Uncharted: Jon Kroll Produces Gordon Ramsay Awesomeness

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio. Who in this episode.

Biagio: It’s episode 132 and we’re back with legendary TV producer of shows like Amazing Race and Big Brother, Jon Kroll. Today he’s talking about his epic Nat Geo TV series uncharted. What’s it like to work with global superstar Gordon Ramsay? How do you travel the globe making an action adventure cooking show during a worldwide pandemic? Insider tips on making a show with a small crew seem larger than life. Do you remember Menudo and. Doing whatever it takes to get past customs?

Jon Kroll: I said, I have a boyfriend there too, which my wife found very amusing when I told her about later.

Biagio: Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pearlman.

Unidentified Voice: I’m a strong swimmer, but as I’m diving down, I’m literally being swept sideways. We have a problem with the corona. It’s pretty strong. So very strong. Tony explains that the fish that normally swim above the reef are taking shelter from the relentless current. He dives deep down to check out some small caves where the fish find protection. I’m not joining him because we’re freediving with no supplemental oxygen. If I get trapped in one of those caves, it would be game over.

Biagio: Hey, everybody sees Joe.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us. All right. Guess who’s back? Back again? It’s Jon Kroll, legend to many, hero to us. And one of the very, very first people we ever met with when we when we were trying to get into business. Well, and took a class from. Well, it took a class.

Biagio: From Brady Connell, which you guest lectured at and gave us the whole Big brother inside scoop.

Jon Kroll: Well, I’m just glad to be back, because you were maybe my very first podcast that I did, and now I’ve done, like a thousand. Nice. I’m a veteran now.

Joke: Well, I’m glad we could break you in. No doubt you’ve done much bigger ones than this. But none more special.

Jon Kroll: None as important as this.

Joke: There you go.

Jon Kroll: Now, with such a perfect audience for the things we like to talk about, which is producing.

Joke: For those of you who might have missed it. Episode 108. Almost three years ago, John was here and we were talking about all the good old days and us coming up. So definitely check out that episode after you listen to this one. But right now John is working with probably my favorite reality TV star of all time in the history of the world, ever, Gordon Ramsay and the craziest show, Uncharted.

Biagio: Or Nat Geo.

Joke: And not only is he making a show where they have to travel the world, and Gordon Ramsay’s jumping out of planes and falling off mountains, and I don’t know how they ensure that show, but but he did it all during a pandemic.

Biagio: Yeah. So let’s talk about it so well this this pandemic season was what season three.

Jon Kroll: Well, the pandemic happened in the middle of season two okay.

Biagio: So talk about that. So you’re producing season two.

Jon Kroll: Let’s go back a minute, because shortly after I did your podcast was when the uncharted journey began. I had no idea I was going to work on a show like this. I think I was doing the crime show that I had been working on, Pink Color Crimes with your friend Alexis, and I got the call to travel the world with Gordon Ramsay and throw him out of airplanes and eat his food. And how does one say no to that? Seriously? And three years later, I’m still doing that show. So the first season of the show did well. The second of the season show was season of the show was going very well, and then the pandemic hit right in the middle of that second season, so we had to completely shut down.

Biagio: Were you in the middle of producing shooting posts?

Jon Kroll: It’s all very concurrent. So we we had shot we shot our seventh episode of season two in Louisiana right before Mardi Gras. And if you remember, Mardi Gras was a big super spreader event and it was actually my birthday. So some friends flew in from out of town who were married to crew members, and we all hung out New Orleans that weekend. Unfortunately, none of us got Covid. We came home on Monday, Mardi Gras was on Tuesday, and everyone got Covid, so we dodged a bullet.

Biagio: Yeah. No kidding. Wow. So what happens when? Who made the call to shut down production? Or was it just California shuts down or or when did you guys shut down?

Jon Kroll: Well, obviously the international nature of our show has some rather a special circumstances when it comes to Covid in terms of travel and everything. We actually had a natural break between the Louisiana episode and the next episodes we were going to shoot. And during that break, Nagios shut down all of their production. And I think Disney shut down all of their production, which owns that show as well, right?

Biagio: So one thing shut down. Did you continue post on the episodes you’d already shot?

Jon Kroll: Yes. We quickly moved to an off site post model, which all three media, the company that Studio Ramsay, has a deal with and oversees all of the post. They did a remarkable job. Justin Madero’s and the team there of getting us to off site post really quickly, like we were only down for a few weeks, and it happened very fast, and we were able to just keep editing the shows. And we had shot seven episodes already, so we were able to put those together pretty rapidly. And those seven episodes aired as season two.

Biagio: So the way your show works, everything is pretty much shot in the field, other than some voiceover that Gordon probably can record wherever he is at the time.

Jon Kroll: Yeah, our episodes each shoot in around a week, and we and then we bring those back and we start editing those and we rotate producers in who do different ones. So it’s a it’s a revolving door of producers. And then there’s a team that stays with the whole thing.

Biagio: That follows around. And you’re with with Gordon. Pretty much. Yes. Following him around.

Jon Kroll: Yeah. We have a sort of a core team that travels with Gordon, and then other people float in to keep people like camera, camera, people fresh and that sort of thing.

Joke: And when he’s, like, climbing up mountains and falling out of planes, are you next to him? Are you also climbing up those mountains? Are you how often are you like also putting your life at risk?

Jon Kroll: Well, typically I like to say that anything that that he has to do, I would do. And anything that he has to eat, I would eat. Yeah. And I do generally eat everything he’s going to eat beforehand. But as difficult it is to ensure him to do these things, it’s often difficult to ensure me to do them as well. So we do have a safety officer who who will test these things out and do them first. The wonderful gas Humphry gas is is our important safety guy. He’s also the first guy to dive into the food. Once the camera is cut, that guy will eat half of that table. He he is has a voracious appetite that gives him.

Biagio: So there’s there’s food left over after the big cookout and everybody eating there.

Jon Kroll: Yeah. Once we shoot the show, there’s a little bit of food left over, and the crew gets to enjoy some of that. The camera crew, if they can get in there before gas eats it all, we’ll get to have some as well. The producers, we all get to have a taste of it. But gas is a big guy. He’s a he’s a you know, he’s a former special Forces military guy. You don’t want to mess with him pretty much. It’s like the main lion gets to eat his fill or her fill. And then the other lines come in. It’s sort of like that.

Joke: Got it. That makes sense. And it sounds like he more than earns his share of that food. I mean, to be the safety dude on a show like this. Holy cow.

Jon Kroll: Gas. Not only does all of our safety, he takes good care of us on the road. And he, when we were in quarantine for some of the things that we’re going to talk about in a minute, he kept us saying by running exercise classes over zoom for all of us.

Biagio: There you go.

Joke: That’s awesome.

Biagio: Okay, so now we’re let’s say March. We got shut down. So April, you’re starting to do post on the episodes you have in the can. What are you guys thinking about the remaining episodes on your episode order?

Jon Kroll: Well, usually our schedule is driven by Gordon’s schedule, and we only get him certain times, usually in the winter months. But obviously all of Gordon’s shows were impacted by this. So what we decided to do was come up with a foolproof Covid plan that was designed to minimize risk and get us back on the road as soon as possible, because we thought we could do that before some of his other shows could, because they are on stages with lots of people and everything, and we shoot outdoors in remote areas with a small crew. So we put together a plan and we brought in a team of former military infectious disease specialist, and we put a proposal in front of Nat Geo and Disney, and we got approved to go back on the road. And obviously we were limited to where we could go to places that were deemed safe by by them, as well as places that would let us in. So we came up with a plan to shoot some episodes in Europe and in the US, and obviously uncharted is a show that shoots in India, Africa, Indonesia, all sorts of places. So that felt a little tame. So it was a real producing challenge to come up with episodes that were just as exciting. But what we found was our viewers really loved our episodes that were in Europe and the US. They loved Norway, they loved they loved Louisiana. And so we just took it upon ourselves to to have a for it to be a creative challenge. And we’re really, actually quite pleased with the episodes that we came out with.

Biagio: Yeah. So let’s talk about the Croatia episode, because I think what’s fascinating is that a lot of the shows that have shot during the pandemic, I know when we were shooting during the pandemic, one of the biggest things is obviously like, even if we all get tested and our on camera people don’t need to wear masks and everyone behind the camera is wearing masks, you still have people walking around in the background wearing masks, and then immediately it’s no longer evergreen and everyone knows you shot it during the pandemic. You guys are in the middle of jungles and on the water, so you don’t have these randos vlogging in the background.

Joke: That helps.

Biagio: With fast. Like, did you guys think that through it? Because it’s remarkable how these episodes of season, like, I would have no idea you shot them during the pandemic.

Jon Kroll: So yeah, we came up with a plan that we did not want to see masks for the simple reason that that you just said that it would read like it was a pandemic, and it makes it a moment in time. And it is a timeless show, and it is meant to be entertainment. And you could have done it through the lens of the pandemic, but we didn’t think it was a show that was conducive to this. This is a romp around the world with Gordon Ramsay discovering food. That’s not a fun thing to see. Pandemic. So we tested all of our contributors. We tested all of our crew. Everybody off camera is wearing a mask, everybody on camera is not. And and we’re masking up right before and after with the people that are on camera. Some interesting things happen in that occasionally we break the fourth wall. So for example, there’s a scene in our Iceland episode where Gordon’s eating some delicious salmon sashimi just caught out of the water, and he gives a taste to our camerawoman and we said, you’re going to get a taste, so take your mask off. And we talked to Nat Geo about it. Does this make it look like we’re breaking protocol because we didn’t. We had her take her mask off right before she took a bite of that. Then she put her mask back on and they said, no, no, as long as that’s what you did, that’s fine, because we she’s appearing on camera and we have approved that. You can have no masks when we’re on camera.

Biagio: Okay. Wow.

Jon Kroll: A little bit in the weeds. But it’s the kind of thing that we have to to deal with. Yeah.

Biagio: Now, we shot during the pandemic, you know, with a small crew here and there, we did not leave the United States of America. But one of the things that obviously immediately hits you is just the cost of the PPE and the Covid tests and on reality budgets, that’s, you know, not easy. You guys obviously have a Nat Geo budget and it’s already bigger and you have Gordon Ramsay. But like the did that come as a surprise to you guys or like how how did you handle kind of all those additional costs and how much more were they because it was international.

Jon Kroll: Well, the Nat Geo team was incredibly supportive because they knew that it was a challenge to get the episodes shot at all. So, you know, people like Betsy Foreign and Michelle Upton, who, who, who we worked directly their work with us on this. And they never saw costs associated with Covid safety to be things that we had to just absorb. They looked at that knowing that that was something that was never contemplated. And they helped us. They didn’t ever want us cutting corners to do that stuff. And they made that very, very clear.

Biagio: Now, your show probably uses fixers all the time, because you’re going in different countries and trying to discover, you know, places off the beaten path. Did you need, like, special fixers in a time of Covid?

Jon Kroll: Well, no, but we needed special, of course, Covid safety officers, which we had excellent ones who helped us throughout the whole thing. I mean, the fact that we completed spoiler alert all of season three with zero positive Covid tests for anyone on our crew or cast is is remarkable. And I don’t you know, I can’t take much credit for that. Some of its luck, some of its care being careful, but most of it is diligence by the entire crew. So they all had to adhere to not only our Covid regulations, but also the local ones, occasionally those being more stringent. So, for example, in Portugal, a crew had to go in every place we went and spray it down with disinfectant before we went in there. And since some of these were like places where food was being prepared, that got a little bit delicate, then we had to sort of figure out that whole thing, right? So yeah, so we had to deal with local regulations as well as our own regulations. And just as well as sometimes the regulations weren’t strict enough for us because we were too close to other people. So we would instill an even greater level of caution.

Joke: So everywhere you go, who’s who’s like prepping you and who’s keeping up with all that? Do you have a full time person who’s just like, this is the Covid protocol here, or is that you?

Jon Kroll: That is not me.

Joke: No, really.

Jon Kroll: Tara Williams, who’s a supervising producer and the mama bear of the whole operation, leads the production team, you know, that is that is just really on top of that. Some of them, maybe people that you’ve worked with, like Jesse Carranza and Gabby Hilton and Maddie Rig who just who are really on top of of what are the regulations, what do we have to do? What are the infection levels? So how careful do we need to be beyond what’s being required? And by the way, all of these things happen in moments in time. So when we got to Portugal for the scout, no one was wearing masks but us. When we got to Portugal for the shoot, everyone was wearing masks and there were more stringent requirements just about any place we went. So it all just changed based on the time that we were there and where they were in the cycle of surges and things like that.

Biagio: I mean, it’s a constantly changing world. Yeah. With that. That’s insane. So what about travel? I mean, obviously before Covid, you know, book a plane ticket, you’re good to go. I mean, you know, sure, there might be some visa issues to bring equipment in and stuff like that, but, you know, like with Covid, how do you I mean, some countries are full on not allowing people in.

Jon Kroll: Yeah. You can’t get into Australia and New Zealand. You know, with two weeks of quarantine to start things, you know, just because of Gordon’s schedule, which still was quite busy even during pandemic, you know, having a two week quarantine somewhere was just not practical for us. So we had to go to places that due to the business interests, you know, we could we could get we could test in and that kind of thing, just like people can do right now. And, and, and I, you know, we just had to pick places and at times that they would allow us to come in and do this. And obviously every country was dealing with the same thing that we’ve had to deal with here in America, which is how do you balance restarting the economy with, with, with safety? And of course, we look at it now on the notion of having those discussions in the summer seems quaint because we ended up being shut down for the rest of the year, basically. But if you remember, we were having those discussions here in the summer about what could be open and at one point, was 4th of July going to be a big super spreader event? So everywhere else in the world, they were on different cycles based on how the virus was spreading, and we just had to respond to that and react to that and make sure we were going to places that we could keep our crew safe.

Joke: Because making a worldwide television show full of adventure, action and cooking isn’t hard enough without throwing a crazy virus on top of that. I’ve been talking about the worst kind of show to try to produce in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, you just had everything thrown at you.

Jon Kroll: Well, we had some advantages as well in that we are a small crew and we do shoot outdoors, and that’s not to be underestimated. We have a few, we have a few indoor scenes, but almost everything we shoot is outdoors.

Biagio: So what does your scout team look like? How big is it?

Jon Kroll: We only scout with a few people and we made it even smaller for these. Sometimes we only had two people on the scout, but typically we prefer to scout with 3 or 4 people. But because of the difficulties of travel, we ended up splitting up so that we had a one unit that was scouting in the US and one that was scouting in Europe.

Biagio: And how was Gordon with all these crazy restrictions and regulations?

Jon Kroll: And I mean, I’m not going to lie to you. Gordon’s an awesome boss. I mean, he’s really great to work with. And he was so appreciative of the efforts we were going to to make this happen, because he knew how hard it was to to make it happen. And he was just fantastic with us. He was great about helping us maintain all the protocols and everything like that. And and he was just he was just a great supporter and champion of the whole process. And we felt very loved by how much he acknowledged what it took for us to do it.

Joke: I’m such a huge fan of Gordon. I want to I want to transition for a second just into Gordon because it’s, first of all, everything I’ve ever seen him in, I loved it. He did an amazing, like prison cooking show once that aired. It was like amazing. It was. Yeah, it was like. It was like it was like emotional. And he could he can yell at people on Hell’s Kitchen. He could like, you know, sit down and have an emotional conversation with somebody one on one. And then he like climbs mountains. Like what has he always been a daredevil or is this something that he decided to take on for this show?

Jon Kroll: Well, he’s an Iron Man triathlete and he used to be a football player. And of course, I mean European football. Yes. And so he’s athletic. He’s in great shape. I know that he was cycling all throughout the pandemic to stay in shape and and going on these 30 mile, you know, biking cycling trips. And so he never says no to anything that will have him do. And a lot of times we have to talk other people into allowing him to do it. But we never have to talk him to do it. He’s up for anything. He just does this stuff and he looks forward to it.

Joke: I love it. He’s he’s he’s just he just seems like he’s so 100% embraces every single thing he dies. It just takes it on like, you know, stares right in the face and just goes for it. And he admits sometimes that he’s like, it makes him nervous, which I think is great.

Jon Kroll: Well, the the interesting thing is this even this season, even though we were in some tamer places, we did some of the craziest things or the most dangerous things. In the Portugal episode, which aired recently, there’s a scene at the top where he goes gathering, foraging for a person, which are these barnacles, and the surf is just crashing into him and slamming against the rocks. And then Texas. He went hunting for rattlesnake with a blind rattlesnake hunter.

Biagio: So where did you find the blind rattlesnake hunter?

Jon Kroll: You know, I have an incredible team of producers. Doug Vise, the producer of the Texas episode Just found. Found this, found this guy. And, you know, he had me at Blind Rattlesnake Hunter. I said, just turned that into a stage. Right. And then the next episode I’m super excited about in Puerto Rico.

Biagio: Oh, gosh.

Jon Kroll: Yeah. Because and I think I told you guys this before, I was actually born in Puerto Rico and had not been back since birth.

Joke: Wow. I didn’t know that.

Jon Kroll: So it was I was my dad was in the Navy, and so I was born in the military hospital there, but I’d never stepped foot there until we scouted. And it was, I don’t know, it was kind of like a really a slightly spiritual experience to go there and experience it in the uncharted way.

Biagio: Yeah. I mean, it’s a great episode. And thank you for giving us a sneak peek at it, because it’s like it’s a part of Puerto Rico. You don’t, you know, usually Puerto Rico, it’s the bustling of the cities and the music and the culture. And just to kind of really dive into the nature and the food was just awesome.

Jon Kroll: Yeah, the mountains were amazing because not only did we find those crazy, we find these shrimp at the bottom.

Biagio: Of the shrimp thing.

Jon Kroll: Yeah, that you have to you have to repel to get into. And we end up having a monsoon storm while we were there. You’ll see all this, the show, people who are listening. But but of course, the greatest find there was, we’re told to meet this coffee farmer, and we go to meet this coffee farmer who is said to make the best coffee on the island. And we see him and we’re like, we know who that is. And it’s Rosa from Menudo. Who?

Biagio: You knew this.

Jon Kroll: We found this out like, right when we were pulling in there going.

Joke: No way.

Jon Kroll: We kept it from Gordon. Of course, that’s the good stuff. But no, but and he wrote Living la Vida Loca. He’s like and and so we didn’t know what it would be like once we got him and Gordon together, because he’s this sort of like, blissful spiritual guy. He, he totally moved back to Puerto Rico to heal himself when he got very ill with cancer. I mean, he has an amazing story and is on very special diets that are related to it. And and so we didn’t know if he would a food show like this would be even of interest to him, but he was really into it. And when you see the two of them together, they had a total bromance. Totally. And and then we even got him to come and be one of the judges at the final cook. So it was pretty fun.

Biagio: I think Gordon actually blushed when he realized who it was.

Joke: He was like, oh.

Jon Kroll: I’m interested to see when the Draco and Gordon Twitter and Instagram followings merge leading into this. Just because they both have such big followings that probably have to be fairly different. It should be kind of interesting.

Biagio: Yeah, I can see the memes already with that one though. So what’s your craziest uncharted Covid story?

Jon Kroll: Oh boy, there’s so many. I mean, just the the travel itself was of course the biggest challenge once we got there. Shooting the episodes was easy. We know how to make uncharted now. I mean, we’ve done 23, 24 episodes. Whatever it is, it’s it’s so the travel was tough. So the most difficult thing to realize was no matter how many eyes you dot and t’s you cross, you’re at the mercy of the gate attendant because they’re just getting new information all the time. And it’s not always the most current. And they’ll go to the internet and the websites aren’t updated because this information was changing daily. So. I won’t name countries. But there was at one point we were going from one country to another, and my colleague Tara and I were traveling from one country to another and they said, you can’t go there unless you have a residence for a husband or a or a wife or a boyfriend or girlfriend there. And Tara said, I have a boyfriend there. And without thinking about it, I said, I have a boyfriend there too, which my wife found very amusing when I told her about later, but all they needed was to tick the box saying that we had a boyfriend there and they were good to send us. Now we had an official letter from the government saying that we could come. That didn’t matter. The fact that the gate attendant needed to know that we had that we had a residence, a husband, a wife, a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Biagio: There you go. Through all this trouble of getting the official government letters giving you entrance, but it’s the gate agent who’s like, I have a checkbox.

Jon Kroll: Well, and I feel for them, and we never kind of lost it with them because we know that they’re getting mixed messages. So we tried to work with them and we tried to say, look, the stakes are very high for this. We only have a couple of days to get to this place and get it ready to shoot. And what information can we provide you with? And fortunately, the fixers in the various countries we worked with were highly motivated to get us there because there wasn’t as much work coming in, you know? And one of their key jobs was get us into the country. And they worked with their local governments, and some of them just moved mountains to be able to get us in. And to them, we are very, very grateful to our fixer nation.

Biagio: There you go. And Gordon never had any trouble getting in.

Jon Kroll: Generally, Gordon arrives after we do. It should not surprise you. And by the by that.

Biagio: Time I have a girlfriend.

Jon Kroll: Now, by that time we paved the way and and it’s it’s you know it it’s known that he’s coming in in general. And we’ll generally have a concierge there or someone to make sure that it goes smoothly.

Joke: Do you find that he’s pretty much recognized throughout the entire world?

Jon Kroll: I am convinced that Gordon Ramsay is the most recognized, recognizable human on the face of the earth, whose last name is not Kardashian. I mean, I honestly think that he’s so distinctive looking. I think more people would recognize him than than most world leaders.

Biagio: Yeah.

Joke: Oh for sure.

Biagio: Yeah. And and his voice and his managers and he’s, he’s you know, he’s just embraced it and he’s been everywhere. I mean, he’s really done an amazing job with his brand over the years.

Jon Kroll: Well, and the interesting thing is being in a lot of airports with him, he doesn’t hide in, you know, hide out. He’s he’s when he’s getting in line to get on the plane and he gets in line like everybody else. He’s fans approach him all the time and they want selfies and everything. And he’s so great with them. And it’s it’s admirable to watch how it happens. And also the fans are pretty cool about it too, like it’s a special moment for them. But it’s always fun to see that and it’s fun to see what a what a great moment it is for them and how he knows that and how he helps give them that moment. Look, I know that people may think I have to say it because he’s my boss and I guess I would say it even if it wasn’t true. But trust me, it is true. No it is. I didn’t know what to think when I went to go work with him, but he’s he’s just really supportive of his crew and he’s the smartest producer in the room. He knows what works for him. So all we do is we don’t overproduce him. We try and put him in a situation with a character who we think is interesting, and casting on our show is very important with the chefs and the contributors that we work with, that we put him with. We just know the kind of person that once he gets in a room with them, they’re going to make magic. And we try to create as many of those moments as we can because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We just know it’ll be good. You put him with someone like Draco, and you know you’re going to get a good scene. And as soon as we met Draco, we said, you’re going to enjoy Gordon. He’s going to enjoy you. This will be a great scene. Besides, Gordon loves coffee and Draco makes coffee, so you can’t go wrong with that.

Joke: It seems like Gordon probably needs a lot of coffee. I mean, with all the stuff you guys are throwing out, it’s like, I imagine there’s at least some caffeine going on behind the scenes.

Jon Kroll: He’s got a lot of energy, caffeinated or not, but I wouldn’t know that for sure, because I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him on caffeinated. He does like a cup of coffee.

Biagio: What would you say your most, most important job is on the show? Your tasks?

Joke: I think.

Jon Kroll: My most important job on uncharted is no matter how crazy things get, especially during Covid, to keep a face of calm and to have a backup plan. So Tara and I and Neil, our director, the three of us are kind of the, the, the three showrunners of the project, and we regroup constantly every night and come up with plan B, C, and D based on weather, travel, Covid, anything that we can think of. We have to be flexible because our most precious resource is time. We have to get our show shot on time so we can move on to the next country. So we have to be smart as producers and be prepared. We’ve changed scenes the night before, multiple times, sometimes there because people, someone in a certain place might suddenly try to hold out for more money. And we like to have, you know, the ability to say fu and and move on to another piece, because who wants to work with someone like that? And a lot of times it’s because of weather. We’ve learned that we always schedule our our aerial or seafaring activities early in the schedule and early in the show because we can drift them downstream to a different day more easily. Whereas if you have them towards the end right before the cook, then it’s a problem.

Biagio: Smart thinking. That’s why you wear the big boss hat. Yeah.

Jon Kroll: Or we’ve just made the mistakes. I’ve done enough shows where I’ve made enough mistakes that I can deal with being on one where they can’t be afforded.

Joke: What you have done. You know, only the biggest reality shows of all time, pretty much. I mean, you know, for anybody who hasn’t heard the first episode yet, I mean, obviously Amazing Race, Big Brother, I mean, like, you’re like, you’ve made really big shows. So now this one, you’re saying it’s a little bit of a smaller crew, but it feels just as big as these other giant shows. You’ve made it. Do you feel like you have to be more creative, more work, better with the budget you have? How are you getting it to feel so big on a with a smaller crew? I mean, what do you miss or what do you not miss?

Jon Kroll: Well, Gordon makes it big. He makes it feel big. And the places we’re going make it feel big. So if you knew the time and effort we go into to establish where we’re going to meet our chefs at the beginning of the episode and where they’re going to have the final cook at the end. Those are the two scouts that are most important for us, because those are the ones that give us our scope. We want to have the meeting, the initial meeting, the epic in an epic environment, and we want our final cook to be in a place that it looks like you have to helicopter into. That’s sort of our, our mantra that we, we try and do. And, you know, we have a there’s a couple of them were disappointed in like the cook off in Hawaii. We should have done on the ocean. And we ended up doing it in this sort of giant tropical forest. And we regret it because we missed that scope of it. It’s still a great episode, but we miss for us like that’s one of the ones that makes us strive to do better. So we always try to not settle, and sometimes it drives our fixers crazy because they don’t get it always. And so they show us a couple places and we’re thinking, well, where’s the drone shot? Like, what’s the big reveal of this? That’s going to that’s going to make it look like a place that everyone wants to go.

Biagio: So, so for those key scenes, the opening in the cookoff, like how many cameras, like, how big do you go?

Jon Kroll: We shoot most of our show with two cameras and sometimes three. It’s just not that big. But we we shoot 360, so we don’t want to have too many cameras because you’ll end up shooting your cameras. Yep. We don’t want to tell Gordon where to go and what to do. We wanted to go and do whatever he wants to, and occasionally a camera person will have to run ahead and get in front of him, and he’ll see that and kind of slow down a little bit. But in general, we like him to do what, you know, we like to at least the beast.

Biagio: Yeah. So at the beginning of the Croatia episode, it’s on some like very rocky beach. I mean, it almost seemed like, like pyre sticking out of the ground. So Gordon’s barely able to walk to go meet him, and then they have to awkwardly sit down on these pyres. My whole thing is like, where’s the camera crew? And how are they not breaking their ankles?

Jon Kroll: Well, that’s why we scout. And you know that scouting is the most important thing for one of these things. So when we scouted that, we knew this was going to be an issue. So first of all, we shortened the amount of time that we were going to be walking on those jagged lava because they were quite dangerous. We made it very clear to Gordon that we were concerned about it, and we also preset our camera, our cameras. And the other thing is that you can’t see is like behind those rocks, there’s kind of a path that goes through the forest so you can move from one place to the other. And so the cameras could leapfrog each other. So we come up with Neil’s really good at Neil DeGroot, our director, is really good at coming up with the ways to make three cameras look like six cameras.

Joke: Yeah, we worked with Neil on Beauty and the geek. Right. Was a beauty geek or was it was science of love? Science of love? No, I think.

Jon Kroll: He did beauty of the geek to at least one of the seasons. He and yeah, he’s I’ve worked with Neil on multiple projects and he’s he’s great to work with because he’s very creative about resource usage, which when you’re traveling around the world, you can only carry so much gear in so many people because everything has a price.

Joke: Yeah. Oh, 100%.

Jon Kroll: So resource usage is much greater than if you’re shooting an elimination show in a forest for six weeks and you’re you have a big gear room and everything’s right there.

Biagio: Is there anything that you’ve learned doing this show, the quote unquote pandemic way that you’re like, now as restrictions start getting eased, you’re like, well, maybe we did that because of pandemic reasons, but that actually worked better. So we’re going to keep doing it.

Jon Kroll: Well, already a number of people on our show live in different places. Neal, our director, lives in North Carolina. I’m trying to move to New Zealand, which I think I sprung on you guys a little bit earlier, but and then we have other people who live in Atlanta and, and, and we have one of our lead producers, Laura Belford, lives in London, and we have a crew that’s based in London. So we already are spread out a bit. And what we learned doing this is the show can totally be produced on zoom meetings, and we can all be where we’re going to be, because we’re just going to fly to where we’re going to shoot the show. And we, of course, like everybody else, have editors working from home. And, you know, during during pandemic. And it works well for us. And I think we’re going to keep doing that because our producers are usually back out on the road and not in a room with an editor anyway. Right. Well, and taking it to a larger philosophical view of the pandemic, I just felt like it was kind of an opportunity, like to reconnect with kids more, which I’m sure you guys got to do to learn a language to to start meditating, take up yoga.

Biagio: Make sure.

Jon Kroll: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people did that. And fortunately I think most people did something with it. And I don’t judge what people did if what they did was have a, you know, reconnect with their kids in a different way, I think that’s great. If if they used it to write the Great American Screenplay or something else, or come up with an amazing new reality pitch for Joke productions, that would be awesome.

Joke: Yes.

Biagio: I was just right. How do we keep the lights on and keep going? Right? What’s the next show?

Jon Kroll: No. It’s interesting. I mean, definitely from a content standpoint, the buyer still needed to put some fresh content on the air. So we had that. But it’s what can you produce? Yeah. You know, in this kind of environment.

Biagio: What’s your dream episode that you still want to go?

Jon Kroll: Do I really want to do Patagonia?

Joke: Nice.

Jon Kroll: I’m not saying that we’ve scouted it already, but I’m not saying we have it. And it’s just the notion of going to the end of the Earth. It’s one of the most unchartered places in the world. There’s incredible food down there. And it’s it’s a place that I think would make a great episode. And I know for a fact that that, that, that a certain Gordon Ramsay would like to go there as well.

Biagio: Yeah. Best Gordon Ramsay food you’ve had.

Jon Kroll: He made interestingly in Puerto Rico, he made a pork that was rubbed with the coffee from Draco Rosa’s coffee farm. It was like a pork rub. Rub. Pork rub with coffee that was stewed. It was amazing. It was amazing. But I will also mention that we we had this is the best non Gordon Ramsay food was Kim Cola, who is the Michelin starred Finnish chef who used to be the sous chef at at Noma was we went to his restaurant in Helsinki and did a tasting meal. Then we was not part of the shoot but on the scout and he was making just some mind blowing, a different, different foods there. It was just it was crazy good.

Biagio: Is the Scout just the best part? Because you get to go to all these restaurants and taste the chef’s food.

Jon Kroll: Oh, we have often said that if we could only scout and and never shoot, the show would truly be the greatest job. Imagination. But the truth is, we have a lot of fun on the shoot as well. And but yeah, I mean, look, the thing about the Scouts is there, it’s a highly compressed schedule. We go about 20 hours a day. We don’t sleep. We sleep on the plane to and from. But once we’re in country, we have so little time and we have so much to see, and we’re driving around and seeing things that will never make the show. Yeah. Once we did a eight hours each way trip to to scout a beat that we never end up using. This is in Mexico.

Biagio: You shot it to.

Jon Kroll: No, no, we scouted it and we. And it was just not something we wanted to shoot. So yeah, it’s see, though, it’s not all it’s not all Michelin starred meals and limousines on these scouts. Let me tell you.

Joke: What the nice thing about 20 hour days is. You burn so many calories you can enjoy all the food guilt free.

Jon Kroll: Oh, forget the Covid 19. The uncharted 29 is more like it you put on.

Biagio: Wow, how many beats do you shoot that never get used per?

Jon Kroll: We use almost everything that we shoot. Seldom do we have an episode that’s so long that we cut it out entirely occasionally, and we try and put that on as a digital scene. So that really doesn’t happen. But we scout, you know, sort of 50% again.

Biagio: So that you have your plan B and C in case something goes through.

Jon Kroll: Well also because until we get there, we’ve heard the fixer describe it. They may have shown us a little video, but until you’re there and you meet the contributors and you see what the activity is in person, you don’t really know.

Biagio: Does Neil go on your scouts to.

Jon Kroll: Yes, yes. Neil, Tara and I all go on the scout, usually with the producer of the episode. We have three great episode leads in Doug, wife, Missy, Bonnie and Laura Balfour. And the three of them were really well supported by by Ryan editor and Manu Lavelle and new person. Just so I can give my producing teams credit, because they do an amazing job and just, just under these crazy circumstances got it all done.

Biagio: That’s amazing.

Joke: That’s awesome. All right. Well, for those for those people who still watch TV the old fashioned way, who aren’t streaming it on Disney+ or some other platform, the next episode that’s going to air is the Puerto Rico episode from the time this podcast goes up, where do they find it? How do they watch it? All that good stuff.

Jon Kroll: You get it on that geo linear as they like to call it. On Sunday nights at nine Eastern Pacific and eight Central Mountain, I believe. And and then it goes up on Disney Plus the following Friday. So you can actually go to Disney Plus and see all of the old episodes of uncharted, including all of the ones that have aired so far this season. It’s it’s a new thing for us to go five days later on Disney Plus.

Joke: Right.

Biagio: Cool though, right? Like, don’t you love that part of streaming at least? Because, you know, usually, like, we spent so much time making a show and then it’s like, if you missed it at Sunday at nine, then it’s like, oh, sorry. Maybe you set up a repeat, but now that it’s like, well, it lives on the streaming, so you have no excuse not to see it.

Jon Kroll: Yeah. No, I, I like it. And it’s also a great way for new people to the show to check it out. And I promise your listeners, if they have never seen an episode of uncharted, either as a viewer or as a producer, watch one. I bet you can’t watch just one.

Joke: Oh, I vouch for that. It’s awesome. And if you like Gordon Ramsay, you forget it. It’s over. It’s he’s so good at it. It’s so good on it.

Biagio: He really is. But so are you, John.

Joke: So are you, John.

Jon Kroll: Speaking of.

Unidentified Voice: Awesome, you guys are awesome.

Joke: Well, thank you so much for, for for coming in and talking with us again. It is always so good just to be in your presence because like, you have to understand. You will never let you live it down. John. I mean, the first time we saw you was we were just dreaming of getting in the industry and you were the big man on campus telling us how it was done. And here we are with the company now, doing no small part to your advice.

Jon Kroll: And you’re helping other people get into the business through your wonderful podcast, who I, which I listen to regularly and which you guys have done a fabulous job. I don’t know if I told you this, but someone asked me to do a podcast and I said, I’m not going to do it because it’s already being done the right way.

Unidentified Voice: Oh.

Joke: That is so nice. Well, we it used to be easily biweekly. Now it’s monthly. But we’re going to we’re going to keep it going. We’re like headed not still about it a little more than a year ago. But we’re coming up on ten years, which I cannot believe. We’re like at eight and a half now. I think it half years. Yeah. I think yeah.

Biagio: Because we did it when our daughter was born.

Joke: Born? Yeah I love her. Nine so yeah. So it’s you know, we’re definitely going to do it at least ten years. But it’s been nice. We’ve met a lot of really good people. We’ve hired people who we’ve met through the podcast on Chosen People. We’ve met through the podcast. So, you know.

Jon Kroll: Well, I admire you guys because not only is is being married hard enough, working together if you’re married is another thing. And working together and hosting a.

Unidentified Voice: Hit podcast. Come on, it’s the trifecta. Everything to children raising two kids. Oh, yeah. That. Well.

Joke: Well, I’ll tell you, since the day I met her at UCLA. And I’m just lucky that she had decided to spend your life with me. Thank you. Honey.

Biagio: You’re so welcome, John.

Unidentified Voice: Thank you.

Joke: Thank you for inspiring so much of our career for coming in. And good luck with future seasons of this with moving to New Zealand, which makes me sad only because it’s going to be harder just to drag you in for.

Biagio: We’ll have a place to stay when we.

Joke: Which is what I was getting to. So, you know, plan on some joke. And Biagio heading over to the NZ.

Unidentified Voice: All right.

Jon Kroll: We already planned to have a guest cottage that is outside of the main house, so that guests can have their own bathroom and place to hang out. Because you can’t go to New Zealand for just a week. You can’t. No.

Unidentified Voice: No, I agree, I’m too far.

Joke: I’m thinking at least a month at least.

Unidentified Voice: So I look.

Jon Kroll: Forward to.

Unidentified Voice: Hosting you. Yay!

Joke: Well, it’s been a pleasure hosting you today, John. Thanks for coming by. And everybody. You heard them. Make sure you tune in. Check out the next episode, the Puerto Rico episode, with a sneak peek of it. It’s awesome. And one last time, John. Nat Geo Linear is.

Jon Kroll: 9 p.m. on Sunday nights on natio, 8 p.m. Central and Mountain, and five days later on Fridays it drops on Disney Plus.

Joke: That’s awesome. All right, man, well, thank you so much. Congratulations. Way to go. Great job surviving Covid making a worldwide adventure cooking show. I mean, you couldn’t string more words together that are anti-Covid than that, but you did it. Congratulations, man.

Jon Kroll: Thanks a lot. See you soon.

Unidentified Voice: All right.

Joke: See you soon, everybody. Bye bye.

Unidentified Voice: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.