Hera Lindsay Bird makes the case for a normies only casting policy.
After two long decades of bridal rhinoplasty and people swallowing horse testicl*s, reality TV is finally returning to its roots and embracing the format which made it so beloved and ubiquitous. Classic games of human strategy, physical prowess and deceit appear to be making a comeback, and I for one, am living for it. Survivor. The Mole. The Traitors. The Circle. The Devil’s Plan.
There’s something refreshingly quaint about everyone tuning in to watch a group of total strangers play what basically amounts to a 19th-century parlour game, the kind people used to play on long electricity-free evenings to kill time between contracting lead poisoning and waiting for the Titanic to sink.
Take The Traitors. One of the most exciting new strategy game shows, based on the classic party game known variously as Mafia, Werewolf, or if you were born after 2005, Among Us. The Traitors NZ is currently having a cracking second season. The good news is that new UK and US seasons will be premiering in 2025. The bad news? They both have entirely celebrity casts.
The first season of The Traitors NZ, which featured local celebrities such as Mike Puru, Brodie Kane, Matt Heath, Colin Mathura-Jeffree and Justine Smith, was a slog. Admittedly, the concept of a NZ celebrity version of anything is something of an oxymoron. Nobody, besides Lorde or Temuera Morrison, is truly famous enough to suck the air from a room. But all it takes is a few former television personalities to dull the mood. It’s not the celebrities themselves who are at fault. It’s just that their presence creates a kind of atmosphere of fawning civility, which is antithetical to drama. Like Lord of the Flies, if the pilot had survived.
Not so for season two! This time, there’s not a celebrity in sight, and the game is well and truly afoot. It’s hard to choose a favourite player. Stephen, who barely said a word for the entire game, and let his “f*ck off, I’m retired” cap do all the talking. Bossy dungeon master Mark, who schemed too hard and earned a delicious scolding from occupational therapist and former high-security prison worker Cat. Jackie, who didn’t come here to f*ck spiders. Brianna who has a f*cking wedding to plan. Jason, and his lucky fluorescent vest. Someone give that casting agent a raise, it’s absolute chaos.
If it were up to me, there would never be another celebrity version of The Traitors. If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be a celebrity version of anything.
It’s not that the celebrities themselves are bad. I’ll admit it was funny when they cast Germaine Greer on Big Brother. But I don’t want to see Harry Redknapp eating spiders. I don’t want to see Mike Wozniak making a peach flan. And I especially don’t want to see libertarian politicians peddling their noxious ideologies through the sacred medium of dance.
If the show is already predicated on celebrity guests, that’s a different story. I’m not advocating for a radical celebrity-free rebrand of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here (although I would be interested to watch a normie version of Taskmaster). Shows like Selling Sunset and Below Deck are exempt from criticism, as they inhabit a unique ecological niche, in which participants have turned their lives into an elaborate form of performance art. But gameshows are a different story.
Are there any studio executives out there? Is anyone listening? Please, I beg of you. No more celebrities!!!
My argument:
- Celebrities just make bad television. By the time they’re famous enough to appear on reality TV specials, they’re walking PR machines. They’re too polished. Too used to the cameras. They have nothing to gain, and everything to lose. They also go to the same Lamaze classes and can’t afford to alienate one another. While it might be sociologically interesting to see Parvarti Shallow making small talk with John Bercow, the former speaker of the House of Commons, the result is as dull as a Graham Norton Show green room meet and greet.
- Celebrities already know each other, which ruins the premise! The entire thrill of a game like The Traitors or Survivor is watching a room (or beach) full of strangers, starting out on equal footing, having to intuit deception and form strategic alliances, all based upon a relatively shallow acquaintance.
- Lack of diversity. While the celebrity cast of The Traitors NZ admittedly had a healthy spectrum of race, age and sexual orientation, the real failure of diversity is casting a bunch of people with exactly the same job, which is being professionally famous. It’s like a season of Survivor only featuring dental hygienists or those people who give away free cheese samples at the supermarket, although arguably much less interesting.
- These people are already rich! The stakes couldn’t possibly be any lower. Nobody wants to see someone win a million dollars twice (except for Sandra Diaz-Twine who deserved it). Sure, sometimes they donate their winnings to charity, but celebrity charities are always bizarre. Anderson Cooper donating $250,000 to a charity that provides Kevlar vests for police dogs? OK.
- Now that university departments are underfunded, nobody has the gas or ethics committee approval to run long-form psychological studies on human behaviour. Which leads me to ask: could reality television be the new frontier of ethnographic research? Imagine the untapped sociological potential. Not to mention the entertainment value.
The obvious downside to casting ordinary people on reality TV is the catastrophic effect it can have on their lives. The public backlash can be extreme. Being catapulted to overnight stardom is not a psychologically healthy experience, and can have deeply harmful consequences on people’s relationships, careers and mental health. It’s no wonder that reality television shows are hiring on-set counsellors and providing therapeutic aftercare.
But whether or not it’s ethical is sort of beside the point. The Rubicon has well and truly been crossed. The Garden of Eden is empty, and we are all naked and afraid. Reality television isn’t going anywhere soon, and the best we can hope for is that studios and producers find ways to minimise and mitigate the inevitable psychological harm.
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If it were up to me, reality television would take an even more democratic approach, where participants are selected in a kind of electoral raffle. Like jury duty. Or The Hunger Games, without all the murder. But until it reaches the national ballot, can we give the celebrities a break already?
The best reason to cast real people on reality television is that real people are just more interesting. They’re funnier. They’re more unguarded. They’re still capable of eliciting surprise. They can’t help revealing the unspoiled core of their beautiful, normal, unfamous hearts. Real people put the reality in reality television. Let’s try and keep it that way.
