I’ve never been to a game show or even been in the audience for one, but it sounds like a whole lot of fun, doesn’t it?
And, just like any other entertainment business, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that we regular folks never get to see. But now we’re in luck! Because we’re about to get some inside info!
Let’s see what AskReddit users had to say about this.
1. The Price is Right.
“I was a contestant on the Price is Right.
They don’t choose people at random.
They interview everyone in the audience for about 30 seconds earlier in the day and decide who to pick based off that.”
2. Cheap and flimsy.
“Everything looks waaaaayyyy cheaper in person. Like most stuff is made of plywood.
Commercial breaks usually include a weird stage manager telling you to do something different or the audience to get more involved. Those were as a contestant. Working on those shows is a whole other story.
I nearly murdered the director of Masterchef because we spent 12 hours setting up the sets, then he wanted everything to shift over about a foot.
Luckily the union stepped in and said nope.”
3. Slime Time!
“I was on Slime Time Live because my family visited Universal Studios Florida, including the old school Nickelodeon Studios building. They gave my sister and I an entire change of clothes, including boxer shorts (I’m a girl too) and watershoes.
Our team was eliminated the first round so they took us back to get dressed in our regular clothes. Then we got to sit in the audience for the rest of the show.
My family took 2 weeks off of school in order to make that Florida trip. I realized that Slime Time Live only filmed on weekdays, and not during summer, so 12-year-old me came to the conclusion that you had to be playing hooky in order to get on the show.”
4. Fakin’ it.
“I was on Jenny Jones back in the day of Rude Jude.
I had brought my friend on (started as a joke). I guess we were being too chill cause between shots, they told us that if we didn’t get louder, they would kick us off and make us walk home. So after the break, I stood up and yelled at the audience.
That’s how they get the shots of people standing and yelling!”
5. Not random.
“The ones who call people down from the audience aren’t random at all.
Contestants are interviewed beforehand by producers and the players are chosen based on various criteria and demographics.”
6. Weakest Link.
“I was on The Weakest Link with the notoriously mean Anne Robinson.
They don’t let you meet her before the game so contestants are more nervous. Also after you are voted off you go into a green room to watch the rest of the game with the people who you just voted off which was awkward.
Also the scene when you are writing on the boards is pre-filmed so everyone just pretends to write for 5 mins while they get writing shots of each player.”
7. This is all good.
“I was on Wheel of Fortune.
Pat was really funny. Kind of reserved on our end, just cracking really funny jokes once in a while in “commercial breaks”. All the contestants are very supportive of one another.
Vanna was such a sweet person and in the beginning she came in and said “Hey everyone! Just wanted to come say ‘hi’ and ‘good luck!’ before I go into makeup…this is what I normally look like (laughs)”.”
8. Master Chef.
“Well, I’ve been on MasterChef.
Two things that I remember well is the judges having a Platoon of stylers following them around so they have the exact same appearance between takes. There was this judge who has a curl over his forehead. There was a person specifically designated to make sure the curl was always there and always with the same shape.
Another thing that stood out was that the timers were all fake. Usually they recorded all the sentences like “start, 5-4-3-2-1.., you have 10 Min” at the beginning or at the end, sometimes even while we were cooking. They recorded them when the light was Ok. Specially in the outside episodes.
Ah, and also…nothing is a surprise. You get to practice your dish for a week or more before the episode. There are no “surprise ingredients”. And, this may come as obvious, they train you in cooking good, but a big part of the training was food presentation.
Sometimes your dish was moved around the plate by the personnel when your presentation was not Ok for the lighting or for whatever reason.”
9. Mind games.
“Who Wants To Be A Millionaire… a lot of mind f*ckery goes on, though not necessarily intentionally to throw u off ur game but it does.
I was a contestant during the most difficult era, when they didn’t tell u the value of the questions so u couldn’t gage their difficulty. You have no idea how that rips apart any strategy. When you’re hopped and wired and stressed, you dont know if it’s an obvious easy question or a trick.
During this era, you couldn’t lock in winnings. There were 10 questions. If u guesses wrong on the 10th, even if by then u had accumulated about 60k (that would be the usual amount with jumps), u left with only 1,000. It was super depressing. Even leaving with 5 or 10k makes a big difference bc going through 10 questions with that process was an emotional roller coaster.
If u got to 10, chances are u had been standing for hours. I didnt get that far but a woman after me a teacher gave this impassioned speech about dreams coming true and then got the 10th one wrong and left with 1,000. This truly killed the show. During the Regis era, u could lock in at maybe 5k and 32… the tv and live audience and meredith viera hated it.
Meredith was extremely lovely but I just get the feeling that she did f*ck matt lauer.
The contestants r back stage all day and have no idea if they’re going on that day or the next or in what order. Which makes u extremely jumpy. You also cant text or go on the internet. The vibe made us all kinda crazy.
You also cant talk to ur family members or friends in the audience who are being circled around the studio all day in different seats, watching 5 filmings in one day!
The test was the easy part for me. I had been unemployed and had been watching the show so when I auditioned. The test was 30 multiple choice to be answered in 10 mins. But they were all questions from the show. Most were familiar.”
10. Cool!
“Was on jeopardy in the mid 2000s. We shot 5 episodes a day for 2 days. So 10 episodes.
The night before stayed at contestant hotel. Which we got a discount but still had to pay for. I got to socialize a little bit with the other contestants but we were strictly segregated from everybody else except for a 5 second picture op with trebeck to avoid game show scandal.
We also had no idea when we would be on. As one of the producers would draw cards randomly to see the contestants order. We didn’t get a copy of our show we were told to tape it.
My brother lost my vhs tape but had uploaded it to youtube where it recently got hit with a dmca strike and pulled. So now no copy, and highly unlikely it will ever be seen again.”
11. Great fun.
“I’ve been to watch Britain’s Got Talent three times. It’s great fun.
However the buzzers are so loud it’s terrifying, when we’ve been at the back you haven’t a clue what the judges are saying and they film lots of clapping standing ovations for stock footage at the start.
Oh and the vast vast vast majority of acts don’t make it near the tv. You get the impression from the tv that the acts are either amazing or terrible when in reality the majority are just ‘okay’.”
12. Time to dance.
“I was on So You Think You Can Dance.
I didn’t make it to the first real episode of the season with the top 20, but I was on the audition episode. So I have two secrets. First, that the clip you see might not actually be from the city they are showing that week. I auditioned in Atlanta but my clip showed on the LA week.
Which was annoying because I didn’t expect it so I wasn’t watching and missed my 15 seconds of tv fame. Thankfully my sister recorded it.
The second is that the auditions you see on the stage with judges is actually the third round. First it was groups of ten for just producers. Then it was groups of ten for producers and the guest judge. Then you go to the televised one with Mary, Nigel, and the guest judge.
This isn’t a secret, but Cat Deeley was very sweet and I wanted to go have wine with her. And my suggestion to anyone who wants to audition: get there early. As in camp out on the pavement overnight.
Because they are in MUCH better moods early in the day and get cranky on the 12th hour. I got rejected but I was like the 30th person of the day out of thousands so they were really nice about it.”
13. Hell’s Kitchen.
“I’ve been to three tapings of Hell’s Kitchen as an audience member. One was a premier episode, one was a season finale, and one I actually got to eat at the restaurant.
For the audience only bits: they’re fun. You just sit and watch Gordon or other judges react to the food. Ramsay is a serious professional at getting the right takes or shots for things. Sometimes he will react to something 2 or three different time and in different ways, I assume for editing purposes. It’s interesting to watch.
When we actually ate there… It was quite the experience. Firstly, it’s not an actual restaurant, it’s just a really well designed set on a sound stage, I forget where but it’s somewhere in LA. You get all dressed up, but no one actually walks the red carpet like you see on the show.
Everyone is taken into a green room, and you’re handed menus to choose ahead of time what you want to eat. We had a unique experience, as we got a different menu from everyone else. Apparently Gordon starts deciding pretty early on who will be making it to the finals, and they will spend a service or two testing their final menu on various guests.
That’s the menu we got. I dont remember what all it was (this was nearly 10 years ago) but I remember it was really good.
We were a bit far from the kitchen, so we didn’t see a lot of drama, but we did hear some occasional yelling. I don’t think we made it into the final edit much, but I do remember that the guy who played Rufio from Hook was sitting at the table next to us.
All in all, very cool experience, just sad I didn’t get to try the Wellington.”
Have you ever been on a game show or maybe you worked on one?
If so, please tell us all about it in the comments!
Thanks!
