Graham Norton is the host of “The Graham Norton Show,” Eurovision commentator for the U.K. and recently had a scene-stealing cameo in Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” music video. Now he’s adding another string to his bow by hosting a brand new ITV gameshow “The Neighbourhood,” which launches April 24 on ITV1 and ITVX.
In the upcoming 11-episode series, Norton oversees proceedings as six households move into a street rigged with cameras where they participate in a number of challenges to try and bag themselves £250,000 ($336,000). They also get to vote out their fellow neighbors by plonking a huge “For Sale” sign outside their door. The last household to escape eviction walks home with the prize.
After a preview of the show in London, Norton took part in a Q&A session in which he revealed why he’d agreed to host the show, what he thinks will appeal to audiences about it and how Taylor Swift made his music video ambitions come true.
“I Am Mr. Twitchy Curtain”
Norton says he was sold on the idea of the show because it was so novel. “Usually when you’re pitched to show, it’s always couched in terms of other things. So it’s ‘Deal or No Deal’ meets ‘First Dates,’ or ‘Love Island’ meets ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’” he says. “And you always think, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do something that’s a pale imitation of something else.’”
“What was so refreshing about this was it was an idea I hadn’t heard before, and it taps into minutia of daily life that we’re all — well, certainly I am — fascinated by: the neighbors, what’s going on [with them]? I am Mr. Twitchy curtain. But it supersizes it, and the scale and ambition of this thing — I mean, it’s a real neighborhood, it’s almost 200 cameras. I’ve never worked on anything of this size and scale before, because they are being filmed 24/7. So there’s the game parts, the big setup bits, but also there is the reality of what’s going on inside those houses 24/7 which is equally as entertaining and fascinating.”
“I’ve never been in a movie, but it felt like being in a movie,” Norton adds. “It’s huge, and it has that heightened thing of almost being like ‘The Truman Show’ or something. So you’re not quite sure what’s real or what’s not. You’re not quite sure where the real flowers end and the fake flowers begin. I mean, seriously, we did see people watering fake flowers.”
Family Drama
The show doesn’t work for strategists. “I feel like going into this with a game plan was a mistake,” he reveals. “Actually, the households that do well are the ones who treat it like real life, where you are just trying to jog on with your neighbors and get on, mind your business a bit, but just be friendly and nice. Those are the families that do really well in this show, even though it is a game show, and you think, ‘Oh, I must go in with a “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got a strategy.”’ And actually, you can’t really strategize getting on with people. I’m here representing the show today but really, the stars of this show are the households. They are so well cast, really likeable. People have their moments but there are no real villains in the piece. I ended up being so fond of all of them.”
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
The drama between the family members was almost as explosive as the drama between the different households. “Often you when you come into a game like this, you’re looking around like, “Who can I trust?” In this, who you can trust is the people you live with, it’s your household, because you’re all competing together. But the other thing that I loved is that the gameplay is between the households. So you would think that’s where the drama and the tension would be, in between those individual households. But so much of the tension and drama happens within the pre-existing households. People, they’re all smiles, and then they go inside and they’re like, ‘What’d you say that for? Why’d you do that? That was a really stupid thing to do.’ I love all of that.”
Moving On Out
Once a family has been voted off the street, they’re booted out immediately. “I love that bit,” says Norton. “There’s really good shots of the people inside the house watching someone walking towards them with a ‘For Sale’ sign. And so what they do is one person from each household comes out with the “For Sale’ sign, and then they all stand there together and do the voting sequence. But it is brutal because it’s instant. There’s no messing around once you’ve got your sale signs. Literally, the removals team show up, there is a van, you’re in it, you’re gone, you will never be seen again. There’s a little goodbye and then that’s it and you’re out of there.”
While Norton didn’t live on the street with the contestants, he was staying nearby for the entirety of the shoot and kept up with all the drama in real time. “I had a little house and they rigged me up a bank of screens so I was able to watch everything going on all the time. So that was my day. I would just be there, just eating crisps, watching it all going on and being very overly caffeinated. There’s something [exciting] about listening to conversations that people don’t think you could hear.”
Dreams Come True
Norton also made waves recently after he appeared in Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” music video. “I got an email saying that Taylor Swift’s people were interested in something. I thought, what the hell is that going to be?” Norton recalls. “Then an email came through, and it was what you know, it was that Taylor had been on the [“Graham Norton”] show, there were these great vibes and she literally got the idea when Donald Gleeson said he’d like to dance in a Taylor Swift video. And it’s so weird — I didn’t notice it at the time, but when you look at the clip, you can see her little face go “Ooh” [as Gleeson says it]. And she went away and she wrote up that whole mad story, asked us all to be in it, surprise, surprise we all said yes. I said to Taylor at the time, often, in your sixties, you begin to give up on your dream of appearing in a major pop video but she made it happen for me. It was just, all in all, a really great experience.”
From Variety US