Phil Keoghan Says 'Tough as Nails' Season 5 Features 'Most Elite Cast We've Ever Had' (Exclusive)

Phil Keoghan Says 'Tough as Nails' Season 5 Features 'Most Elite Cast We've Ever Had' (Exclusive),Tough as Nails Season 5 kicks off tonight on CBS, and host Phil Keoghan says it features 'the most elite cast' the show has 'ever had.' PopCulture.com had a chance to catch up with Keoghan to chat about the series, which features real-life working-class competitors going head-to-head, and [...]

Phil Keoghan Says ‘Tough as Nails’ Season 5 Features ‘Most Elite Cast We’ve Ever Had’ (Exclusive)

Tough as Nails Season 5 kicks off tonight on CBS, and host Phil Keoghan says it features “the most elite cast” the show has “ever had.” PopCulture.com had a chance to catch up with Keoghan to chat about the series, which features real-life working-class competitors going head-to-head, and team-against-team, in a multitude of challenges designed to test their skills, intuition, endurance, and ability to work together. During our interview, Keoghan also revealed some fascinating changes for the new season, and teased what fans can expect. Scroll down to check out our conversation!

PopCulture.com: I’m curious, when it comes to the structure of the show this year — I know that the last season you guys had some change-ups and did some new stuff — are there going to be any new things this season that fans are going to see for the first time?

Phil Keoghan: Well, we’ve never been out of Los Angeles. So this is time we’ve ever been out of Los Angeles. First time we’ve been on foreign soil, we’re in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, which is known as the Steel City. Actually, the nickname’s also The Hammer. And the other thing was we got a lot of pressure from Canadians to be able to apply. So we opened up the casting to Canadians, and so there are Canadians in the cast. And they certainly made their presence known. And so I would venture to say it’s the elite of the elite. When you suddenly open up the applications to another 30-something million people.

Suddenly we’ve gone from the best of America to the best of North America. So, they are elite. They are extremely elite, the most elite cast we’ve ever had as far as life skills, fitness, drive, determination, and competitiveness. They really are. They are a very competitive bunch. Our show, we pride our show in having a lot of heart and humor. As competitive as it gets, we’re big on the humor. It’s very rare that anybody can get through an episode of Tough As Nails without crying. It’s funny because it’s emotional. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, because I really do feel like it’s just so real and people just really lay it on the line. And so I’m just excited that we get to get out of LA and try something different.

PopCulture.com: I think that’s really exciting as well. I agree with you. I think that a big part of the emotional response that the audience has comes from the fact that we’re watching people like us, working-class people, competing at these incredible feats. You see more of yourself in the Tough As Nails contestants than you do in a lot of other reality shows, I think. Keoghan: You’re 100% right. It’s real people in real life and who are real tough. I think, to your point, so many shows have contestants who represent the unattainable. They represent a group of people that the so-called ordinary person maybe aspires to or finds fascinating, but they can’t necessarily connect directly with it. They aren’t able to directly, or in the same way, empathize and connect with the cast that’s in front of them, the camera. Whereas on our show, I really feel like we are, to your point, we are looking at our brothers and sisters, our family, sometimes ourselves. It’s because of that, when they emote, that I feel like maybe it tugs at the heartstrings a little bit more because of that, because it is so real. PopCulture.com: An incredibly, incredibly palpable level of authenticity, I think. And there’s just not a lot of other series that give you that.Keoghan: Well, you’re absolutely right, again just with regards to getting the fact that we are really, really strict on the authenticity. And so we really make an effort not to make the messaging in the show preachy, that it feels more organic and authentic than, “Oh, okay. We’re going to do a little speech about something that’s topical and the zeitgeist about this person who represents a particular type of person in society.”

We try to keep it as organic as we can so that it doesn’t feel preachy, it doesn’t feel like we’re targeting a message or anything. It’s like, “No, this is how this person feels. It’s speaking from their heart, and without trying to label things too much.” Again, because we have people who are old and young, Black and White, rich and poor, some that vote for different people, the whole idea is to just try to keep it real and, again, to your point, authentic. Steven: I think that everything that you’re saying there, especially using the term “organic,” is such a great way of defining it. It really does feel very organic. I wanted to ask were there any special challenges this season that stood out for you as especially notable? Keoghan: Yes. There’s been some challenges that I have found challenging to get off the ground, quite frankly… You’re always aiming for the stars, right? You’re always aiming for the dream challenges. There’s some challenges that I wrote up way back in season one, and I haven’t been able to execute them until this season. One of them was inspired by the Supermarket Sweep show, where people would go into a supermarket and have to pick up items in a grocery store.

I wanted to do that in a hardware type store, where you have the teams competing to pick up building supplies. We were lucky enough, and it’s being really, really tough, to just take over a massive store. It’s like the size of two football fields. When we got to Canada, we found a local brand that allowed us to come in. We took over the whole place, and it was mayhem. We had drones flying and cable cans and guys on roller blades and these teams running through this massive, massive… down the aisles of this massive home improvement center, picking up supplies. It went on for about an hour. So it was a team competition. In the end, it literally came down to three seconds. It was so dramatic, and there was a big dramatic showdown at the end of the whole thing. That was a dream one that I’ve been wanting to do forever. We managed to pull it off and then got the kind of finish that we wanted, where it was really super close. We are in Steel Town, so there’s a lot of steel. People really embrace us being there. We got access to a zinc factory. Which is one of the biggest, if not the biggest in North America. We got to apple orchards. We did a give back challenge. We had our usual Battle of the Trades, which was awesome. So, yeah, there were a lot of things that we just hadn’t done. Everything is fresh. Everything you’ll see is new and different and stuff we haven’t done before. We set off a few explosives at one point.

It was pretty out there. Tough As Nails is about us plugging into real job sites. So by going to a new place, we were able to literally drop in. Our whole idea is we don’t build sets, we don’t build TV sets. We go to real job sites and we say, “Okay. You’re going to compete here at this quarry and you’re going to do the stuff that they do here at a quarry.”

Set your reminders, it’s almost time to get to work with our neighbors up north!🚨💪🏽 You’re not going to want to miss the #ToughAsNails Season 5 two-hour premiere tonight at 8/7c on @CBS!🇺🇸🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/Rv30bRMiTu

— Tough As Nails (@ToughAsNailsCBS) July 2, 2023

PopCulture.com: When it comes to blending Canadian contestants, American contestants, did you find that there was any kind of competitiveness between nations? Keoghan: Oh, hell yeah. You must know your old history of the rivalry between Canada and the United States on the ice. Canada’s like the little brother trying to prove themselves to Big America, right? We have the same thing in New Zealand with Australians. Oh, healthy, absolutely healthy rivalry, but in a really good way. Look, that’s what I love about our show is, again, the unique part of our format is, because nobody goes home, the bonding that takes place with our cast of characters and the redemption opportunities where someone punches out of the individual and then they stay and they’re there for their team and where they have an opportunity to redeem themselves.

We had a situation in the Battle of the Trades… where we had the final team challenge. We had a scenario there where literally you could not have scripted what happened with moments of redemption. Just like, “Okay, let’s all sit around and write the scenario that we would like to play out.” It happened exactly as we would’ve wanted. It’s almost to the point where it’s almost like, “This has got to be set up. This could not have happened.” So they say luck is the residue of design. We got the right cast with the right challenges and the right location, and we’re hitting our stride. We produced Five Seasons of Tough Nails in less than two years.

In those 50 hours, we’ve produced some television that I’m extremely proud to be a part of and with an amazing group of people. And we punch above our weight. And we don’t have budgets that are anywhere near the budgets of big shows, but we rely on great characters and great challenges. And that’s what the audience seems to gravitate towards. So you’re very proud of that.

The Tough as Nails Season 5 two-hour premiere airs Sunday, July 2 at 8 PM (ET/PT), with new episodes airing weekly. This season, there will also be replays on Fridays at 8 PM (ET/PT). Paramount+ subscribers will also be able to watch the show live, as well as stream new episodes the following day. Those interested in trying out a free trial of Paramount+ can do so by clicking here.

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