“Let’s hope that RTVE doesn’t ask us again,” say the MasterChef judges when asked about this new MasterChef with double everything. Exhausted, with “life 1” -the family one- absorbed by “life 2”, that of MasterChef. “It is not sustainable over time, mainly due to a physical problem,” they insisted with the RTVE staff present in one of the new sets modified and enabled to accommodate the mammoth edition that Shine Iberia has prepared by order of the public entity.
When Shine and RTVE were negotiating the new season of the culinary talent, the chain made a request to which one could not say no -Macarena Rey, the CEO of Shine, would not have thought of saying no either because one of her mantras is always give the customer what they ask for-: the 11th edition of Masterchef had to go on a double broadcast, two days a week and, therefore, with twice as many contestants, twice as many tests, twice as many sets and twice as many of effort and sacrifice. “A MasterChef XL”, they say.
Pepe Rodríguez, Samantha Vallejo-Nágera and Jordi Cruz have lived during all the months of recording, and it is still not over, in the Shine studios. Hours and hours of recordings, hours and hours of travel, hours and hours of outdoors and hours and hours of patience, a lot of patience. “There is a contestant who has lost 10 kilos since the recordings began. You can hardly see him,” explains Macarena Rey. And it is that if a program like MasterChef with 15 or 16 participants is already demanding, it is not necessary to imagine much how it should be with 30.
The reason for doubling everything is that MasterChef will be broadcast two days a week: Mondays at 10:00 p.m. and Tuesdays at 10:30 p.m. Mondays are test days on set. There will be two, one of them qualifying. Tuesdays are outdoor day. First there will be an introduction on the set, then the outdoor test and then another qualifying test. In other words, each week two applicants will leave, because many things change in this MasterChef, but the duration of the edition has to be the same, which means concentrating twice as much of everything in the same number of weeks as in the editions. size M.
There are contestants who in this edition even look human
“At first we were a little scared, but now we are fully in life 2,” Samantha explains. “We see Jordi or Macarena Rey more than our families,” she insists, to which Pepe Rodríguez cannot help but add “I haven’t argued with my wife and children for a long time.”
RTVE’s request, also risky because nobody knows how the audiences will respond, led the program to recover one of the largest castings in its history, the one that will open the program tonight: 1,000 people gathered on the esplanade of the Royal Palace cooking for MasterChef. But it also led to having to search among more people, more people, worth the redundancy.
“The diversity of Spain is all involved in a set and the pressure is maximum. It’s like a pressure cooker, when the spout jumps, it jumps. It’s life itself: extravagant, colorful, but at the same time very human. There are contestants who in this edition, they even look human”, affirms Pepe Rodríguez between laughs, but pointing out a truth like a temple. In MasterChef 11 we are going to find a Dominican friar, “who has taken us years to find a religious man,” says Rey, even a tiktoker who, as he enters the program, loses his cell phone and “learns to relate to others face to face”.
Some 70,000 people, of whom 60 will fight tonight for the white apron, signed up for the casting: former MasterChef Junior contestants, an air traffic controller who wants to start an air catering, a judge, a fan of Harleys and the fan No. 1 of the format, able to remember everything about the format.
The MasterChef studio has been completely renovated for this edition, in which two sets are released. The first, which includes the supermarket, the lounge and the kitchens, has been expanded by more than 600 square meters and more workstations have been installed in the kitchens so that the 30 applicants can compete at the same time. The contestants’ gallery, the privileged place where the saved go up, has six more meters and has been decorated with an incredible bookstore with more than 2,000 books.
The second set is almost 300 square meters and consists of the new restaurant and a multipurpose area, with a walk of fame with photos of all the winners, where some tests are presented. Impressive stage sets will also take place here, including an American prom, a mechanical bull rodeo, a fortune telling booth, a wedding banquet, and a performance by the Sakura Duo.
The kitchen has 12 fixed cameras, one hot head and eight robotic ones. The other set is equipped with 10 fixed cameras and a hot head. In this way, the control is capable of simultaneously recording up to 16 signals.
And the tests also change, “the loop curls even more,” says Samantha Vallejo-Nágera. More complicated tests to understand and to do, such as preparing a sandwich without bread. “A sandwich without bread does not interest me at all,” Pepe Rodríguez blurts out, maintaining his line of ‘traditional’ because there will always be things that never change in MasterChef.
RTVE asked us to do the program two days a week and has promised us that it will not happen again
The applicants will face all kinds of challenges: preparing a gourmet delivery, dealing with ancestral conservation techniques, competing in the beef race or the battle of honey, cooking all kinds of international dishes and even making a cocoa tree completely from chocolate.
“We have left our skin”, says Pepe Rodríguez. “That’s how they demanded it of us and that’s how we charge it too. Those of us who come from the hospitality industry have more or less assumed how hard this is. It’s a very fat beating,” he says.
It is such a beating that if they asked him again today, the answer would surely be no. It is such a beating that for the first time the shortest presentation in the history of MasterChef was given and the reason was none other than having to go record. Today it opens, but the program continues to be recorded, there is still no winner. Macarena Rey seems to be joking, but there is something serious: “It is not easy to do this program two days a week and that is why RTVE has promised us that it will happen again.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
