have to talk to them about it?

No, no, no, no, no, no no, there's nothing like that.

The only thing that I have to do is be mindful of pickups or say, for example, and we've had this in one season of The Bachelor, I think it was season one, it might have been season three. I think it was season one, where a person who was involved in the first few weeks of the show chose to look kind of basically said nah, I actually don't want to do it, and everyone decided it's probably better that we don't put you know, these things, we don't

Well, Fritos are on set.

I'm like, all right, just so everybody knows I'm going to radically change the way I look, and I think, okay, and then that's fine.

And that's that's about it.

I have a and that's only fair because otherwise it makes doing the actual job very very difficult if we're not able to keep continuity through whatever it's doing. But as far as you know the way I look and pressure to the way I look, I you know, I might have got employed in ninety ninety nine because I had a certain something, but I think I stay employed because I work really really hard at being the undeniable

Get to do this thing.

Well, there's only one that's him, because I worked my fucking ass off to make sure that they think that.

I was going to say, mate, I saw you last year, not this last season of the Massing Up, but I was in the audience to watch the.

Rap that's a fun one, and I was.

Blown away by you doing that show, like I was blown away by the pickups as well, Like the judges panel at one point wasn't there and you had to do pickups and you talk to people that weren't sitting in those spaces. The producer stood there and talked to you, but you wrapped that shoot so fast, like I don't know whether they pay you by the minute.

So they were like, no, I'm just mindful of everyone's time. And that's one of the reasons they get me because I can do things in one take.

I can, Yeah, I work I work very hard at that. I work very hard at at main.

You know, you know, I have ways that I can learn really really long scripts quite quickly, and I work really hard at that. So when you've got forty something people on set, if you keep sucking it up like and you go into overtime, that's going to cost people a lot of money, all right, And everybody wants to go in their meal break and pickup's usually done right before a break, right, And my job, I really look at my job as how can I make everyone else's

It was, and it was all right. And that's why I do that.

By being on time, by being absolutely prepared, by being where I'm supposed to be, knowing what I'm supposed to do, getting the fucking gold every time, and you know, basically, you know, to be honest, thinking like okay, how can I I'm thinking like chess, you know, how can I okay, three moves from now, as a promo moment coming up, I reckon I can get there and then boom and

And they're going, oh, that was an easy day work. I thought it was going to be hard today. And that's the way I kind of look at it.

You know, I just want to jump in there.

A friend of mine work was working on The Bachelor's that was the one that was on in January, and it was one of his first jobs working in television, and he was there to see you do the opening of that first episode and it was the longest monologue I think you'd ever done for an intro of a show. I think you shot it twice, but they just used the first take. I think that's the story. But that's unbelievable.

It's touching all the points.

You know.

It's one to be able to remember the lines, and even actors don't usually have that time to be able to have to go that long, and you just day on it.

I'm like, but that's you know, your colleagues saw the moment of you know, they saw the I don't know, they saw the one tumble run at the rhythm at the gymnastics, you know, Matt competition.

They didn't see the days or the hours before that of getting in my head visualizing it, knowing you know, there's probably going to be a camera turn here, there's probably going to be light that I've got to hit there, there's two steps there. But that's all work, you know, that's just all that's the work that goes into it. And I don't just show up and if I make it look easy, that's the job. I don't make no mistake. I prepare as much as I can for those moments.

It's actually crazy, you know, before you go, I have to ask you the same question I ask everyone who joins the podcast. What is something from behind the scenes of this Bachelor's something that we as an audience won't see, but kind of like a behind the scenes secret, something that you know, audiences would love to know about this particular series. Maybe something that was harder to do, that hadn't been done before.

I don't think you're going to see it, but the home that the ladies stayed in, the home where the Rose Council is sorry, Rose Ceremony, but because I wear all Survivor fans and our director direct butch direct Survivor, so we call it the Rose Council because one of these days I will be on that show. The Homer we shot it in has a spinny tunnel slippery slide in one of the bedrooms.

I saw it, Yeah, I saw it, all right.

Well you've already seen that, all right, then, So what's something you haven't seen?

No, no, no, that's a good one. I don't know if we're going to get the audience point get a chance.

Oh the people my mind to make the cut.

Okay, So one of that so I can't remember the the house has a lot of kids, all right, Generally we shoot in houses that have had a lot of kids, because that's that's how you get in that many bedrooms. But there's like the proper like the kind of slippery slide you would see at Bunny's or you know, the big kind of mod you play, kind of plastic thing with a spin and a big loop in it and

I really wanted to have a go myself, but I never got I never got it. I don't you know, I don't go into their bedrooms. That's in a private space.

But I don't want to hurt you any as well. They don't want you to go down the slide and put and bust a hip or something.

You're not that I've.

Already busted my hit plenty. It's I was, I'm fucking done with surgery.

Bro.

I'm like, I'm not.

It's just like, don't let I should go down the slide just in case, Like I ride.

My bicycle to work. What the fuck like?

It's fine, No, Cox, Spenser be like, you know, at the time you hear is a bit longer. The static might ruin your hair and take it.

It's fine, it's beautiful.

I have to let you go because we're right on nine thirty, and I'll.

Give you Okay, I'll give you one thing.

Keep an eye out for Melissa Byrne, who is my absolutely genius stylist.

She makes all the suits on Mask Singer.

She made this exquisite suit for the first episode, but she's made some custom shirts. Every shirt is bespoke, it gets worn once. It's ridiculous she made she's made. I was looking at some steals last night. She's made some shirts which are just divine, all right, And look, we don't we really talk about male clothing.

You know, you just a dude on camera.

But the attention to detail that mel puts into these these unbelievable garments, it's just, oh man, it's just so freaking beautiful. I think episode three there's one particular one that's just nuts.

There's beautiful.

I just wait to keep watching this show. Honestly, this is right.

I watched the first episode and I'm probably not supposed to do this, but I watched it with my mother in law. She's just sitting over there listening. But we watched it last night and it's.

Just staying in her house.

You'd better watch the embargoed show with her and just make a pinky promise.

Well, it did finish, and this is a good review from someone's mother in law. Is when it finished, she said, do you have any more episodes?

This is the answer that I wanted to hear.

Yeah.

Yeah, And so that's how I feel people will be watching this series.

I think it end.

Every time an episode finishes, you'll think to yourself.

I need I need more, I need to keep going.

I'm so proud of it.

It's a it's a beautiful story and it's a really interesting insight as to what it is to date in.

Australia in your twenties.

And I think we're going to show a lot of people things they may not expect.

That's the conversation. That was something we didn't talk about.

But I just think it's so fascinating with the way in which these days people are dating online and socializing in real life. You know, it's so interesting. Anyway, that's we'll talk about it for the Bachelor's season. So you know the Bachelor's season.

Yes, yes, thanks man, thanks for your time.

Chat to you mate, look on my bade.