Phil Keoghan corrects our Tough As Nails assumptions—and talks about its future

Tough As Nails host, executive producer, and co-creator Phil Keoghan has answered some questions raised by recent episodes of season five of the CBS competition, from the fairness of the muddy ATV challenge to the trend of women being eliminated from the individual competition.

That happened on Rob Has a Podcast, where Phil was a guest of Rob Cesternino, Jessica Liese, and Mike Bloom on Tuesday. The episode is “Phil Keoghan Talks Tough as Nails 5.”

Talking to them, Phil is generous in praise for their recap episodes, and very kindly gives me a shout-out, too, for “helping to keep [Tough As Nails] in the zeitgeist.”

But Phil also points out that listening to or reading our post-episode thoughts and analysis occasionally creates some frustration. “One of the things I struggle with—and I’ve learned a few things—[are] your assumptions and the way that we run things,” he says.

“I do want to address an assumption that was made by you guys, and also by Andy Dehnart,” he says before discussing the ATV challenge (a lot more on that below).

After Phil offers context and information that wasn’t included in the episode, Rob says, “Let us apologize for not giving you the benefit…”

With love and respect, I disagree with Rob here. Of course, I will always apologize if I get something factually wrong—which happens more frequently than I’d like, as ideally, that’s never!

But as critics, fans, and viewers, we can only work with the text we’re given, and I think it’s fair to discuss and make assumptions about what we’ve been given to watch.

This is what I love so much about television and all art. Inside the constraints of their medium, an artist or creator completely shapes their work. They release that completed artifact; we respond to it. How someone reacts to art is completely up to them, and our interpretation of what’s inside that literal or metaphorical frame might be different than the artist’s.

For me, there’s no such thing as a correct interpretation of art. But it is also interesting when I learn about the artist’s process and intent.

With reality TV, we have the art (the episode or show) and then the reality of how that was produced. What didn’t we see? Why did they include what they did? What were people thinking but may not have articulated? We get insight about that process from journalists, critics, producers, and reality TV cast members.

Those three things—the process, the work, and the slippery space in between—are really the center of my interest in reality TV. So while I defend those of us who, say, watched an episode and were frustrated by the fairness of a challenge, I absolutely love hearing from a person who was there.

The muddy ATV course was reset

“In the mud challenge, I made the assumption that everybody would have assumed that we reset the challenge,” Phil Keoghan told RHAP. “Bad assumption.”

He’s referring to the episode four individual competition, during which contestants drove ATVs through mud, picked up a log, and then drove to the end of the course.

The episode gave us information such as:

• the first two heats did not require a winch to pull them out of the mud; the last three did
• the person with the fastest time, Marcus, was in the first heat
• Cheryl fell, lay in the mud, then limped to her ATV—and still came in fourth

Phil said that analysis of this challenge raised “very valid points, and I think I could have easily fixed it. While I made it very, very clear to the contestants how it worked, I could have made it more clear to you.”

He said that the course was reset for every run, and “those resets took 30 minutes.” During that time, the production:

• ran a bulldozer through the course, with a set height (Phil thinks 8 inches) over the hard ground to the top of the mud, to ensure it was even
• measured the depth of the mud/water at “dozens of plot points … to make sure it was consistent”

In addition, long before the contestants showed up, the production had testers run the course, reset the course, and then had the same people re-run it the next day (so they’d be well-rested). Phil said producers wanted to know: “Can they run that course in a consistent time?”

Of course, all of that pre-production cannot be included in an episode, though explaining the process could have been. “All I had to say was: We’re going to reset,” Phil says. “That would be an easy fix for me.”

The apples weren’t wasted

During the season 5, episode 5 team competition, teams gathered baskets of apples and hurled them onto trailers being towed by tractors. I expressed my anxiety at watching apples roll off the trailers and onto the ground.

Phil said the apples were not freshly picked. Instead, they were all apples that could not be sold, having failed quality control: perhaps damaged in storms or by insects, bruised, whatever.

“None of them could ever be sold for human consumption. They were animal feed,” Phil said on RHAP. They were stored and then put out specifically for this challenge.

After the challenge, no apples were wasted: they’re going to be used for animal feed.

Also of interest: Phil also said “we could not tell” that there was a 1,000-pound difference between the two teams until they actually weighed the apples. “We had no idea.”

There was no penalty for breaking things at the store

One of the more comical moments in Sunday’s episode six was when Yesi bumped an oven door with her cart, shattering it instantly.

Some viewers thought there should have been a penalty for that damage.

Phil points out that the production didn’t consider the possibility of damage, and they absolutely could not have created a penalty after the challenge was run (of course not!).

He says that other countries who produce their own versions of Tough As Nails—Australia is currently casting—will benefit from the U.S. production’s experience if they use the same challenges.

Phil also talks about the challenge of having such a rule, as “adjudication [of] rules in challenges is incredibly difficult.” For example, he says, would a dent in a can be considered damage?

Oh: I also loved the detail Phil shared that one of the show’s camera operators actually filmed while roller-blading through the store.

Women and the individual competition

Mike Bloom asked Phil about the trend of women being eliminated from the individual competition before men. So far this season, four of the five people eliminated are women, so only two remain in the individual competition.

Phil first talks about casting, noting that, because women and people of color are underrepresented in trade professions, “as far as a pool of people to pick from, the men have an advantage over minorities and over women. That’s just a fact,” Phil says.

“We’re not trying to adjust things to make it so more women are going to do better, but there is an opportunity for women to excel and they have,” Phil says. He cites Lia’s win in season three (the only female winner to date) as one example.

“These women can hold their own,” Phil adds. “Pound for pound, there is nobody that we’ve ever had stronger than Akeelah.”

Phil did say that, after the rules are read for each challenge, he tells the cast, “If you have any issues with fairness, speak up” and that he’ll answer as many questions as they have, because “we don’t want them to be questioning fairness. And sometimes, I guess, some of that information probably needs to be shared with the viewer so they know.”

I do appreciate that, despite the disparity in actual employment, Tough As Nails does do a good job of casting so that it’s not just all young white guys competing. And while production already adjusts certain challenges to compensate for height or weight, and I certainly wouldn’t want them to rig challenges to favor certain contestants.

Still, what we keep seeing—over four seasons now—is that women just don’t make it far in the individual competition. In the first four seasons, just one-third of the people to make it to the final five have been women, even though 50 percent of the contestants are women. Last season, there were zero women in the top five.

That suggests to me something structural that could be addressed. Honestly, I’d just appreciate fewer challenges that can be won by strength alone.

Tough As Nails season 6 and beyond

CBS’s abrupt scheduling of Tough As Nails season 5, and its twice-a-week airdates, did not give me confidence about its future. Why burn off such a great series in less than a month, air it on weekends, and with so little notice?

Phil Keoghan told RHAP he was surprised, too. “We did not have a lot of lead-up time to get the show launched. I got a call two weeks before we were about to head out on Amazing Race, and it was like, We’re going in two weeks, and we’re going to be on twice a week,” he said. “I do want to apologize for viewers for the extremely short notice” and says “thank you to our faithful fans for sticking with us, but it’s not been easy to track.”

But Phil said that recent L+7 ratings (those who’ve watched either live or within a week on their DVRs) he’s seen are promising. He also mentions that some viewers are still confused, wondering if Sunday night’s episode is a repeat of Friday’s (it is not!).

“I hope we have the opportunity to keep on going with Tough As Nails,” Phil says. “Our budgets are not anywhere near the budgets of the bigger reality shows. We do a lot with what we have.”

Phil also talked about the desire to move the show to a different location every season, and said other cities and locations have approached the production about filming there.

While a dozen other cities were considered, including Detroit and Pittsburgh, they ultimately chose Hamilton, Ontario, for its ability to meet the production’s needs in terms of locations—and, Phil says, for tax incentives that make it cheaper to film in Canada.

Seasons one, two, three, and four were all in Los Angeles for a very simple reason: the COVID-19 pandemic, which made production much more complicated and expensive, so it was easier to establish a footprint there.

We are, of course, living in an entertainment world where corporations literally put produced movies in the trash and delete seasons of already aired shows to save money on their taxes, so nothing is guaranteed. But my hope is that Tough As Nails continues to be as regular a presence on CBS as Survivor and The Amazing Race.