Kevin Bacon hadn’t thought about entering the world of reality competition television, but when ABC called him and asked if he could serve as executive producer of a new game show, he was all ears.
“Throughout my life, there have been moments where an idea seemed a little out of the ordinary, depending on what I was involved in,” Bacon told TheWrap. “But over the years, I’ve learned to be open to all kinds of crazy ideas.”
Despite having no experience of the genre, Bacon was intrigued by one of the three ideas put forward by the creators of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Bacon said he watched the show and even took part in the celebrity edition once, but admitted he “didn’t do very well.”
After we arranged a call in which Bacon himself played the game “Lucky 13,” he was convinced.
Together with fellow actress Gina Rodriguez (“Jane the Virgin,” “Not Dead Yet”) and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, “Lucky 13” hosts the show, in which participants have to answer 13 quiz questions correctly or incorrectly. They are then asked to predict how well they answered the questions. The participants with the best answer have the opportunity to take home a cash prize of $1 million.
“Some games really require you to have a huge, extensive knowledge of all sorts of subjects. Some games are just about luck – they’re just fun and you don’t really have to know anything about anything to play them,” Bacon said. “But ‘Lucky 13’ has an interesting twist for me, which is that you not only show what you know, but also how much you think you know.”
Bacon finds the game appeals to human nature, which sometimes leads people to answer a question “with an enormous amount of confidence in their own knowledge,” regardless of whether or not they are actually correct. In fact, Bacon was surprised that no one had thought of the game before, and recalled thinking to himself as he played, “How come no one has thought of this before?”
Although Bacon has never competed in a game show before, he was the subject of the parlor game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” in which people trace the connections between a chosen actor until they reach Bacon himself. The game was first created in 1994 – a decade after Bacon starred in “Footloose” – and Bacon expected it to fade away “pretty quickly,” but in the end it stuck.
“When it came to that, I thought, ‘What’s the point?’ I’m trying to be a serious actor here, and here comes a game,” Bacon said. “There’s something about it that speaks to people, so to speak, and I took ‘Six Degrees’ and started a … charity, SixDegrees.org. I embraced it. I’m certainly not embarrassed by it. I’ve done a lot of movies, and a lot of those movies have had a lot of people in them.”
Bacon also felt comfortable as a reality newcomer alongside co-hosts Rodriguez and O’Neal, whose backgrounds outside the game show world “give the show a certain charm,” he said.
“They’re so great together. They’re just naturally funny and they’re both so supportive of the contestants on the show,” Bacon said. “Obviously the contestants, the questions, the drama – all of those things are entertaining, but I think just seeing Shaq and Gina together is entertaining in and of itself.”
Bacon will also make a special on-air appearance on Thursday’s episode of “Lucky 13.” He said the series has been in the works since he began talking to ABC about the series.
“I think people are going to really enjoy it,” he said. “The contestant, who happened to be the contestant in the segment that I came in on, was … so great. He’s just really funny, a really cool guy. And even without me, I think it’s going to be a great episode.”
“Lucky 13” premieres Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
The post Kevin Bacon Says He’s Serving as EP on ABC’s Game Show ‘Lucky 13’ Because He’s Open to Unconventional Ideas appeared first on TheWrap.
