ABC’s ‘Claim to Fame’ and the meaninglessness of a celebrity connection
In ABC’s “Claim to Fame,” celebrity is a double-edged sword. A familial relation to someone famous, be it your aunt Cindy Crawford or your grandfather Chuck Norris, is your golden ticket onto the reality competition show. But the moment you’re selected as one of a dozen anonymous contestants, celebrity becomes a weakness. The easier it is to guess your relative, the sooner you are sent packing.
The goal is to make it 10 weeks in a shared house without anyone sussing out your claim to fame. The premise invites cynicism; granting famous people’s lesser or entirely unknown relatives weekly airtime solely because of those unearned connections could be interpreted as them riding coattails. Add to that the calculated casting of Kevin and Frankie Jonas as hosts, the latter of whom was for years cursed with the nickname “Bonus Jonas,” a reference to his not participating in the Jonas Brothers with his three older siblings.
But with each episode of “Claim to Fame,” which just concluded its first season, it becomes clearer that everyone present is keenly aware of the dynamic at play. The show asks its contestants to temporarily erase their relations, to work for the $100,000 prize using their own charm and wit. They reclaim their identities in the public sphere, revealing the futile nature of a fluke celebrity connection.
Casting the show proved difficult — even for Donna Driscoll, who has been in this part of the biz since auditions were sent in on VHS tapes. As the executive vice president of casting and talent at Kinetic Content, a production company whose roster also includes shows such as “Love Is Blind” and “Married at First Sight,” Driscoll led the team that put out a flyer advertising their search for the relatives of celebrities. In a recent interview, she described it as depicting “an average Joe on a red carpet.”
Not a single person responded.
“We had to work for every single applicant,” Driscoll said. “When you reach out to people and they are celebrity adjacent, there’s skepticism. They want to make sure it’s a legitimate opportunity. The starting point for us on day one of casting was identifying a list of over 4,000 celebrities we would be interested in trying to research to find their relatives. And from that point, we hit from all directions.” Driscoll’s team hit up celebrities, their publicists and sometimes the lesser-known relatives themselves. They sent emails and Instagram DMs, eventually generating enough interest to move onto the interview process, during which the team still had to reassure potential contestants nervous about “making sure they were able to represent themselves and their families in a positive way,” Driscoll said.
In this sense, the show’s first season strays from much of the reality television we have come to know — these contestants were already well-acquainted with the downsides to fame. Their motivations were part of the vetting process, according to Driscoll, who said some contestants wanted to support their families or pursue entrepreneurial dreams. Most didn’t set out with the intention of maximizing their screen time to launch high-profile careers of their own.
That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to. Contestants such as a charismatic woman named L.C. and drawling country boy Logan emerged as fan favorites, partially because of a clever partnership they strike up early in the season. L.C. sails through the later challenges, even without access to phones or the internet. Logan keeps things light, even when he is “as lost as a fart in the wind” (his words).
Both of them make it to the final round by maintaining the mystery of their celebrity connections, aside from a few casually tossed-out clues, such as when (spoiler alert) eventual winner L.C., whose real name is Loreal Chanel, says “Sorry to this man,” a nod to her sister, Keke Palmer. (Runner-up Logan, whose last name is Crosby, is country singer Jason Aldean’s cousin.)
“We’re looking for people who are authentic and open books, and who have a great sense of who they are,” Driscoll said. “We’ll see what happens if there is a Season 2 … I have some ideas.”