Centennial Bridge, Panama.
An overcast, humid day at the end of February. Commuters drive by, slowing down, honking their horns at the sight of an emotional, motivational pep talk between Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and competitor Darnell Mack, a family man from Washington who's uprooted his life in order to travel to Central America and participate in death-defying challenges as part of TNT's new reality series, The Hero - which premieres Thursday, June 6th on TNT.
The Rock encouraging contestant Darnell.
I sat by the roadside, back with the production crew, as Johnson encouraged Darnell to do the seemingly impossible: travel hundreds of feet to the very top of the bridge and then repel down, swinging out to grab clues to a riddle along the way. A riddle he'll then have to successfully answer when he reaches the bottom. Oh yeah, and there's a time limit.
And as with most reality competition shows, there are personalities you root for and those you root against. Darnell was someone that everyone on the cast, crew and visiting press (like myself) was rooting for. So it was sort of a twist on the old parental adage "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" With the addition of "Yes, you would if The Rock told you that you'd be great at it."
"I wear a lot of hats on the show," Johnson told me. "Host. Coach. Mentor. Ass-kicker. Motivator. Supporter. And this is all brand new, by the way, so what I'm realizing is that it's nice that I've had the opportunity to play 10 years of football. Because there are a lot of things that are sports-related that carry over here. It's one thing to see your role on paper, but I thought 'This is going to be my show and I'm going to serve as its host, so I want to do more.' So we all thought about how we could expand that role so that I'm not just giving the audience information. I wanted to deeply connect with the cast. With the competitors. In ways that other hosts don't."
During my visit to Panama, I was able to witness the production of The Hero first hand, including the fights, the tears, the joy and the redemption that accompany an emotionally draining obstacle adventure series featuring players from all walks of life: A surgeon, a SWAT team member, a cheerleader, a wrestler, and a mother who works five jobs among others.
"I wanted to get into television for a long time," Johnson explained. "I didn't necessarily want to do a reality show, but I wanted to get into TV and start producing television shows and grow from there. And because of that, we all sat down and started having these high level discussions. Then we connected with Ben Silverman [Executive Producer of the The Office and The Biggest Loser] and he said 'I have the show for you. It's perfect.' And it was The Hero."
As someone not overly familiar with the blueprints of most reality competition shows, I'll try to break down The Hero as best I can. All players are competing for a cash pot of money at the end; a pot that can grow in dollar amount each time a challenge is completed. The team also votes members into solo "Hero Challenges" for a chance to grow the pot, based on who they think has the best chance of successfully completing the daredevil-type task. The snag here is that the players also have the opportunity - after completing an obstacle personally - to pocket the obstacle prize money instead of growing the pot. Basically, they can take some money now, with no repercussions, no getting kicked off the show, knowing that they only have a chance of maybe/perhaps winning the entire game at the end.
"The temptation aspect is a very intriguing aspect to the show," Johnson said, with his trademark grin. "It's one of the more important parts of this project. Because there's a duality at play with the money temptations. So if someone's going to take an offer - for example we had a contestant take $35,000 yesterday - it automatically causes major drama with the rest of the group. And you've seen it all unfold first hand. We've had two people take the offer so far, one last week and one this week, but they're still on the show. They'll have to opportunity to tell the group, and all of America, why they did it. And sometimes it'll just be because someone wanted the money. As in 'I'm here to make money. I saw the brass ring and I took it.' But then there are moments where the person who takes the money really, desperately needs that money back home. And it leads the show into some great discussion points and gets the group talking about empathy, and maybe coming to an understanding of why someone did what they did."
More with The Rock on the set of The Hero on page 2...
Source : ign[dot]com
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