ROOM’S MAKEOVER
Friday favourite The Living Room returns with a fresh format but the same familiar faces, writes Holly Byrnes AS isolation partners go,
The Living Room’s charismatic chef Miguel Maestre admits his wife and children pulled the short straw.
In one of the great understatements of the man known to fans as the ‘Crazy Bull’, he says the bleeding obvious:
“I’m very intense, so I feel very sorry for my family who were stuck, all the time with me. It’s very hard living with the Crazy Bull, 24/ 7,” he laughs.
“Ask Gringo, ask Dr Chris [Brown]. When we do road trips, he knows how it feels.
But with the new series, we’ve been working together every day, but Gringo is very good at disconnecting and trying to ignore me,” he says.
“But I’m the guy who’s with you all day, and I never run out of gas. I’m like the little rabbit with the batteries,” he adds, rolling every ‘ R’ for full effect.
Asking Brown how the hosts have coped with the new series and the extra filming demands that mean they spend more time with each other ... especially so soon after Maestre followed him into the South African jungle and won this year’s season of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!.
“I’ve been practising social distancing with him for years,” the former Bondi Vet jokes.
“But it’s been great to spend more time with each other because we are like a family. And just like a lot of families, you can’t get enough of each other, and sometimes you need a bit of a break. The time this year we’ve been in each other’s orbits has reminded just how much we do have in common in some respects and how different we are in others.
“The uniting factor is that we just enjoy each other’s company and we all enjoy a laugh, mostly at each other’s expense, which is very much like a real family.”
After misinformed reports the series had been axed at the end of the year, the collective of Brown, Maestre, Amanda Keller and Barry Du Bois knew they would return with a revamped format.
Keller says while the coronavirus has pushed back its broadcast slightly when production was initially halted, the pause had“helped us find our feet”.
“I’d had a busy start to the year [co-hosting Dancing with
the Stars], as had Chris and Miguel funnily enough ... so it’s like we’ve been given a fresh coat of paint. We’re in a new house [studio], so it feels real and it feels fluid ... it’s just a really invigorated us, so we’re excited about it.”
Instead of a series of different segments they would previously film as individuals and bring back to the studio audience, the new format sees all four presenters pitch in to help a worthy family or common cause.
What’s back is the huge dose of heart that’s become The Living
Room’s signature – compounded by the love they have for each other and support they all offered Du Bois when he fought off cancer for the second time.
Showing the fighting spirit we’ve come to know about him, the building contractor has not been put off filming outside of isolation; but rather is digging in to give even more of his time to collaborating with his co- stars.
“It’ll take a lot more than COVID-19 to kill me,” Du Bois says defiantly. “If you’re going to pick a fight with me, you want to bring your best game, because they’ve shot everything at me and I’m still here. The more they shoot at me, the fitter I get. I’m not scared of anything, ever.”
His steadfast attitude and relentless tenacity is only softened by his admission that the one thing he’s missing since the pandemic “is the hugs”.
“There’s a real sense of humanity in our show. It’s entertaining, it’s funny and you’re going to learn how to do stuff, but there’s another layer of humanity which I’m loving,” Du Bois says.
Brown says the opportunity to change lanes within the program is both a positive and a challenge – especially if you consider his DIY efforts have previously ended in tears.
“I tried to remove a seemingly harmless tree from my backyard, got sap in my eyes and ended up in emergency for the night because it was one of the most toxic plants in the country and was eating away at my eyeball,” he says, adding with a laugh, “that takes skill to do that.”
Keller says despite the format changes, laughter and tears will still be on The Living Room menu.
“We will still have the stupidity and we’ll still have the laughter, but I’d like to think we’re one of those shows where you can do the gear change ... sometimes in the one sentence. Barry and I just have to look at each other and start talking about our parents or his children and we go the blub. Often I find myself on the brink of tears and then the next minute, there’s a snort of laughter. I think that’s how life is though, we can laugh through the tears and drink through them as well.” THE LIVING ROOM 7.30PM, FRIDAY, 10