If you’re a reality TV lover, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve watched something Jeff Conroy has produced. The three-time Emmy winner’s impressive resume includes Deadliest Catch, Ax-men, Ice Road Truckers, Storage Wars and now, Race To Survive: New Zealand. Over the course of 40 days, Conroy’s latest series follows nine teams of two as they traverse 150 miles of New Zealand’s most treacherous terrain for their chance to win the prize pot of $500,000. Season 2 of the hit USA show appealed to Conroy from the start: “It felt like an accumulation of the experiences and skills that I had acquired from shooting in very difficult environments with people in pressure situations.”
An any experienced producer knows, you’re only as good as your team. So, it’s no surprise that for Race to Survive Conroy assembled the best of the best across various disciplines. One person Conroy knew that he had to get involved? Kiwi Nathan Fa’avae. Given the title of “the G.O.A.T of adventure racing” by Conroy, Fa’avae assisted the production team in working with the New Zealand Department of Conservation and the New Zealand Film Commission and also helped design the course. “This is his home turf. This is his playground,” said Conroy. “That’s part of the reason it’s such a tough course.” Conroy also enlisted Rob Gowler as the series’ director of photography. “[He’s] a mountaineer on an elite level,” explained Conroy. “On our show, the DP is not just flipping on a camera and calling for another ND filter,” said Conroy proudly. “This is a guy who is mountain goating up the side of a mountain so he can figure out the right positions for the cameras.”
Conroy was eager to talk about the production process, but what moved him the most with this series were the storytelling possibilities. “I don’t care if this is the competitors’’ first race or last race, they will be different people by the time it ends,” said Conroy. “It seems like an overstatement, but in my experience, it is very true.” While audiences will no doubt be drawn to the show because of the competition, Conroy hopes they will love watching the “human transformation” of the racers from week to week as well. “People going through big life moments makes for good storytelling,” said Conroy simply.
Conroy spoke to DECIDER over Zoom about putting the show together, the casting process, and why production team decided to make the racers earn their rations in Season 2.
DECIDER: Your resume includes some of the most high profile reality TV shows of all-time, including Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. What drew you to the Race To Survive franchise?
JEFF CONROY: Honestly, it felt like an accumulation of the experiences and skills that I had acquired from shooting in very difficult environments with people in pressure situations. I’m always looking to tell stories of real people during high stakes moments in their lives. It’s hard to find those moments anymore. That’s what’s great about this show. You’ve got people who have agreed to push themselves and put themselves on the line. Obviously, it’s to compete for money, but they are making themselves vulnerable. I love telling those kinds of human stories. Also, there’s the adventure of it all. You could turn off the volume on Race to Survive—which you wouldn’t want to—and take in the beautiful scenery. You could just watch people climb mountains and float down the rivers. Visually, it’s very exciting.
Adventure racing and eco-conscious shows are gaining popularity among reality TV fans. What do you think makes these genre so compelling?
Authenticity. Audiences —especially younger audiences— are jonesing for things that feel real. They can smell a fake mile away, which I love. The goal of shows like Race to Survive are to bring these incredible experiences to audiences in as raw and real a form as possible.
In Season 2, Race To Survive moves from Alaska to New Zealand. What was the reason behind the setting change?
There’s a desire to constantly step it up. Alaska is an amazing place, and I’ve certainly shot there a million times. In this season of Race to Survive, we really wanted to make the show even more adventure forward. While Alaska and New Zealand both present lots of physical difficulty, New Zealand has bit more varied terrain. In the first episode, we go from a lake to an alpine environment down to a whitewater river, and then to a valley.
As the season progresses, you’ll see racers encounter some very unique volcanic red rock. These different environments test the competitors in a lot of different ways. Within a relatively small space in New Zealand, you could encounter all these different ecosystems. That was really attractive to us as creators because these challenging landscapes bring out character and performance and enhance the story.
I imagine you had to get permission from the New Zealand government to film there.
We were really fortunate because we had Nathan Fa’avae on board. Nathan is very much a beloved and celebrated person in New Zealand. He’s the G.O.A.T of adventure racing. Plus, he also helped us design the courses. This is his home turf. This is his playground. That’s part of the reason it’s such a tough course.
He was on our side when we went to get permission from the Department of Conservation and the New Zealand Film Commission to make the show possible. Everyone was great and helped us create a race that was incredibly challenging, but also worked within the conservation rules of New Zealand. They know they have an insanely amazing, awesome outdoor wild adventure space and they want to protect it. They’re very strict, and we followed the rules. It was a joy to navigate.
Nathan Fa’avae is an icon. I watched him and his team best the competition on Prime Video’s World’s Toughest Race: Eco-Challenge Fiji.
He’s an amazing person. His intelligence combined with his ability to bring people together helped us make such a cool course.
In reality tv shows like Survivor and The Challenge, production members test out challenges before the participants even have a shot at completing the tasks. Did you do something similar for Race To Survive?
Yeah, we use our expedition team to “ground truth” it, right? That means we need people on the ground to find the truth about these course and challenges work. That data is insanely valuable to me because I can say, “Okay, the guys and girls got to here and they said at this point this time they couldn’t decide which way to go because of this terrain.” That helps me as a storyteller go, “Okay, well I can expect my cast to get there,” and that’s going to be a decision point.
One of the things we really tried to be smart about this year was anticipating where cast members would have to make a navigation decision or make a personal decision. “Do I climb up that steep thing or do I take the long way around?” All these decisions are really what drives the show. These advanced teams understand what they’re physically capable of, use their map-reading knowledge to elevate the terrain and chart the correct course, and deduce how to make that work so that they’re successful. They really grind through each of those courses to help us tell a better story.
I imagine both the expedition teams and the production staff have to be extremely fit.
Absolutely. Our director of photography Rob Gowler is a mountaineer on an elite level. He spent 25 years as a mountain guide. This is a guy who has made at least three trips to Everest and probably 20 plus guiding trips to Denali, and he’s our DP. That’s what makes this show different. On our show, the DP is not just flipping on a camera and calling for another ND filter. This is a guy who is mountain goating up the side of a mountain so he can figure out the right positions for the cameras. He’s the person who determines the decision points where the racers are probably going, “Oh shit,” and he makes sure he’s able to capture those moments.
That’s that level of expertise on the show. We were were staffing the show, we were looking at people’s Strava [a health/fitness app that tracks movement across terrain]. How many miles are they cranking out a week? What are their times? Where are they running? These shooters have to be physically elite. How else can you keep up with someone who’s racing for half a million dollars?
Definitely the most impressive crew working in television!
The only advantage we really give our guys is weight, right? They’re not carrying a pack and that does helps. They are not trying to figure out where to go, but only following. However, they’re sleeping out there with the racers and dealing with same conditions. They are just really impressive humans.
Are there designated stations along the course where the production crew can pick up new batteries or anything else that might need to be replaced?
Yes, but we try to build the course so that it feels as like organic as possible. We have mandatory checkpoints depending on the race, but a lot of them are natural choke points. For example, the checkpoint would be where the teams would be landing on shore after a kayaking leg. That’s where we might have someone from our tech team with a bag of batteries or anything else the crew needs. Our tech team is killer. They’re like ninjas who are ready to get you what you need, swap you out and get you going. Our audio team is constantly making sure that we’re capturing all of the sounds, all of the talking and conversation. We don’t want to miss a minute of the action.
This is an incredibly exhausting excursion. Are you monitoring the health and safety of these contestants as they go?
We have a health and safety team. We have guides who are trailing these teams so the racers are never beyond a whistle blow from a safety person. We are constantly making assessments. If someone gets a cut or a bruise or any type of injury, our team has to determine if they can continue. Most times, it’s nothing serious, but it has to be evaluated. We do try to keep hands off as much as possible. We’re not handing them band-aids or anything. They take care of that stuff themselves. When they get to survival camp, we also do a full assessment of them. They go into a tent where the team runs through a list of questions and takes their vitals to make sure everyone is fit to continue.
And just because you’re monitoring the metal health and physical health of the contestants doesn’t make the race any less challenging.
Absolutely not. I don’t care if it’s the competitors’ first race or last race, they will be different people by the time it ends. That seems like an overstatement, but in my experience, it is very true. This show will change their lives in ways that are obvious and ways that are not so obvious. That’s what’s cool about it, honestly. Yes, it’s fun to see the competition and who will win, but for me, I love seeing the human transformation. I love seeing people become what maybe they didn’t know they could become or people having a better understanding of themselves. The only way to really do that is to push yourself to an extreme level. It’s super cool.
You’ve managed to assemble an incredibly diverse group of racers from all different disciplines and backgrounds. What was the casting process like?
We have a really good casting team at Original. This woman, Xena, has the sense of how to dial into people. Of course we have some professional endurance athletes in the group, but one of the things I’m really proud of is that we have people who are essentially endurance athletes, but who don’t identify themselves as such. I’m thinking specifically of smoke jumpers Ethan [Greenberg} and Tyrie [Mann Merrill], whose job is so physical that it pushes them to an elite athletic level.
We also look for people who are at transitional points in their lives. You look for someone who would really value this time and challenge. There’s a reason that we should be watching them now. The most obvious one is Paulina [Peña] and Creighton [Baird], who were recently divorced . You could also look at hunters Ryan [Stewart] and Bronson [Iverson], a father-in-law and son-in-law, who had just been officially family for four months prior to racing. Casting people who are going through big life moments makes for good storytelling.
This season introduces the wrinkle that racers will not be given food but will have to earn it or forage for it, which is insane! Whose idea was that and are they a sadist?
Yes, they are [laughs]. There are a number of sadists on the USA team and on the Original productions team. Trust me. I don’t think any one person is responsible for that decision. It came through a lot of discussions as a group where we said, “Okay, we don’t want to give them rations because if we give them rations, they just starve themselves and wait for the next ration, so how do we make it more part of the game?”
Plus, we really wanted the experience to be as real as possible. We didn’t give them food. We just basically said, “Look, you decide if you’re going to eat.” We also wanted to make their survival skills count. We want the people who are better at survival to have an advantage. I mean, the show is called Race to Survive. So yes, you have to navigate and run and have the skills required by the course, but it’s also Race to Survive. So, we really wanted to push that survival was part of it.
Last question. As someone as prolific in the reality TV space as yourself, I want to know what shows you are watching in your spare time?
Oh, interesting. Of shows that aren’t mine, I always loved Alone. I really respected that the concept was so simple and raw and real. I’m a consumer of documentaries big time. I love following the arc of a person starting in one place and ending up as a different person by the time the journey’s over. Human stories are fascinating to me.
Watch new episodes of Race to Survive: New Zealand every Monday at 11PM ET/PT on USA Network
