Buddy Games, a competition series from Josh Duhamel that sees teams of pretty regular people compete in an array of homespun mental and physical challenges, premieres on CBS September 14.
Inspired by the games Duhamel and his pals have long competed in each summer —human bowling, wiffleball, a paddleboard/paintball game Duhamel invented called Splat — Buddy Games features six teams of four. The winning team walks away with $200,000.
Duhamel, 50, told B+C his own Buddy Games began in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. Some of the participants have known each other since kindergarten, and they aimed to cap it at 20 players as the summer event took off. It began in North Dakota, where Duhamel grew up, and shifted to Minnesota when he got a cabin there.
Each year’s Buddy Games would feature what Duhamel called “one crazy event.” That included Splat, which involved having to paddleboard from one buoy to another, about 50 yards away, wearing only underwear and a helmet, with the opposing team pelting the paddleboarders with paintballs.
Human bowling, for its part, involves sliding down a watered-down track on a hill and aiming to take out the maximum number of garbage cans.
Buddy Games continues to this day, for Duhamel and his friends, for a weekend each summer. “It’s just stupid things like that that we still do even at 50,” he said. “We’re kind of ashamed to admit it, but it truly does bring out the kid in all of these guys.”
Duhamel said his own Buddy Games crew represents a range of different backgrounds and interests. “If you fit into the group, you just fit in,” he said. “You just had to be a good dude and want to have some fun.”
The show was shot at a lake house in Bogota, Colombia, of all places. Duhamel suspects the massive house was a drug lord’s base back in the day. “Bogota was not only a cheap place to shoot the show,” he said, “but it also very much resembled Minnesota lake life.”
The six teams are the Pageant Queens, a crew with a beauty queen vibe; Derby Squad, comprised of roller derby vets; Chicago’s Finest, a team of Black police officers; Team OK, featuring cowboys from Oklahoma; Team PRIDE, which has gay, lesbian and trans people from Portland; and Philly Forever, which Duhamel described as “everyday people” from that city that remind him of his own Buddy Games crew.
Duhamel hosts the show. He executive produces with Michael J. Luisi, Julie Pizzi, Rupert Dobson, Jacob Lane and Emer Harkin. Bunim/Murray and CBS Studios produce.
The strongest team won’t be the best athletes or the toughest competitors, Duhamel said, but the one practicing the best teamwork. “It’s really about how good your group works together, how well you know each other, how well you know each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “The teams that knew each other best knew how to navigate each game. And the ones that didn’t know each other so well fell short.”
Duhamel tested the games before the teams took part, referring to himself as the show’s “test dummy.”
“I wasn’t going to ask them to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” he said.
He also kicks off challenges with a blow on the bugle. His mother forced him to play an instrument as a kid and he picked the trumpet. “There was a first chair, a second chair, third chair and fourth chair,” Duhamel related about school band. “And I was the fifth chair.”
But at least he learned how to blow into the horn. Duhamel does share that “some pretty hilarious fails” happen with the bugle, which he found in the Bogota mansion.
Duhamel’s TV credits include Las Vegas, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers and The Thing About Pam, and his films include the Transformers franchise, as well as a couple of Buddy Games movies.
Duhamel suspects viewers will see themselves in the Buddy Games contestants, who push themselves to pull off difficult challenges and not let their teammates, and themselves, down. He was curious how they would get along in the lake house, without phones, TV or other diversions. “It was really kind of a beautiful thing,” Duhamel said, “seeing how they all became so close.”
He said the notion of a “big summer camp” series might be right for American viewers saddened by the end of summer and bogged down by the bleak news they consume about the country and the globe every day.
“I think it’s a respite from all the craziness that’s going on in the world right now,” Duhamel said.
