- 5 hours ago
Jimmy 'MrBeast' Donaldson and his creative team join the show's winner Jeffrey Randall Allen for a discussion about the big-money competition series 'Beast Games' in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00hi everyone thank you so much for joining us for this wonderful fyc conversation for
00:16prime videos groundbreaking beast games i am cara warner your moderator very excited to be here
00:23today i contribute to vanity fair and the la times and like many of the millions of viewers
00:28was shocked and gobsmacked by what we saw in the first season of beast games so i'm very excited
00:35to introduce this incredible panel who made it all happen please welcome your host creator and
00:42executive producer jimmy mr beast donaldson player 831 himself and winner of a lot
00:50you can say just say the 10 million to winner 10 million dollars creator and executive producer
00:58sean klitzner again creator and editor mac hopkins
01:03production designer extraordinaire steven lenhart hello and casting director katie wallen hi i'm so
01:16excited to get into this because can you start with the origin story kind of how when you started
01:23thinking about this and then kind of how you assemble the group and brought together kind of the perfect
01:27people for this production yeah so i'll hit the origin story and then klitzner you you talk about
01:32the group um for the origin honestly i've always wanted to do what we do on youtube but bigger uh
01:39because with youtube you kind of have to if we put a hundred people in a big circle and say last
01:45leave this big circle wins a million dollars and we upload that to youtube that's a 130 40 minute
01:50video and you have to build up all these people like character wise and then by the end you have
01:55to eliminate them all and you have a winner and it's a lot harder to tell a story and uh you know
01:59and have arcs when it's just one single video so uh it was honestly we just had a desire to want to
02:06tell cool stories and and build these contestants and do what we do but bigger and a better scale with
02:12largest set in history the largest cash prize and so that was kind of the foundation of it it's just
02:16wanted to do what we did on youtube but with better stories uh i have no idea how klitzner assembled this
02:20team well yeah it wasn't just me we had some really good people who obviously got the what we found to be
02:27the best in what we were trying to accomplish so it's it's not necessarily the best in the world
02:32although i feel like everybody on this project was oh okay be more specific who's not the best in the
02:36one let's look at me but no the point is is that when we created these youtube videos these are
02:44massive productions and so you know it's always been viewed as as a youtube versus a traditional
02:50but really it was a mentality that when you create something on a platform like youtube it's a different
02:57way you have to go about doing it and we wanted to bring that to the more traditional space so we did
03:03bring a bunch of people from that youtube space and from our company over mac hopkins is one of them
03:07but then we had to find people who thought the way we did in the ever-changing pivoting style of
03:13creating uh content from scratch and that's where you get somebody like steven and katie because every
03:19aspect of what we do had to kind of fall into that when it comes to jeff he's just one in a thousand man
03:24right jeff well i have i have specific questions for you for sure but steven and katie i wonder if you
03:30could kind of go into a little bit of your process i mean i just i'm wondering it seems like there were
03:37a lot of like groundbreaking firsts on this show um for you in your careers you've you've been working
03:42in this business for a while but can you talk a little bit about the challenges like the joy of some
03:47of the challenges and then kind of what you're most happy to have executed or you know risks taken and
03:53all that look the when they came to us last year and just and just laid out the basics you know we're
03:59gonna we're gonna put a thousand people on trap doors and then that's gonna go down to 500 people
04:05and those 500 people need to move into the biggest reality tv living venue in history it needs to be
04:12built from scratch and house 500 people and by the way we're doing it in like three months
04:17um it it was just absolutely over raiment once and ten days let's be fair
04:24um it it was simultaneously the you know the most exciting challenge
04:34that i have ever and will likely ever get the chance to conquer but but also
04:39the the fear of failure is something that that you know most projects you know how to get to the
04:45finish line there might be a little bit of a budget problem there might be a delay
04:48this this was undertaking something that there was no blueprint for how to do because nobody had ever
04:53done it before and so what what an exciting and gratifying process that was to you know to work
05:01through it and say well this is my plan and and i don't know i don't know who i can ask about whether
05:07it will work i don't know we're just gonna kind of go for it and see how it's going and hope we make it
05:13and we did which was awesome you have one not to pick a favorite because like a favorite child is
05:18a bad question but is there is there a set piece that you're most proud of i i just i constantly was
05:23trying to think of the engineering behind some of the things and how quickly you maybe had to change
05:27things i i have i i do have a favorite child um but i can't tell you about that because my three
05:34daughters would be way upset but i but i don't know if it's easy to pick a favorite set from from this
05:41season because we got to do a shiny black floor game show set in the finale we got to do the biggest
05:48reality living space in history which was a combination of of you know a giant stunt set
05:55which were the towers plus a giant living reality set which were the all the houses and and it had
06:00parks it was it was so fully flushed out and then you know just the the sheer scale and technology
06:08behind the the episode one trap doors it they were all incredible it was it was like honestly it was
06:15four or five of my favorite shows i've ever worked for all on one show and and you know it and it wasn't
06:22just me uh my design partner isabella scanoni who isn't here today she she and i collaborated on all
06:29of that stuff and then there's thousands literally thousands of people who helped us put it all together
06:34in that time frame nice um katie for you how did you how'd you wrap your mind around a thousand
06:41contestants i i mean loosely kind of your selection process i guess and then talking about whether you
06:49got to root along the way for jeff or you had to wait and see it when it was all finished such great
06:55questions i don't know if just my whole life i'm relentlessly optimistic but i was always like we're
07:02gonna do this and it is part of what i do is taking strategic and entrepreneurial approaches to take
07:09people's creative and determine what is the best strategy to feel talent to a show like this and we
07:17went in it with a mindset that we knew every day and we were turning around at least 200 people we talked
07:26to over 100 000 people in 12 probably 12 weeks and we were turning around a certain amount of people
07:33and connecting and looking at tens of thousands of video and like we do on every show wanting to give
07:39everybody the same opportunity and and really amazing experience not everybody is sitting in jeff's chair
07:47right now but we wanted everyone during the process to know that this was an amazing experience even if
07:55they didn't make the show so getting into it i i started to feel the challenges of the pure
08:02numbers and i've never in my career and i've been doing this three decades and done a lot of shows
08:09ever probably work this hard like 24 7 in order to bring this to life and i was just relentlessly
08:20perseverant and to be honest what inspired it was these guys and and jimmy who is so positive and has a lot of
08:31gratitude but was so inspiring and he was really the beast behind the motivation for me to do this my son
08:38is a giant fan and he's also the reason that i'm doing this but it was it was fun also because meeting
08:47so many amazing people in so many different walks of life and knowing everyone could have the same
08:54opportunity and and shot at it um was inspiring so every day that we did this was inspiring very
09:02challenging and then at the end being there and seeing a thousand people was incredibly rewarding
09:09and then to see the connection and the experience whether they won or went home um and they're
09:17they're they're so positive and how it changed their life and talking to so many people now
09:22it was a life-changing experience so with that said um it was it was one of the greatest experiences
09:29in my career and i'm so excited and jeff i remember the day danielle from my team
09:37said i really want you to see this video i just talked to to jeff allen and i looked at the video
09:43and being a mom myself i was like this guy had such a heart and he's so courageous and being a parent is
09:52so challenging but he was doing it for more than the money he wanted to change his son's life and
10:00we knew at that point that it was a game changer of why he wanted to do it and how important
10:06it was to have people like jeff on the show because they were competing for something bigger than five
10:12million dollars and jeff congratulations and i did not know that i watched the show along so to answer
10:20your second question um it was a really great moment for us at at mystic to to see you win and we're
10:28really proud of you and really happy for you jeff yeah thank you so much yeah jeff how how are you
10:34how's it going two two three months host right what's life like now yeah not even i think it's um
10:41little under two months two months since the finale came out and yeah it's um i'll say life is
10:47very different but also still the same um you know still still dadding and kind of working out
10:54schedules but kind of jet setting um with kind of trips to the east coast and to la to do interviews
11:01and podcasts and um you're blessed with a platform to be able to talk about my son's condition and to
11:07raise awareness around it and um it's it was an absolute adventure of a lifetime and i've said this
11:12before like winning was the cherry on top like i got to talk about my son to the world i just so
11:18happened to win 10 million dollars too um which allows me to do a lot of good with um a lot of
11:24good for not only for our family but for kids like lucas too aren't you what did you think going in i mean
11:29i'm not sure how it was kind of the casting was posted but had you ever done anything like this
11:34before um as far as a game show i've ever done before but this is i think my wife and i when we
11:42were dating we filled out an application for amazing race and like just didn't follow up but this is the
11:47first time i ever like went through and talked to kind of a casting director uh first time i've ever
11:51been on a show and then i show up and i'm clearly like in the top 10 oldest there and i'm like what
11:57am i what am i doing here like i had so i probably had three or four times in the first couple challenges
12:03like what am i doing here like i am i do not belong here um and i was just fortunate to meet some
12:10amazing friends and kind of everything stood still um in the beast games so it didn't matter if you
12:16were 20 or 60 like we were all the same age um it didn't matter if you were a boy or a girl it
12:21didn't matter nothing mattered like we were all on equal footing because there was no technology
12:25there was no phones there was no concept of time or even calendars so like we were all in it together
12:31and if you built relationships and earn people's trust you happen to go farther and so i'm like
12:36oh my gosh like i love asking people questions i love getting to know people
12:38and so for me um you know those feelings of why am i here what am i what am i what i get into
12:44slowly went away i'm like i do not want to leave i want to keep staying and keep playing
12:49i mean it's just it's such an insane watch um for jimmy and sean and mac kind of being in the thick of
12:56it what was it like just like being embedded and things happening so fast and and i'm just i'm kind of
13:03curious about how long your filming days were and and how often you had to kind of switch and adapt
13:09because things went other ways that you didn't expect yeah i mean klitzer how many days were we
13:15filming wasn't it like 35 days yeah yeah it was over a month yeah over a month of filming um i mean
13:22a lot those were some really long days because uh the thing is because it's not scripted you don't
13:29really know how things are going to go um you know like hide and seek on the island like you know
13:34it could take five minutes it could take hours or um other uh it's yeah i don't know klister what do
13:41you think yeah you know the uh the inherent nature of what beast games really is is a world that we're
13:50going to create where we we actually don't know what's going to happen next for example in episode two
13:55we had four people up there and they all passed up on a million bucks but the challenge actually
13:59was if you take the money you eliminate 62 and a half 62 or 63 people and so for us to sit here and
14:06go well we know what's going to happen it affects the games coming up as well and i think one of my
14:11favorite subtleties of the show is because we're putting the viewer in the in the um world that anything
14:18can happen and that's what i felt was really the excitement day-to-day when we were on set
14:23is that the episode six physical mental chance where people chose chance and there's a big wheel
14:30that has one of 16 numbers zero of 16 as well and the idea is if you spin it that's how many people
14:38are going to be eliminated so if you spin on zero or you spin on 16 you either aren't eliminating
14:44people or everybody's gone and we had a whole challenge set up and the idea that we really could
14:50have hit zero or 16 and not done the next challenge is the nature of if you really watch every single
14:56challenge has this world that we're living in that we're like we we don't know what's going to happen
15:01and that's the feeling we had as we're going through day-to-day on the show of you know we would meet at
15:07night we would meet first thing in the morning and we'd go all right well here's how everything
15:11changed for the next x amount of days and then after you get all that you then have to pass it over to
15:16mac who's on the editing side of things to go now tell this story that we didn't even know we can't
15:21plan for that so now mac has to go through and he and his team have to figure out what's the best story
15:27that we can tell that encapsulates what it was like to be on the set as a contestant or you know
15:33production or uh lighting or every aspect of it so mac you want to talk to that yeah 100 and being a
15:41co-host on the show actually gave me some ability later in the edit to cut through the noise of
15:48the world's by technicality world's hardest edit ever attempted by mankind uh more footage like you
15:55know uh tens of thousands of hours of footage hundreds of cameras and to be honest like just
16:02seeing it all go down on set every day i kind of was able to have this sort of inner you know voice of
16:10how the whole plot was unfolding and i had no idea that jeff was going to win uh and but i was i you
16:17know talked to jeff you know from time to time we talked to the contestants all the time and one thing
16:22that was pretty interesting i'm sure jeff you can relate uh more about to this more than i can but
16:27you would kind of become friends with people because we'd shoot for 12 hours and you know the cameras
16:32would be rolling for maybe three of those for example and you would just you would just talk to
16:38these contestants who are real people who are really in this thing trying to win and then all
16:42of a sudden they'd be gone because they got eliminated and you're like whoa wait a second
16:48where'd my where'd my buddy go they're just and that was that's a pretty that must be a pretty insane
16:53feeling um and that wasn't the only insane feeling there was there's all sorts of anxiety i remember
16:59when i was standing up there on the top with jimmy when there's four people and you know like a press
17:03a button at any point and win one-fifth of the money at that time that they thought was the grand
17:07prize and none of them did it i was baffled i could not believe my i blew out my vocal cords
17:12from screaming because it was just such an unbelievable feat and i remember there's this
17:18moment it's actually an episode where i looked to jimmy and i and i just i was just in disbelief i was
17:23like how did this happen because it was not what we expected at all and it's just it's things like
17:29that the feelings that you get from situations like that the feeling of loss when these people go home
17:34because i don't you know we don't have our phones we're shooting people get eliminated they're gone
17:38i can't talk to them anymore at least until the show's over and that's sad and there's this just
17:43array of emotions that you know as the person being in charge of the edit it's it's our responsibility to
17:51try to make those strings come through for the audience so they can feel what we felt as well
17:54because this could all get shot we could break all these records we can have the most cameras but if we
17:59can't nail it in the edit then it was all for nothing and so the burden of you know being at
18:04the 99th yard is stressful but it's also the most fun because i can we can bring out and highlight
18:10things that people said and you know i jeff was the i i'm so glad that he was the guy that ended up
18:20winning this thing because his cause was so beautiful and the way he articulated uh you know his son's
18:24condition was very helpful to for the audiences to understand that he just did a really great job
18:30doing that and he had such a meaningful purpose to spend the money on so all of it just these emotions
18:35coming through in the edit is the you uh mac just just one more little thing with you because i don't
18:40think editing especially on something like this is is appreciated because it's hard for those of us
18:45who don't do it to know what you actually accomplished um can you kind of loosely just talk about
18:49how much footage because you had so many cameras yes in those the the drops like i i'm just wondering
18:55how you kind of loosely organized it to get to like a discernible or digestible map to editor well when
19:02i tell people this they they usually are baffled but i want you to just imagine in your head you have
19:0610 000 or okay you have you have maybe between 800 and a thousand cameras rolling at once for days
19:12and you have no idea who's gonna win and you have all this footage and all this we can't focus the
19:19cameras on who's gonna win because everyone has an equal chance of winning at this first episode so
19:26there just is all the footage and the edit final product that everyone watches at home is actually
19:32in a way based on probability of what we find and it's a lot of i'm watching i'll put you know eight
19:39screens on camera at once and i'll watch it at 4x speed which is like kind of an information overload
19:44i'm just kind of like looking around we're looking just for like emotive conflicts just people saying
19:49one thing to one person emotions and then we zoom in we pull their laughs figure out what they're saying
19:54and that is how we find all the stuff that went in those big episodes like one and i remember i said
19:59this in in the the last discussion but it felt like nasa watching a rocket launch we'd all jump up and
20:04cheer when we found like a meaningful line from someone who makes it far in the show
20:07and just the probability i mean almost not calculable that number one and two in the show
20:17were standing right next to each other in episode one it's just like it does it like the i don't know
20:23what the probability of us being alive is higher than that happening it's just ridiculous so um
20:29yeah it's it is mainly probability it's a we have a lot of skilled editors and um they do great but
20:37a lot of it it's probability what ended up being actually one in 999 whoever the winner actually
20:41one in 498 because it could have been on either side but it also could have been across it's not as
20:47it's not as uh crazy as you would think the the numbers well no to the what determined like who won
20:54through all the things that happened like to guess that one oh yeah you know yeah it blew my mind maybe
20:59my math is it's one in five but this is right um do you have i would love to hear just a little bit
21:05more about kind of the relationships built because i got super attached to several of the contestants
21:10especially as you get down to the wire there um gauge and towana for sure like jeff are you are the
21:17relationships to still be had there are you are you friendly with these people are you still in touch
21:21with some of the other contestants of course yeah no i was just with jeremy number 991 yesterday um
21:27patrick 939 he was in top 10 we talk probably too often he calls me almost every day uh gauge um i saw
21:35him a week or week and a half ago so it's uh this was probably one of the biggest surprise obviously
21:40winning 10 million dollars was a total surprise because we didn't think it was 10 million until the
21:45last night and that was just wild to have that coin flip like that was the coin flip was probably the
21:51most exciting part of the entire games for me i just couldn't believe it um but the second most
21:58kind of um the second thing i didn't expect from the games was the friendships forged like these are
22:03real friends like i've worked at companies where you know you're friends with people then you leave
22:07companies and you're like oh yeah we'll keep in touch and maybe you email scott and every other year
22:13these friendships i feel like they're there's a handful of friendships that'll be lasting which is
22:17super surprising but i'm very grateful for it did you i don't know if jimmy you are since you're
22:24familiar with some of these sums of money did you have any advice for uh jeff kind of moving forward i
22:29did see that what huge positive is there were so many hits to the website that is the non-profit that
22:35focuses on the disease your son has which is incredible i'm just wondering some of those kind of
22:38benchmarks the the advice you've gotten versus the people who the only real advice i had for him was
22:44just make sure you pay the taxes because if you go to jail then i get in trouble oh and she did so or
22:50at least will do um so besides that yeah i mean i i didn't hear about that tell me about the website
22:56visits on the non-profit yeah we um it was up like a hundred fold um the week the finale aired i mean
23:04that's like and then and then we we've had kind of think almost between a thousand two thousand new
23:10donors you know these are just people who are just on their own going to the website so it's um it's
23:16this is the biggest thing that like i won 10 million dollars like though like i didn't expect people
23:21to kind of go okay this guy just won 10 million dollars and i'm going to help him um but a lot of
23:25people kind of connected to the cause and understand as a parent or they might have a sibling with a rare
23:32disease and they wanted to kind of be a part of be part of the journey and that's why so many people
23:37are kind of open up their hearts and donating or i've gotten so many dms just um from fellow dads
23:44it just it gives me so much hope for for humanity too yeah can you like loosely talk about kind of
23:51your hopes and dreams going forward now as far as progress with with potentially campaigns or kind
23:57of the research and all that jazz like obviously broad broad it's only been two months
24:02so i will we'll give them some lead way but yeah i mean what what are your i mean yeah i mean uh
24:07karen jimmy my ultimate aim is to to help find a treatment for my son and kids like him um and it's
24:13a it's a genetic disease so it doesn't happen overnight so many people are like hey if you found
24:17the cure yet um we're working on it and a lot of i've had a lot of new researchers actually reach
24:24out to me from prestigious universities saying hey i work on the protein side can i collaborate with
24:27some people on your side um so people are coming to help we'll certainly speed this up and for me
24:35i'm just going to continue to do things that help kind of bolster my platform to be able to tell
24:39lucas's story and so like i need to take notes from people like jimmy and mac like how do i how do i get
24:44better at youtube and socials to be able to reach more people to tell lucas's story and ultimately get
24:50more um get more eyes on it and help more families and also get more dollars to fund more research
24:55yeah i mean again it's such an incredible incredible story and uplifting in so many ways
25:00um as we sort of start to wind down the time here can you all maybe talk about again not to pick a
25:08favorite but some of kind of your most enjoyable reactions like things the feedback you've gotten
25:12from viewers or if it's just interactions you saw between contestants or something that you pulled
25:18off in the show that you cannot believe i was very happy to hear jimmy you at least refer to the
25:23amount of security you needed for the actual cash uh on this net that was a good i'm like i figure
25:28there's security we just don't see it but i'm just wondering kind of those fun little tidbits
25:32i'll kick it off i was uh i was a little surprised just how kind um so many of the contestants were
25:39you know only one of them is winning the largest cash prize in history and so i thought people would
25:44be more cutthroat when presented the opportunity especially in certain instances where there wouldn't be
25:49repercussions but um yeah for the most part people were were uh very sympathetic a lot more
25:56um i guess emotion was shown than i thought you know um because it would be easy to look at it pretty
26:03objectively like this is a competition show my goal is to eliminate you so i can win you know
26:08bye but even when people did eliminate other people like they they genuinely felt remorse and felt
26:14very sad and it made me uh have hope for humanity just seeing uh the empathy that people had there
26:21even though they're large sums of money on the line i mean mac or klitzer what was your favorite moment
26:25you saw yeah i'll just say really quick that i love and it happens multiple times a week sometimes
26:31like multiple times a day where i hear a story of somebody who said that they watched it with their
26:37blank and that blank is just so unusual man you know i know when i i you know big competition show i love
26:42them all and you know there's some shows my kids just you know they tune out they want to do something
26:48else but i'm just so it's so awesome to hear that you know grandparents and their grandkids are
26:55connecting you know and you know grandma what you think about this that's crazy that a show can
26:59span something like that and you know i'd be amiss if i said it wasn't surprising it is but it is a goal
27:06that we keep in the back of our head that we do want to bring people together to watch
27:09entertaining content like that's what we're i mean that's where the youtube channel started is how do
27:15we get the most amount of people to watch and it's not the most targeted and the cooler thing is it's
27:20all around the world as well you know the show is localized and how many like over 30 languages i think
27:26something like that but keep you on 40 whatever it is and so it became like this global i don't want to
27:33say phenomenon but it is a global recognized show in its first year and it's incredibly humbling to
27:41all of us and you know it's funny people ask they're like you must be like on cloud nine and
27:45you're seeing broken records in this and i'm like the team actually just wants to break it down and do
27:50it better if we get a shot to do it again and that's that's so true to how we create content here so
27:55it's humbling that we're even having this conversation but uh it's really cool to see the
27:59reaction from across you know every span of demographic
28:03and sean if you don't i'll add real quick like the biggest piece of takeaway i get from from
28:10families is go we we watch this every thursday at seven o'clock where we watched it together every
28:16friday at you know after school and it was like a ritual thing where now you can stream you can binge
28:22uh you can watch online it just reminded me of my family growing up watching the cosby show or
28:27watching seinfeld you know it's like a certain time do you miss it at eight o'clock on thursday
28:31you miss it and so i just did a lot of parents especially my age who have kids are like this was
28:37the first time i've watched a series with my kid where we both are invested into it and like that
28:42um kind of like what sean said like just it just melted my heart it was super cool
28:47the most beautiful moment that i remember onset of filming this show was when tawana comes up to
28:56jeff after jeff wins and they embrace again and that is just like i mean it might as well be a
29:04movie it was it was beautiful i remember i saw that with my own eyes i was just like oh my gosh this
29:10is like the emotions these two people are feeling right now it's it's like it's insane um but my
29:16grandma actually like my grandma who is you know in her 80s was heavily invested in this show and
29:23she's never really been uh i don't know if that's typically our main demographic and so it is it is
29:28cool to see that people of all ranges were invested in this kind of longer uh longer form content and
29:36to get the chance to do it again would be amazing nice steven and katie last last words
29:41just just piling on to what others have said the the crossover appeal of this has been really
29:47incredible this is certainly the only show i've ever done that all of my children and my parents all
29:51watched all the episodes voluntarily like they they all loved it which that's that's just not
29:57not heard of you know it's it's almost always not somebody's cup of tea i'll say this i want to first
30:04thank jimmy and i believe passion leads you to your purpose period and this is an opportunity and with
30:13klitzner and just genius group of people teamwork really does make the dream work but this touched
30:20everyone in so many ways and i talked to a lot of the cast all the time and it was it was life
30:27changing for them and it in a time where the world is you know unpredictable the one thing i know about
30:35this is people could relate to it it was a positive experience and we all can believe now that anything is
30:43possible because it is and good work again jeff definitely within this format anything is possible at least
30:50from what i have now gleaned uh jimmy do you want to take us home before i say goodbye to everyone
30:55uh thank you for taking the time to interview us and to anyone who's watching this thank you for for
31:01watching we poured everything we had into beast games and um yeah i'm just very grateful you guys
31:06watched it i hope to do this every year for the next 10 years i'm very passionate about doing
31:10competition shows building large sets and um telling these stories it's uh very fulfilling very fun
31:16and um yeah thank you for listening take care everybody well fingers crossed thanks so much
31:21for everyone tuning in beast games now streaming prime video
Be the first to comment