Will Arnett Pieces Together What It’s Like To Be The Host of ‘Lego Masters’

Leave it to LEGO—one of the coolest toys in the world–to create a different kind of reality show, one where contestants build each other up; everyone is nice (much like The Great British Baking Show), and teams have been known to cry when other teams get eliminated.

Considering his strong ties with the LEGO brand, Will Arnett is the perfect host of LEGO Masters. Also known for playing Gob on Arrested Development, voicing the main character on BoJack Horseman, and for being LEGO Batman in the LEGO movie franchise, Arnett talks with Decider about his first time as a reality television host, what surprised him most about the show, and the best part of the whole gig. 

DECIDER: How did you get involved in this in the first place?

WILL ARNETT: I talked about doing a version of this show a few years ago when I was actually making The LEGO Batman Movie. I have a relationship with the guys at Fox and at Endemol Shine, and they were producing the show. Basically, they kind of laid out for me that “We’re going to do this show, and because for your involvement with the LEGO movies over the last 10 years, is this something that you’d consider doing?”

And I’d never done anything like this before. Because of all my LEGO stuff, it just kind of weirdly made sense. My friend Hamish [Blake] hosted the Australian version. He does such a great job. I talked to him about it, and he said, “I had the best time; it’s super fun.”

I have a real passion for LEGO. It is such a huge part of my life and my kids’ lives. It’s a real point of connection for my kids and me. So yeah, it just made sense on so many levels.

One of the things that’s so different about this is that the contestants are nice to each other. That’s so unusual. Was that a good thing for you?  

Of course. LEGO is a combination of two words, but it basically means “play well together.” I think that that’s really at the heart of what make LEGO so great–it is something that people can collaborate with each other on. The LEGO building community is very strong– something that a lot of people don’t really realize–and those are a lot of the people that we drew upon to be contestants in the show. And while they do sort of compete, if you will, to try to create bigger things and create sculptures, at the same time, they are all very supportive of each other in a real way.

One of the things for me that was important is that this is not a “gotcha” show. We’re not going to see you with your pants down or try to make you look bad. There’s enough of that in the world today. All people want to do is catch people at their worst moment. We’re hoping to catch people at their best moment.

Since it’s about LEGO, you probably have kids watching it and you don’t want to see people ripping each other apart.

All of our contestants are adults–so it is an adult show in that sense. Of course, kids really enjoy watching it; I know my kids and their friends do. It was really important that the show be positive. My role out there is to not sew discontent between the contestants. My role is to be a cheerleader, and I want them to do as well as possible.

At the end of our show when we have to eliminate a team, we always say this is the hardest part on the show.

So has this made you the cool dad? Or no?

Not cool enough.

You’d think it would, but I’m at the stage where a lot of the time my kids are just embarrassed by me.

One of the things also that made me really enjoy the show was that you make fun of reality shows. You’ll say something like, “And this is the part in the reality show where we would do this and show this, but we’re not going to do that here.” Was that something you implemented or was that something that was already part of the show? 

We just all kind of collectively decided “Let’s do this” because we are kind of like the anti-reality reality show. Why not? Because so many of these shows do take themselves so seriously.

I have no interest in making fun of the contestants. We’ll have fun together, but I don’t want to make anybody feel bad or be mean spirited. [That’s] not where it works for me.

Were you into LEGO as a kid? 

Yeah, I played with LEGO. I remember my parents got me a boat. You built it, and it floated in the bath–like whoa! And that blew me away that I got to build this thing that I could then play with.

Now, there’s so many great LEGO sets out there.

Do you ever disagree with Brickmasters Jamie [Berard] and Amy [Corbett]? 

We have had a few, I wouldn’t say disagreements, but there are times when I’ll dislike something and then they’ll say, “No, this is actually better than you think because blah, blah, blah.” They’ve seen so many builds in their lives, and they come up with builds. They will recognize stuff that I don’t necessarily recognize.

What happens to the creations after they make and they’re judged? 

We shoot them from every angle to make sure that we get all the beauty shots we can and sort of keep them intact, and then eventually they get broken down and returned to the bins.

What? Oh no! 

Because you can’t keep them all forever, you know.

Well, not all of them, but most of them. We have over 3-1/2 million bricks on set. When you have all these teams building these huge things, we need all the pieces we’ve got.

What are some of the most important things you think you’ve learned from hosting this show?

I’ve learned how difficult it is to do something like this and to kind of be thinking on your feet. It’s helped me appreciate other people’s vision. It’s been fun watching people get better and get stronger at doing something when they really believe that they can do it.

And seeing teams rise to the challenge and create these things and kind of think outside their comfort zone–it’s really cool.

What did you not expect at all?

I didn’t expect it to be this emotional.

What I’ve loved about this experience is that when everybody’s working towards kind of a common goal, even though it is a competition show, everybody’s rooting for each other. It creates this sense of positivity that’s really overwhelming. Nobody wants to see somebody’s creation crumble at the end.

To see people rooting for each other–that’s awesome. It’s been a really positive place to be in.

Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski is a writer and author of the national award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. Like Mrs. Maisel, she writes and performs stand-up comedy. Unlike her, she’s never wanted to be a road comic. For more Wojo, check her out at Wojosworld.com and on Twitter: @TheMicheleWojo.

Where to stream LEGO Masters