MTV’s ‘The Challenge: Double Agents’ Takes Reality TV to New Heights, Even During COVID

Awards Daily talks to the production designer, casting director, and executive producer behind one of TV’s longest-running reality shows about how a Real World/Road Rules spin-off show became the one to outlast them all.

Back in 1998, the first iteration of The Challenge was simply a way to keep the success of The Real World and Road Rules rolling, by taking the most memorable personalities and pitting them against each other in ridiculous stunts like decorating a bed mattress and pushing team members in it down a road in a race to the finish.

More than 20 years later, things are very different. Stunts involve hand-to-hand combat from moving tractor trailers, jumping out of planes, deep sea diving, and eating some of the most gnarly animal parts you can think of. And yet, this is THE show that every reality TV personality wants to get on, even going so far as to go on other lesser reality TV shows first for a shot at The Challenge.

“Look, it’s unbelievably flattering,” says executive producer Emer Harkin. “We became aware of that quite quickly, that a lot of people were trying to get on other shows as a potential precursor to getting on The Challenge, which is the ultimate flattery. It’s a testament to the quality of the cast that we feature on our show.”

As the most recent entry into the franchise, The Challenge: Double Agents took place during COVID, something many shows like it, including Survivor, refrained from doing during a pandemic (talk about the ultimate dangerous stunt!). But in the end, Season 36 ended up being one of the best yet in the franchise, with bigger casting nets (an Olympian), bigger sets, and bigger stakes.

Elimination at a Crater

After coming off of Season 35 which took place in Prague (in more of an older, bunker setting), production designer James McGowan said they wanted to change it up with Double Agents.

“In Iceland, we wanted to do something different, with more of a theme of technology and be completely modern. In the beds [of the house], I built all of these LED lights, even in the gym. They were all RBG and all hooked up to the same panel, so the entire house changed color.” Which is how the players know when it’s elimination time!

The production design team got to utilize the environment of Iceland, by hosting every elimination on a crater. McGowan says that the elimination sets get bigger and bigger each year, which this one being the most complex to date, involving an “upside-down pyramid” that’s 90 feet across and 16 feet tall.

“It had to have so much structure inside. We had to sink 10-foot concrete ballasts into the ground underneath it to pin it all down. We had to have multiple engineers. When they’re [the agents] standing at the end of the pyramids, it makes them look like they’re floating off the ground.”

Casting Collisions and Surprises

Even though many of the players come from reality TV shows, casting director Skye Topic believes that the show is a trailblazer when it comes to its diverse casts, celebrating different sexual orientations, race, religions, genders, and ethnicities.

“The Challenge is a full extension of The Real World, but at this point a global extension and a much bigger soundstage and platform. Because the cast comes from rookies and people from previous seasons, we look for the best in previous seasons and the storylines that could potentially pay off in their next season and then just really strong people from around the world.”

Season 36 brought returning favorites like C.T., Wes, and Aneesa, while also bringing in a potential ringer in the form of Lolo Jones, Olympic hurdler and bobsledder. And yet, Double Agents proved to be tougher for the world-class athlete than she thought.

“You need such strong mental fortitude—I’m not implying Lolo doesn’t have that. It’s just a very intense physical game but also just the amount of politics and double-crossing that’s going on between different people. She fell in ‘like’ with Nam quite early, so her game was a little off. We all know crushing can take you out of the situation. Lolo has said to me that she didn’t expect to be that tough and acknowledges that it’s a very tough show.”

Stir-Crazy in Iceland

As if the show isn’t intense enough, Season 36 upped the ante by being filmed during a global pandemic, with all of the players living together in the middle of nowhere. COVID proved to be yet another challenge for these players to tackle.

“I think it was very heady for our cast,” says Harkin. “We had plucked them from a life of quarantine and isolation and having spent upwards of six months in isolation, and we were then immersing them with 30 people in a house together. I think that it probably was quite overwhelming. It quite a lot of relief but a lot of complex stress, because of what they had just come from.”

As tough as it was for players, it was also difficult for behind-the-scenes. For McGowan, it was his first project on location since the pandemic started.

“You just live it. It’s intense. There’s no escape from it. There were different levels in the bubble. There’s the A tier—the cast and the handlers. Then there’s a tier of people who go out shopping and interact with people. It’s really complicated.”

But as complicated as the show gets (even creating the huge The Challenge signs get more and more intricate each year), there’s no sign of slowing down or stopping, even as some of these cast members have been nearly 20 years removed from the original series that made them famous.

“We’ve all sort of thought, this season’s the last, this will be it,” says Harkin, who’s been with the show since the beginning. “We were super-excited to get to 25, then 30, and 35. We’re all extremely grateful and delighted to be part of such a magical beast.”

The Challenge airs on MTV.