It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload the podcast last week that might welcome to older new TV Reload listeners. My name is Benjamin Norris and this is your podcast to get all the inside goss on the popular TV shows that you may be
currently watching from around the world. I focus on reality shows, scripted drama, comedy, and documentaries from Freeedoware channels, and our most popular streaming services Underniably, our TV sets are a major part of our home entertainment, and very little is known about our favorite shows and how they get made.
Each episode, I will find guests that want to dive just that little bit deeper into the shows they are currently making so you can hear all their exclusive stories and gain access to reality TV stars, network executives, actors, producers, writers, and casting agents like never before. I'm grateful and very lucky to have a working relationship with access to these phenomenal content makers who are willing to share their stories.
I love a good chat, I love people who are willing to share their stories, and hopefully you will walk away feeling inspired and entertained. I want to thank you for downloading all subscribing to the podcast I love hearing your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment on your chosen podcast platform and I'll make sure you feel is included in the production of this show as possible. Today on the episode though, I have the most recognizable
male TV presenter in Australia. He started off working on Channel V in the nineties, became a household name on Australian Idol and currently hosts Network ten's most celebrated reality TV shows. It is the upcoming host of The Bachelor's Osher Ginsberg.
I'm very lucky to in my career to worked with some amazing people.
Osher joins me on this episode to talk about The Bachelor and how it has changed.
Different seasons of The Bachelor have been produced by different people, and each one of them has a different way of telling this story.
We will talk about his dedication to his career and what it takes to host live television and high pressure hosting jobs.
I take it very very seriously that I am as professional as possible.
In those moments, I'll ask him which one of the three new bachelors he would most likely date.
Is stunning and his swagger is confident.
I will also find out exactly how he felt with Australian idol returning to our screens and if he was asked.
To be involved, Jim and I were the undeniable choices to host that show, all right. There's no one who had more credibility in the live music scene than him and now at.
The time, we will also get some pretty exclusive stories that only Osher would know and be willing to tell. However, we should really bring Osha into the podcast now, and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hi, Osha. You know I've been so excited to have this chat with you because we get to talk about the rebooted Bachelor, which is what I call it, so reload to the Bachelor now called the Bachelor's Real And there's nobody better to tease wat's in stall for us this season than you.
Well, thank you, I'm grateful. Well, there are better people to me, like the people that pay for it. We want brothers in Network ten. But I hope I could get you. I hope I can get you a lot of what you're hoping to find today.
I've been speaking to Spence, who was producing from Warners, and she's amazing. Obsessed with her.
I think she's so good people understand that, you know, a Chili Peppers record that was produced by Rick Rubin is very different from a Chili Pepper's record that was not produced by Rick Rubin. Same band, different overall vision. So different seasons of The Bachelor have been produced by different people, and each one of them has a different way of telling this story. And Spence is just something else.
Man.
She is like everybody I work with is incredible, but Spence is really an extraordinary team captain. Because that's what an executive producer on a TV show does. They set the tone of everybody on set. They set the tone
of what it is we're trying to achieve. They set the tone and basically draw the boundaries for or this sort of stuff is okay, this sort of stuff is not okay, and everything in between go and Spencer's vision on how we're going to do this, how we're going to wrangle the telling of three very very different essentially core of three very different love stories. And because of
the amount of people involved, probably many, many more. The overarching tone and language visual language, audio language, the way it looks, the way it sounds, the way it feels, how far it pushes into areas that we haven't pushed before. How little of things we used to see all the time, we don't see anymore. That's all her and she's incredible to work with.
Mate.
You know, I'm very lucky to in my career. We've worked with some amazing people, and you know there's some people are like, Yep, I would follow you into battle, absolutely, because I just believe in what she holds in her heart. And I might not see the whole picture, but I trust the picture that she has in her head and
I'll do what it takes, be honest. I dare say every executive producer I've had nearly every EP I've had on this franchise, at the final moment, whether it's down on one knee or not, there's a tear in their eye. They've been there every step of the journey with the people that get to the end of Bachelor, Bachelorette, Batch in Paradise and they cry. And when I see that, you know, because I'm not there at the moment, I'm hiding in a ten one hundred meters away looking at
a video feed. I turn around and I see my boss getting on misty eyed, just in the romance and the love I'm like, and I'm glad I work for you. You know, you'd think that after I've been in reality television nearly twenty years now, you'd think that deep within me there is just like this giant, big lump of Obsitian rattling around. There is no there's just like a rock. You know, this is approaching zero degrees Calvin when all
entropy ceases. But no, you know, I get emotional too, and it's nice to know that you know the people who are leading the way and ultimately looking after the welfare of the people come on our shows.
I think that the thing about Caroline Spence, as people affectually know her in the industry, is that she gets really good, real content out of the people she's putting on screen. And with you, it's one of my favorite things about you as a person is how authentically you are yourself when you are on camera, which I think is it gets rare and rare as time goes on. That's something that you do so well.
I appreciate that you are seeing a level of that, though you know only as much as the gig allows. Okay, so it was something like when I worked on Australian Idol the first time around it came I loved music. I still love music. I love music incredibly. The guitars behind me will be evidence of that. And so to be on Telly every night, even on Channel V talking about music, you know that part of me is the
part that is essentially that's what they're paying for. They're paying for that part of me to come on the camera and do the thing with a bit of traffic direction in between, right and now here's a break or whatever.
But it's still though you have to I mean, you can be loud, emotional, empathetic, intuitive and reactive. But I think as an audience, we still always see you.
You see a version of me in a nice suit, and you see a version of me. The job isn't for me to be funny. The job is to not insert my personal emotional or my personal opinion into a situation. That's not the job, and so the never job is never there. Like if I want to show like mask singer or something, people don't watch for me. People watch for the moment the head comes off, and people watch for the reaction of my panel. So my job is to make sure that both of those two things people
watch for are there. As much as possible, if I get to be a little bit funny there, if I'd get to maybe throw a slight political jab in there, tickety boot. But that's not the gig. I've been lucky enough to have been on Q and A once or twice. If you ever watch on you ever watched me on Q and A, that's pretty much closer to me. When I'm not at work.
I do tend to talk about some pretty boring shit, some pretty serious stuff, but with the same level of enthusiasm and wild metaphors that I use at the other jobs.
I watched it today, so look, it's fine. I just watched clips of that today. I didn't see the whole thing, but we do see. I think you're right. We do see versions of you on TV, and you know you are at the top of your game. I watched a live recording of the Master Singer this year, and I couldn't believe how succinct and word perfect you are as a presenter. But then there's still the warmth of you in front of the camera. Watching you live is something to be seen.
I appreciate that I work really, really hard at that. I don't just accidentally do that. I take it very, very seriously that I am as professional as possible in those moments, and I bring as much as I can to what my job is, especially on something like mask. To have an audience again this year after making it in a vacuum over it for a couple of years was hard. It is extraordinary, and when that audience is great,
the show is great. Everything is even even greater, And so part of my job is to make sure that those people feel like this is fucking amazing, because it is. It's amazing.
I've watched a lot of shows being filmed live, and it always seems to me like you're reacting and feeling things deeply. Does look like it would take an enormous amount. I mean, people sit at home watching TV a lot thinking that they could do it. What it is that you do is not something I think most people could do.
To give myself the space to react and feel deeply, there is a heap of work that makes everything else in that situation almost semi automatic. In the same way that when you first learned to drive, then you probably the first time you reversed a manual car down a driveway, you probably like I had to turn the radio off you had to. Don't nobody saying anything, you know, and you know it took you five minutes to drive five meters.
Now you probably do it while eating a sandwich, putting on a podcast, putting on a sa belt with one hand, and doing it with your knee. You're able to do all those other things because the middle bits, the meat and potatoes of what you're actually doing have become automatic or semi automatic. Similarly, I put in heaps and heaps and heaps of work to make sure that how many steps is it from the front of the mouth to the center of the stage. I can't see it, so
there's masks behind me. It actually walked out with I can't see out of those things, all right, So I rehearse in rehearsing and rehearsal, rehearsal to make sure that, okay, it's exactly twelve steps. And there's a tiny little thing I can see in the corner of my eye. It's like the edge of a speaker. That's when I know
that I'm pointing in the right direction. You know, I do that so many times that by the time you see it on the telly, it's just like a thing that I'm doing, but I had never did it before that day.
Yeah, that's two decades doing live television.
It's something that I adore. And to be on a stage. I love live so much because that's all I ever did right was be live, whether it be on stage with a band, or then on radio, or then on Telly and then on Idol. The thing about The Bachelor, though, it's as if it was live, because you can't ask someone to have an authentic emotional response a second time and expect it to be as good, expect it to be as authentic. It never ever ever is. So the ability to get out there and teg a champagne flut
with my ring finger like some really obscene flex. It's fun.
It's wrong, but it's fun, and to you know, drop hundreds of words of exposition, knowing that I've got eight cameras, sometimes seven, sometimes sorry I'm exaggerating, six cameras sometimes seven cameras covering thirty three separate faces, knowing that I need to give the cameras enough time to get on particular faces during particular moments, to make sure that we cover the reactions of those particular people the moment they discover the thing that I'm saying out loud for the first time.
You can't do that twice. So having had live a live background experience, I think went a long way first getting the job on Bachelor, and now we just work at a point where the producers and the directors trust me enough to know that I will give them the space they need and they will make sure they get the reactions they need. I will wait and watch to see that they've got everything covered before I keep going
because I can't do it and it feels weird. If you're standing in the room and there's bloke you know from teleywalks in a glass and this says the same things four times and aw, You're like, well, okay, I've got you the first three times, Like why are you saying it again.
I've got a brand who's a TV producer, and it's funny. I've quite often written to him while watching the shows that he makes, and I'll say was that live? And He'll be like, funny, you ask that we had to reshoot that moment. You have to be so precise to try and capture something like something on the Bachelor, because if you have to try and do it again or mimic it in any way. The authenticity I always feel it dilutes fifty percent. I mean, you'd have to be pretty s cool to watching TV to pick up.
On it, knowing how any sausages made ruined sausages forever. You know, when I first started in radio, once I knew how radio was made, I couldn't listen to radio properly. Ever again, Okay, we're coming out of the eleven a m. News and there's a Nickelback song. You know, once you know how it works, you know, you know how it works, and it kind of takes the magic away a little bit. On this season of The Bachelor's we worked really really hard on making sure it was as hands off as
we could be. We use very different you know. It's interesting people may not realize that choices that you make about which cameras you'll use, which lenses you'll choose, how you light a situation will influence the way the people in that situation will respond. An example would be have you ever seen Drive to Survive? But is that what's called the Netflix Formula one?
Yeah?
I think that's what it's called, But I know I haven't watched it. I have to wait.
Yeah, formula one drives as VI. It's on Netflix. It's if you never If you don't care about Formula one, just I don't care, just watch it. It's one of the most extraordinary documentary obdos observational documentary. It's one of the most extraordinary obdocs ever ever made because they've just got everyone micd the whole time, and so you'll know there's a difference between sitting some seeing someone sit down, you know, and they've got a soft box above them.
Sometimes they'll shoot them wide so you'll see all the hardware, and they're looking a little to the left of the lens or a little to the right of the lens, going and they're putting the question in the answer, going, oh, when we did that. When we did that, it was that they've been asked a question. They're putting the question of the answer to create it into a statement.
Right.
We know that's the language of reality television. There's a big digs between that and when we see them shot on a long lens across a field actually telling the person what you know, they told them in the moment, because they're in the moment. So that's a long way of explaining that. Between fence and our director and you know, a network who went along with it. And the way we shot this season of the Bat actually, we lit it in a way that it could be shot from
any angle. We're using particular cameras that are able to shoot in very very very low light on quite long lenses.
So if two people are having a moment of emotional even physical intimacy, they're being filmed, but the camera is not standing next to them, whereas in the past the camera had been sometimes standing next to them, And that's going to change how you feel when you're pashing someone, or how you feel when you're saying I'm not that into you if there's a camera an arm's length away, which sometimes happens on not necessarily our shows, but shows
like this. So we worked really hard to make this be a very different experience for the people who participated
in it, and the results speak for themselves. The level of authentic conversation, authentic connection, authentic how shall I put this dialogue between people is extraordinary and really kind of care I'm so proud of everyone involved in changing solistically how that this season looks and feels, because it ultimately changes the level of emotional expression you see on camera in a very different way, and I'm so proud of it.
Did you get any creative control? Because I mean, this is this is the first time they've really shaken up the formula which has been a global success. And you know, you're a producer in your own right and no television extremely well I ever remember in your book, I think you were working on a show called The Real Deal. That's how I got the job of the pitch that to Channel ten and Channel ten greenlit it and you
went back to La to work on it. And so what I'm trying to get at is, you know you've got the producer's mind, and when they decided to change a very successful formula into what we're about to see with the Bachelor's, were you able to have a contribution into what needed to happen? And was it anything like The Real Deal? Has anything ever been made like The Real Deal?
Well, I've I've got to say that to their extraordinary credit, both Spence and my network EP at the time at Network Tan Hillary in US were actually quite open to ideas because they were looking to rework it and they were asking everyone. They asked a lot of people, and I was one of the people. They asked, and I was very grateful that they did. I would never expect
that they would have. I would never expect that my ideas the host from the Australian version of the show, which has been super successful in forty something territories and there's been making networks all over the world lots of money for decades, would have something to say that could add to it. But they listened, and I'm really grateful, And I also guess in the moment, there's a few very different things about the way this season works, and one of those is essentially when we were the first
territory in the world in so people are pretty. They're pretty in TV people who listen to your show, right, so they get that when you buy a TV franchise,
it's like buying fast food franchise. They pass you this gigantic ring binder with the logo, with the graphics, with the soundtrack, with the Okay, if you're going to if it's a reality show, if you're going to cast it, I'm just making this up, but you're going to need the one that shouts, the one that whispers, the one that cries, you know, the one who is kind of kooky and you're gonna need the one who ultimately is
just full of heart. You've got those five people you've got to show and then you know you go from it. That's not our show, but that that document is called a bible. So to be able to then go to the franchise owners, like if you said to the fast food franchise, hey, look it's asked you down. Yeah, it's ulture and then yeah, we're thinking of reworking it. Yeah, so we're thinking three all beef patties, just normal sauce, no let us, but more cheese pickles, red onions on
above with those sssame seeds. They'd be like, you shut your mouth and know your place, know your place, sorry the rock, know your place. Shut your mouth. It's two or beef patty specialists. Let us cheese pickles and your sispecyed onun. I'm hanging up the phone right now, and that would be it, all right, But we have been given this extraordinary permission to kind of tweak the recipe. That never happens in television. You never get that chance.
You never get that chance. Well, it rarely really happened.
So it happened with master Chief. Master Chief came to Australia as kind of like it was like a mid morning at best, the sort of thing you'd put on instead of an infomercial, you know, kind of benign wallpaper cooking show, and Australia turned it into this just behemoth, kind of world beating monster of supermarket integration, like the level of integration that they sales integration they put into it, like it just and tension and drama made become this
huge show. So there has been some success in reworking international formats. When we got about I don't know, three or four weeks in, someone from someone from overseas from Warner Brothers International showed up and it sped about a week with this and they were like, can't believe this.
And when you get someone who's like a high level TV executive, you know, in charge of making sure that the international versions of the brand are aligned and you know you haven't strayed, you know culturally you do need to adjust in every territory, but that you're on board. When you get that person who's probably been in television for a while now slapping the table, going no way, shouting and go, that's I might.
Like, you know you're on a good thing that's going to be Australia that they're going to be like, Oh my god, I can't believe what they're doing.
So I've got I've got I've got a long way. I've got a long way to answering your question, which is around it? If I have any input, there's a there's a format point that's quite different in the past. We were the first territory to have the thought track going in the rose ceremony. Okay, it used to be just here's our hero holding, you know, a rose in their hand. Here's the lineup, whether it be boys or girls,
and we would never hear what they were thinking. We were the first ones with the long, slow pans acrom the across them, using grabs from their interviews, going oh, I really hope Ben gives me a rose. I had really such a good time with him on this podcast. I don't know about her, She's got things. And when I was on Ben's podcast, we talked about that, and you know, then they call that one of their names, and then you do the thing. We're the first people
to do that. Those moments now are in the room and I'm very grateful that the network and the production everybody trusted me to be able to hold that down and hold down that conversation between who are in contention for the roads. Sometimes it gets a bit sprightly, but they trusted that they would do it. And in those moments, whether they you know, whether you know it or not, you're making on the fly. I'm making decisions, I guess obviously in alignment with what my bosses want me to do.
But if I've kind of got the sense that I'm so close to getting this person, give me the real reason, because I kind of have an idea of what it is they have going on, and they're kind of skirting around it. So even though they might hear, they might have gone, okay, you know, go that way, Okay, we're
not going to get it. If I go like, oh, hang on, and I try another just one more time, which I do sometimes, and then I get it, I'm like, thank you for letting me spend an extra three minutes of everyone's crew know hours on getting that moment, because I guess I know enough to know we can't really tell the story if we don't get this really key bit, and they trust me enough to know that I can, I can deliver that and that's extraordinary on it that they would let me hold the wheel like that in
that moment. Because ultimately, with a show like Bachelor's everything that you see in the cut, everything that you see in the edit we shoot what let's just do a quick like, say, we shot four cameras across a cocktail party that went for two hours. That is the least of it. That is eight hours of footage that we have to make into maybe a sixty minute episode, which after commercials is I don't know, forty eight forty nine something minutes.
It's a tough mathematical equation.
Are you going to do that? That's a lot. There's a lot that doesn't come and there's a lot. So everything that makes it into that edit, everything has to make the decision makes sense, has to make why they do or do not give the rose make sense, all right? And you know, as long as we're always kind of pointing in that direction, we're gonna be okay. And I'm just so grateful that you know, not only Spence, but also you know, you know my other EPs Dean and
Jimmy just they're just the borst man. I'm really I'm really liked well.
Spencer that in a really interesting way. She said, you know, if it doesn't speak to clarity, then it doesn't work. And so I thought that was a really interesting piece of the pie when it comes to the content that she makes, because that's true, that's absolutely true with the work that she does. There's nothing in her shows that doesn't speak to clarity. Yeah, you've probably shot a lot, but what's left there is all about answering the simple
questions that the audience want. It was funny we were talking about ev Jones who was on Snack Masters and she was really disappointed that she wasn't in it as much as she filmed and she was like, oh, I thought I was going to be in a more spence because I had both of them together, and Spence was like, you know, at the same time, there was so much hilarity, there were so many great moments that you had, but if it didn't add to clarity of the story, were
so we're under a time constraint. And I just thought that was an interesting thing to say at the end of what you were talking about, you know, with the eons of footage that's being made and the mathematical equation of trying to get that down to forty five minutes, which you're handing into the you know which warners have to hand into the network. Yeah, I think it's fascinating.
Yeah so, but it's like, but it's no different from any kind of visual storytelling that we see on a screen, even in a even in a link later film. There's nothing that is done or said or seen that is by accident, even if it's to make you feel a certain way, even if it's to prime you with a feeling of oh, right before you know Jordan Peel, right before Jordan Peele literally scares the shit out of your body, nothing is there by accident in anything you ever watch.
And so it's similarly like with really good reality, nothing is wasted, No frame is wasted, everything about the frame, everything about the way it sounds. One thing I love about this new season of Bachelors is the music is so different. There's no simple crashes. I won't give it away, but there's something so beautifully majestically different about the music this year. Music on this season it's just the best. And that's you know, that's Spence all over it. Man,
she's really quite a visionary, visionary person. It really understands what it is to take a format that is so loved around the world and loved in Australia for various reasons. People love watching our show and understanding what people really want out of it and what people are like, Look, I like this, and look I might not have been over there for a while because I kind of know what I'm going to get and I kind of, you know,
I want to be a part of it. But I mean a little more than what you've given me.
Everyone's been sitting at home for the last two seasons, and let's be fair and say that's probably what it is, you know, wanting it to be a little bit different. They love this show and they own it as well. Like if you talk to people about The Bachelor and the Bachelorette, there shows that people really love. It's appointment television the first episode where they watch it with their friends,
you know. And so when you've got a TV show like Idol or Big Brother or Bachelor that that brand is so important to people, you have to be a little bit careful with it. But I did love that when you announced the new Bachelor's I think you're on the project and you said, oh, we're getting rid of the We're getting rid of the tea lights or whatever. You know.
Oh, there's no fairy lights. There's no fairy lights, there's no fake flowers, there's nothing.
I'd been saying, and I said it on a podcast, not this one, but I was a guest on another podcast and they asked me about what I thought needed to happen with the formula, and I said, I love the red carpet ceremony, but I was hoping it would be on the Gold Coast and she would be standing outside of GC Nightclub and it all happens before they go into the Gold Coast Nightclub.
I did take a jet ski to work every day in a linen suit, you know, and it was like Kenny Powers leopard skin as well, So that was pretty pretty cool.
GZ is a good place for the I've always thought, you know, we're going to change the Bachelor.
It's a pretty good spot for batch. It's an amazing thing because it's like, you can't believe it. It's a part of Australia that looks like nowhere else in Australia, and it's a part of Australia where is it is a part of Australia that is like nowhere else. Culturally, it's a very different place to the rest of the country. Visually, it's completely different to the rest of the country. And
that's where we were. The house that boys lived in was so big you could literally, and you know I've done it, ride a bicycle from your bedroom to the swimming pool, which is also inside the apartment.
I have to ask a really annoying reality TV podcast question and you have to come with me with a sense of humor on this. But if you were going to pick one of these men in a hypothetical world, you know who out of these three men is your type?
Out of Thomas, Felix, and Jed oh easily, easily Jed. There's no one that I I mean, they've all got something about them that I really like. I could get really nerdy talking about sport NBA with Felix, and you know, I lived in America for about ten years, so we got to talk about you know, college basketball and March Madness, and you know, not many people in Australia understand how intense it is, and so that was super cool. And then Thomas is a very awakened man. He's done a
lot of work. He's a deep thinking human being and gorgeous. My god, with his shirt off, he looks like an RSL meat trade. Vertically, he's god unbelievable. It was true though. It's like if you want the meat tr at the RSL and you tip that inside and then you put a shirt around it and a head on top, that's Thomas. Like just and Jed, Well I could, I'd say Jed because look, he's a muso, knows what it is to
be on stage. He knows a lot about music, and he appreciates great you know, like a great chord change. And most people will be like, yeah, what, but you speak to the person who be like, hey, how's that thing that has really good? Yes? Yeah, that's a good mind of seventh sto with its attention. There's a brat nights. Yes good, you know. So I really appreciate it. And I think just Jed is just he's my kind of guy because he just fearlessly wades into the world, just
the way that Jed carries himself. And just this is what I'm going to wear today, Yes you can see him nipples And am I happy about it? Yep? And I'm just going to walk into this room and be the most exciting man you've ever seen in a head to toe fish that jumpsuit with an overcoat and he's just hot.
I saw a bit of function like about three weeks ago, and I'd seen the press photos, I'd seen some stuff and you know, I'd seen your introduction and then I met him in person. I spoke to him for like half an hour and I was just It was at a makeup lawaunch and they did his makeup and I was like, you are you are a modern man.
It's stunning and his swagger is confidence I know. But that's what does it for me, because it comes with this kind of nerdy muso on the inside, whereas someone else might be right up for you know, Felix, and someone else might be right up for Thomas. Sorry if you're listening, boys, but yeah.
The audience is going to switch though. I reckon that. You know, they're the type of boys that you're going to change your mind, which I guessing is going to be some of the magic of the Bachelor's But and.
That's what it is for me, is that when we started this format, well we in Australia started this format swiping left and right in the straight world had only just existed, all right. In the non straight world, people had been dating online for quite some time, but in the in the straight world, that had just shown up, really, and so the idea of you know, scarcity was still a factor in dating. You know, I'm going to have to sort this out because I've just found this person.
They're pretty great. Fast forward a couple of years, when you can swipe so much that you are you always thinking, oh, I'm just one swipe away from meeting them, and what if this person this little annoying thing I'm finding. Wow, a couple more swipes, I might find the one that is then and then I make people who, you know, seven eight years, they haven't had a partner because they've just been going from this transaction or relationship to transaction
or relationship. And that's really sad to not have that ability to connect emotionally and share a moment with someone that you can be there with your best friend. But there's another thing to connect emotionally with someone and connect intimately with someone and then share a moment in time with that person knowing that you will be there for each other. That is a truly beautiful thing, and that was one of the most wonderful things about being human.
And that's kind of how modern dating now is, and that scarcity is no longer a factor. The supply and demand has been turned on its head. And you may and I know this from my brief time on those hell whole dating apps. I'd be on a date with someone and I kind of had this clue, like, oh,
you're going to meet someone after this. Ah, So you're not, even though I'm kind of being a little challenging in the way we're speaking, or you're challenging me a little bit in the way we're speaking, you don't want to work through it or find some common ground because you're just going to go after this and have a drink with someone else that you made.
Ah. Ah.
But that's what we've brought into this show. We've brought this. The level of the scarcity thing is gone because everyone's got a choice.
Man.
The boys have a choice and the ladies have a choice. So it's kind of all it's all air, it's all to play for. It's very very, very interesting. I got I wrote about this in the book that you mentioned earlier, and I even share I shared it with the boys.
Uh sorry, I don't want to infantalize them. I shared them with these men because there's moments in this season that I've always had I'm not going to say a constantly airy role, but like a sounding board for our hero, whether it be Rook Blurton or you know, Sam Wood or whoever. And there's been moments when you know, our hero has wanted to figure out what is it to date someone? For example, what is it to date someone
with a child? Which, face it, when you're in your late thirties, early forties, you're going to be dating someone with job and so come over have dinner, and so you know, time to time, some other heroes have come and had dinner with me and Audrey and g and kind of gone, oh, okay, this works. I see how this works. And that stuff's always been off camera. Those kind of conversations we have and have always been off camera.
But one of the conversations that I had with Spence and Hillary, which I mentioned earlier, was you know, let's have those conversations on camera. Let's find a way that we can make those conversations feel real. And they are and they are real, And so I write about this moment in my book, and you know, I got to share it with the gentleman, one of these conjuring, one of these conversations, whereas there there actually is no such thing as the one there isn't. It's just finding the
one who's willing to work on it with you. It's a fallacy, the idea that and now I've found you, I no longer have to change anything about myself. That's it. It's this is.
How you're getting all life.
No, no, mate, no no, no, you have just seriously, you have that. You've just passed the startup screen. We haven't even got to load the first cut scene before we even get on to start to get into Vice City and get rolling around like that's when we begin, you know, That's when you start. That's when the change has to happen. Is when you state till we want
to stay together, you need because we all change. We all get older, things we want in life change, bits of our bodies stop working as well as they used to, you know, we don't. We sag more, we get crankier. If you find the person who's willing to work on it with you, then just hold on with both hands and do whatever it takes and do the work on your on your side, and that's what I tell these guys, and what they do with that information is up to them.
But I was grateful that I had the opportunity to share in those you know, have those kind of conversations like that, because you really don't see men, Australian men on Australian television talking to each other about anything other than sport of politics. So I found that to be kind of a first and that was really nice that the team who make the show felt that these moments were important enough to stay in the cut because they made the moments at the very end of the show
makes sense. That's really really nice because you can't be what you can't see, all right, And to see men speaking and this is the relationship between the gentlemen as well, between Thomas, Jedd and Felix, the relationship between them is really something. It's quite lovely to witness these guys kind of get to know each other and find support from each other, and not in a punch you in the
arm kind of kind of way. It was actually quite lovely and a version of masculinity, Australian masculinity that we just don't really see on Australian television, but it's still hot. Trust me.
I was lucky enough to talk to the boys the other day, the three of them together, and it was definitely the take home from me was that these guys have obviously given each other their rows. Yeah, I mean it was obvious to me that they was a genuine friendship amongst them, and that was really good to see as well, Like, it was good to see all three of them being very different men and being supportive of
each other. And you're right, we don't get to see a lot of that on television unless it's beensitive over the years, you know, sensationalized or boxed into a very certain way we should see men. And then here we are in twenty twenty three with the Bachelor's and you're answering some of that in a profound way, which is probably one of the shows that you don't expect to see that being discussed.
All. I think that's what that's the thing you know with the show like Bachelor's or Bachelorette. I'm not going to say we trojan horse things into people's living rooms, but like, there's this moment that really sticks out for me of all the versions of the show that we've been lucky enough to make Brook blittin season of The Bachelorette, where dr Ami Funich sat down and asked the final two seventeen words. If I were to ask you whose country you live on right now, would you be able
to tell me? And both of Brook's final two weren't able to answer that question. Now, this is, obviously is a conversation about colonialism. It's a conversation about, you know, the fact that sovereignty was never seated. It's a conversation about what it is to be a First nation's person in Australia. It's about what it is to know a First Nations person's Australia or be romantically involved with an Aboriginal Australian person. And it wasn't on four Corners, it
wasn't on Insight on SBS. It wasn't like some person in a T shirt screaming at you on a giant street protest. It was in the context of this kind of reality TV show about people falling in love. And I remember, I know it cut through because one of my neighbors came out the next day. I was wondering my yard one of my neighbors came out and said, yeah, I can't. I didn't know the answer to that. I
had to look it up. And that blew my mind because we have this apportunity on this show to demonstrate these things and not in an intense kind of like ideological way, but just as a kind of kind of
matter of fact. And so there are some things that you will find out by watching this show this season that take what we started with Brooks season and we're just to go to a whole new level man and ways of has should I put this ways that relationships and what is okay in relationships and what is not okay in relationships that will make people of a certain generation kind of turn to younger people in life and go and you're cool with that, and the younger people
will look at them go, yeah, it's going to be really interesting.
I think you're then talking to your audience as though they're intelligent, and I think that's what means Australia.
We are intelligent people.
No, I know, but you'd be surprised at the community. You know, you know, you've been on television for two decades nearly, and you know we have seen plenty of shows on television that discuss love and show people being people, and we've escaped some of that intelligence of respecting that the audience are intelligent, because you're right, they are. But I don't think it's a given. I don't think it's
a given. With a lot of the shows that we've seen that have even tried to be like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, you know, we've seen a lot of love shows come along that aren't as recognizable, you know, globally as this format is. So I think it's good that it's evolving, and I think it's good that the people who are making it, you know, respecting their audience.
You are going to see some stuff that will blow your socks off, mate, But don't worry. Everything you want, everything you want is there. There's love, there's you know,
there's conversations that you otherwise wouldn't expect. For me, one of the most wonderful things is seeing the extraordinary emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence and holding of boundaries between people who may have a shall we say, discrepancy in how they view the outcome of a situation, and just how the way that these people just model what it is to have a conversation that is holy charge and highly emotion without calling someone names, without smashing a glass, or without throwing
wine in someone's face, like it can happen. It's amazing to watch and it's incredible. I can't wait for.
You to see it. It would be remissive me not to quickly ask you about something that's coming back next year, and that's Australian Idol does come back to TVN next year. Was there any fomo about not being involved with it coming back? Considering that when you think of Australian Idol, you are the first face that comes to mind.
I am one of them. There's many look the I know behind the scenes, and a lot of people have been trying to get it up, get it back up in various forms for quite a while. When I heard that it was happening the way it was happening, you know, the first thing I did was I picked up my phone and I had Scott Tweety's la number and I texted him straight away and I said, mate, this is it them doing it. This is you go time to start. This is your gig. You must get this gig. This
has to happen. You have to do it. I haven't seen anyone who works as hard on being as great at what they do. It's been a long time since I've seen anyone who commits to themselves, commits themselves to being to excellence as Scott Tweety. Because it is a craft. Is It's like, it's like being a great cricketer or you know, being very good at I don't know, a race car driving. I'm mentioned sport. I'll keep mentioning sports. It's like being a good I'm saying I'm a surgeon.
But it's a skill. It's a skill that takes work to not only start to be good at, but stay to be good at. Tweety is one of those people. And like additionally, like that, Ricky Lee is oh so happy for her, so happy for her. She has worked really, really, really hard. They don't accidentally give these jobs away, you know, they don't give these jobs as a favor. They give it to the person who's just the best at it.
And you know, I'm so proud of Ricky Lee for working really hard to stay the best, to stay undeniable. And if there's one thing that I know from television is that if you make yourself undeniable, you will not be denied. And that is what Tweety and Ricky have done. They have continually put themselves through the ring to make sure they are undeniable. So when the job shows up, people go, well, I can't we can't pick anybody else. We've got to pick those guys, and it's going to
be a great show. It's I mean, I mean, I know a bunch of people who are working on it, and I'm trying to figure out how I could sneak into being the studio. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it.
Because it's not in there, because you'll distract.
It's not a network. No, but it's not a network. It's not going to happen. It's not going to have no way.
Was there ever a real conversation about you doing the show though?
On Channel seven?
Well, let's not. I mean, it's it's murky. I feel like it's murky because you are very Channel ten. But I mean, was there ever a possible were they do they ever try and reach out and ask you to do it?
Oh? Look, I you know you hear people going, oh, we're going to try and bring it back like unreal. Well, if I'm still the right guy at the time. I'd love to do it. It's the best fu ever. It's an extraordinary format. But you know, I understand that, you know, market shift and change and people want different things. And you know, in two thousand and three when we did Idle, Jim and I were the undeniable choices to host that show. All right, there's no one who had more credibility in
the live music scene than him. And now at the time, I am not that person now, and that's fine because what I am to the music industry and what I am to the world of broadcast is very different now, and that's totally cool. That's fine. My value proper is by value prop has changed quite significantly, and that's fine.
Very last question I ask everybody is what is something from behind the scenes of making The Bachelor, let's say Bachelor's twenty twenty three, like a secret behind the scene secret, something we won't see.
Because we shot on the goal course. Now, we shot season two three of The Bachelor at a mansion in Hunter's Hill in Sydney, which is we show at a mansion in Hunters Hill in Sydney, which is directly below the incoming flight path of Mascot Airport in Sydney, and so if we were shooting ever on a Friday night and the wind was blowing in a particular direction, the amount of seven three, seven eight hundreds which were passing two thousand feet over our heads meant we shot those
seasons in forty five second chunks in between plane noise. Years went by. Let's not get a mansion in a flight path, then we shoot on a mansion on a canal on the Gold Coast. I'm not going to say that the jet ski owners of broad Beach Waters did their comrades any favors as far as the stereotypes around safe boating and the relationship that has to jet ski ownership, but let me tell you there was some Just hang on,
please wait a second. Wow, let me ask you that again when you look at it, how do you feel trying to stop people? Don't answer the question just yet. You know, there's like five I think about it. Don't say anything passed on a Yamaha.
Can I just say thank you so much for being so generous and coming out podcast and talking today. I absolutely have been in your audience from the minute you've stepped into the Australian zeitgeist of television, and I'll be there right to the end. I think you're an incredible performer. I think you're a fascinating man. And just before you go, I've read your book twice. I don't know, I'm not
holding it up correctly. Read it twice and got different things out of it both times, so i'll probably read it again.
That's very sweet of you. Thank you so much for your time, and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.