If you are like me, then last week you fell in love with USA’s
Summer Camp that airs Thursdays at 8p on USA. Since then you have been wanting to find out what happens next to our 16 (now 15) adult campers who get to live their summer childhoods all over again and vie for the chance to win $250,000. What challenges does the show have coming up for them and who hooked up with who? Let’s be real, it’s camp and that is what we did when we were away from the ‘rents!
Well yesterday I was on the set of
Home & Family that airs weekdays on the Hallmark Channel from 10a-12n and I got to speak to the host of Summer Camp
Matt Rogers. You might remember him from season 3 of American Idol, so I wanted to know if he knew then that he would be where he is now. He told me, “I always had the vision and the dream of doing my stuff. Ever since I was 3 years old, I would take my little cassette tape recorder and my own Saturday Night Live show. So it was something I always wanted to do.” So now that he’s doing what he dreamed he wanted to do, he made sure to tell me is super grateful about it.
This isn’t the first reality show he’s done, far from it because in fact he’s been doing this for almost a decade. So what is he going to take away from this one over all of the others? He said, “I’m going to take away from this show, there’s still a way to produce good reality shows even after almost 15 years. There’s a lot of bad reality shows out there and I don’t think this is one of them. The format is super cool, the way it is shot is cool, the cast is hands down the best cast I’ve ever worked with and I’ve been doing reality shows for 9 years. I’m really proud of the cast that was put together and I’m proud of the show.”
He couldn’t stop gushing about the campers. He shared with me, “The cast is literally what makes up this show. The cast is unbelievable. My hats off to the casting department who found these people.” Then he added, “Even Chuck who is labeled the Sci-Fi geek. He’s a huge strong competitor. His personality is awesome and he is a great guy. But he basically won it for the guys in episode 1.” Then Rogers wanted us to take note, “Watch how strong of a little player he is for the guys in episode 2. He’s labeled as a geek, but that does not mean he is not a strong competitor. He is literally the backbone of the guys’ team. As the episodes go further you will see him develop a lot more.”
Chuck stands out to him, but which contestant surprised him the most? He revealed that contestant to be Lauren, who declared herself the mean girl last week and shocked everyone (including the viewers) when she wasn’t eliminated. He let us in on a little secret about her, “She comes off as the mean girl. Off-camera she really sweet. She plays the game really well, like it is a game. You want to have fun and develop relationships while you are there, but at the end of the day there’s a quarter of a million dollars on the line. She plays the game part of it really well. She embraced the theme of summer camp, she hooked up with the cute cowboy, made a couple of friends and some enemies because she is the mean girl. She surprised me a lot.”
While she surprised him as a contestant, what surprised him when he was doing the show. Here’s a story of something scary that happened when they weren’t filming, “Off-camera bears invaded the camp and we had to shut everything down. I had to scream on the PA, ‘Campers get back into your cabins, there are bears on the lot.’ So we’re really in summer camp.” So as you can tell things got really real on this reality show.
So when I asked him what he’d say to get you to watch this show that airs Thursdays at 8p on USA, he said “If you are a realty show fan, you’ve found your show. If you like reality TV, you need to watch this show because it has every single element that you are looking for.” As an instant fan of the show, I have to agree him. I know you will do them same when you ride the bus to Summer Camp! Just remember the best part about watching this show, is you get to see them do all the fun things we did in camp but with the air conditioner on and more importantly with no mosquitoes leaving their itchy mark on you. What more can you ask for?
BTW if you missed him on Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family today, you can watch a repeat of the episode tomorrow at 12n. You will want to tune in to see the awwwdorable video of his 5 year old son mastering the art of heckling at a recent Lakers game that he shared with the daytime talk show.
