BUDDY GAMES
(SEPT. 14 ON CBS)
Josh Duhamel steps away from acting to host the new reality competition show Buddy Games, which is based on a reallife annual tradition that he partakes in with his lifelong friends. For the past 20 years, one weekend a summer, Duhamel and his ride-or-dies come together to compete in a variety of competition-style games—and now he has turned that into a TV show in which six teams of four close friends compete in an assortment of physical and mental challenges in the outdoors while bunking together in the same lake house. There’s a cash prize, a Buddy Games trophy, but more importantly, bragging rights for the winning team.
How did something you do with your own buddies become a TV show?
It all started in our backyards as kids. Making our own pole vaults, playing tennis on the hockey rinks in the summer, playing wiffle ball in the backyard and shooting BB guns at each other as we drove by on our bicycles in our underwear. These buddies almost became like a second family and that’s really what keeps us close today. You can’t make new “old friends.” We value those friendships more and more as we get older.
[Executive producer] Michael Luisi and I thought it could work as a competitive reality show, because people do this or something similar all over the world. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who tell me they get together with their friends every
year. I’ve found that it’s not so much about the games, but rather a reason to stay connected to old friends. And what do old friends do better than talk smack to each other? Seriously, I look forward to the banter between the boys more than anything. I never laugh more than I do the third weekend of August every year.
How do you think the teams—Chicago’s Finest, Derby Squad, Team OK, Pageant Queens, Team Pride, Philly Forever—will stack up?
Each team has a love of competition and a real desire to have a good time. The teams you think will dominate, don’t always do so, but then surprise you. The teams you think are the closest, aren’t always. It gets dramatic. It gets emotional. It’s highly competitive and it’s really f--king funny.